Tonight I am working late to finish an article for Louis Poulsen and tomorrow I’ll get up early, pack the bike (like last year) and head for Sweden. First stop is Miklas and Åsk in Malmö. They have bought a nice two-floor apartement right in the center of town, but for some unknown reason there is no stairway between the floors and thats why I am coming. Me and Miklas will spend some days designing and building the stairway.
Then I’ll go about 300 km north to a small island near the border to Norway. The ride along the coast should be awesome. Here is a very butifull place called Gullnäsgården where I will meet my meditation group. We are going to spend a week in meditation there and I am looking so much forward to it.
This means you will not hear much from me. If something dramatic happens I can reach this blog by smartphone, but don’t expect it :-) See you all again in the middle of Juli. Untill then - have a nice summer.
A Chinese law imposing fines on media that report emergencies such as riots and natural disasters without official approval could go into effect by October, the government said Tuesday, as a rights group urged Beijing to scrap it. Critics said the proposed law raised concerns over journalists’ right to report on matters of public interest. News organisations that report on emergencies without authorisation or issue fraudulent reports would be fined between EUR 5,000 and EUR 10,000 under the draft law, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The legislation defines emergencies as industrial accidents, natural disasters, health and public security crisis. The draft law was discussed Monday by Chinese lawmakers in the first of three planned legislative hearings. Xinhua quoted an official with the Legislative Office under the State Council as saying the draft law, which has been under revision since 2003, was ‘not aimed at controlling the media.’ ‘The focus is on banning the release of false or bias news reports,’ the report quoted Li Yuede as saying. ‘If the report did not contain detailed information, it would cause public concern.’ (AP, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, June 27, 2006)
View today’s frontpages from China
The BBC today launched a weblog written by editors from across BBC News outlets on television, radio and online. The blog aims to make the corporation’s editorial decision-making process more transparent. In an introductory post, BBC head of news Helen Boaden wrote: ‘We are committed to being impartial, fair and accurate - these are the qualities which BBC News is rightly expected to uphold. But we also want to be open and accountable, and while this is nothing new (my colleagues and I are quite used to appearing on Newswatch on News 24 and Feedback on Radio 4), we are hoping this blog will be a fresh way of having a direct conversation with you, our audiences.’ The project, which was announced by head of BBC News Interactive Pete Clifton at a conference in January, has been running on the corporation’s internal network for several months. (Press Gazette, June 27, 2006)
MSN is gearing up to launch a video-sharing community website in a bid to match the popularity of YouTube and MySpace. The launch marks a significant strategic move by MSN, with online video-sharing becoming easier as broadband penetration grows. Since launching in January last year, social networking website YouTube has grown phenomenally fast to become the fourth-largest such site, with around 40m unique users. According to a recent Hitwise study, YouTube and MySpace dominate video web searches, with a combined share of 65 per cent. YouTube alone accounts for almost 43 per cent of the market share. Established online media players - Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL - have failed to significantly tap the phenomenon. Each of the firms already has a video search service but, according to the recent Hitwise study, none of them holds more that 9 per cent of the market. Last month, Yahoo announced it was developing its video search service to be more community focused. AOL has a service beyond video search called Uncut that uses the strapline ‘See it, shoot it, share it’. MSN said that the new site would be separate from its existing online social community MSN Spaces. (Media Guardian,June 26, 2006)
INTERACTIVE IS THE FASTEST-GROWING PORTION of publishing giant Tribune’s business, company head Dennis FitzSimons said Tuesday at a Newspaper Association of America conference for newspaper investors.
So far this year, interactive revenue at Tribune, which publishes a host of papers–including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune–increased 28 percent, FitzSimons said. What’s more, he said, while interactive revenue is poised to grow this year to $225 million–or about 6 percent of the company’s publishing revenue–the company is looking to more than double that figure within four years. “We look to increase to … approximately 12 percent to 15 percent of publishing revenues in 2010,” he said.
From Online Media Daily
The European Commission ordered the Dutch government on Thursday to recover EUR 76.3m in aid paid to NOS, the umbrella organisation of state broadcasters. The commission, which polices competition issues in the EU, said the payments made between 1994 and 2005 exceeded the needs of broadcasters for public service purposes and led to NOS building up financial reserves. ‘Excess compensation unnecessarily distorts competition and allows the public service broadcasters to operate in commercial markets on more favourable grounds than competitors that do not receive state aid,” ‘ said EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who is Dutch. EU regulators opened an investigation in February 2005 after commercial broadcasters and other media undertakings raised concerns about funding for Dutch public service broadcasters. They found that NOS had received total overcompensation of EUR 76.3m in the period under investigation. In addition to the money to be recovered by the government, commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said that state broadcasters would also have to pay EUR 4m in interest. Todd said that the commission also had probes into state broadcasters in Germany and Ireland. (AFP, EU Business, June 23, 2006)
Two former employees at AT&T say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation.
In a pivotal network operations center in metropolitan St. Louis, AT&T has maintained a secret, highly secured room since 2002 where government work is being conducted, according to two former AT&T workers once employed at the center.
In interviews with Salon, the former AT&T workers said that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret security clearance are admitted to the room, located inside AT&T’s facility in Bridgeton. The room’s tight security includes a biometric “mantrap” or highly sophisticated double door, secured with retinal and fingerprint scanners. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees working inside the room were “monitoring network traffic” and that the room was being used by “a government agency.”
Two of the most popular web portals in the world, the search engines Sina and Sohu, of have been blocked in a sign of intensified internet censorship, millions of users expected are affected. The Sina and Sohu search engines have been out of service since Monday noon, with the search pages carrying a message that the sites were undergoing upgrades. Other services of the two portals were unaffected. Acording to Alexa.com Sina.com is the sitxth largest website in the world and Sohu is the tenth largest site.
Western internet firms including Microsoft and Yahoo have long been criticised for putting the quest for profits ahead of ethics and agreeing to censor websites and content. According to an industry source, illegal keywords, which are regularly updated by the authorities, cover content deemed ’subversive’, such as references to Tibet, Taiwanese independence, the Falun Gong and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, writes Asia Media. But a recently updated list of illegal keywords shows that references to former president Jiang Zemin , the Cultural Revolution, the Bingdian Weekly, which was once suspended for controversial articles, and rights activists Gao Zhisheng and Guo Feixiong have also been banned.
Update!
Red Herring and Austrailian IT now runs the story
Update
China unblocks search engines of popular portals
On Monday authorities blocked the search engines of Sina.com and Sohu.com to try to upgrade their censorship capabilities, website staff said. ‘Concerned government departments have been inspecting web portals including Sina and Sohu and others,’ a customer service employee at Sina told AFP. She refused to specify what aspects of the search engine had been inspected. But on Tuesday Sina staff said the government was seeking to enhance the censorship capabilities to better preempt ‘unhealthy’ content. A customer service representative at Sohu also said the company’s search engine had been upgraded and resumed functioning on Wednesday morning. Mainland China has for years been battling to censor the internet of pornographic and violent content, as well as political and religious material that it believes could spark social unrest. (South China Morning Post via Asia Media, June 22, 2006)
Italian publisher Mondadori, part of the Fininvest empire of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, said Monday it was buying Emap France for EUR 545m. The company added in a brief statement to the London Stock Exchange that it planned to return proceeds from the sale to Emap shareholders ‘as soon as practicable.’ It said the operation would be financed entirely with available cash and specifically agreed credit lines. Emap France, a subsidiary of the British publishing giant Emap, was put up for sale in February. It is a leading magazine publisher in France with 43 titles covering interests ranging from the lives of celebrities, to the home, the auto sector, science and television. The French business, which also includes television listings titles, has struggled amid a competitive market and a downturn in advertising. (AFP, The Tocqueville Connection,June 20, 2006)
The Guardian is launching a new service providing readers with a rapid overview of news that will be updated every 15 minutes. G24 will be a free service featuring news content from the Guardian Unlimited website across five areas: general news, international, economics, sport and media. Users will be able to log on to Guardian Unlimited and download an eight to 12-page A4 pdf document, which can then be printed off. They can select any of the five news streams. The Guardian hopes the service will to appeal to lunchtime and evening commuters wanting a live print-based update of the day’s events. G24 will be launched later in the summer with telecoms giant BT as the launch sponsor. (Media Guardian,June 20, 2006)
I am working on a new subpage that grabs today´s front pages many more than 200 leading newspapers worldwide. The front page index is searchable by country and what you see is a thumbnail of the day’s print version. When you click you will see the entire newspaper frontpage in high resolution - free to read and save. If you want to read the entire newspapers online you can have a free 14 day trial. See today’s frontpages here
Not all countries are finished yet, check back in a couple of days to see them all.
Dozens of mayors from Turkey’s troubled southeast could go to jail for sending a letter to Denmark’s prime minister, who said that would go against the values of the EU which Turkey is hoping to join. A state prosecutor has charged 56 mayors with “knowingly and willingly helping” the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) when they urged Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen not to close the Danish-based Kurdish broadcaster Roj TV.
No date has been set for the trial and the criminal court must still accept the charges for the case to go ahead. The mayors could face up to 10 years in jail. Turkey accuses Roj of being a mouthpiece of the separatist PKK, which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of carving out an ethnic homeland. More than 30,000 people, mostly Kurds, have been killed in that conflict.
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen today told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation that he was “shocked about the charges”
In support of ROJ TV, I have decided to add the stream to Newspaper Index TV. This means that you can now watch ROJ TV directly from you browser. Click here to watch ROJ TV.
Iran has banned The Economist magazine for describing the Persian Gulf as merely “the Gulf” in a map published in the latest edition, state television reported late Wednesday.
It is the second time in two years that Iran has prohibited a publication of international repute for failing to use the term “Persian Gulf” in its maps. In November 2004, it banned the National Geographic atlas when a new edition appeared with the term “Arabian Gulf” in parenthesis beside the more commonly used Persian Gulf.
Tehran believes in aggressively defending the historical term “Persian Gulf” against “Arabian Gulf,” which it regards as a name dreamed up by Arab nationalists. While Iran dominates the eastern side of the waterway, the western shores are held by Arab countries.
Source: The Associated Press via The Jerusalem Post
The Pentagon has ejected the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer reporter who broke the story of suicides at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Reporter Michael Gordon and photographer Todd Sumlin were the only US journalists at the base when three detainees hanged themselves Saturday. They had been working on a profile of a jail commander and had clearance to be on the base for six days, the Observer said. The two Observer staffers along with reporters from the Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times were ordered by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld to take a military transport plane from the base to Miami Wednesday morning. A Pentagon press officer said Gordon caused ‘controversy’ with his insider reports and there was also a problem with other media demanding the same access. ‘The Pentagon appears to have panicked when it discovered it couldn’t manipulate a first-class reporter, so it shoved him and all other press out,’ Observer Editor Rick Thames said. (UPI, Editor and Publisher,June 15, 2006)
A survey has revealed that about 38 per cent of young Belgians have their own weblog. This is well above the European average of 18 per cent. Girls aged between 14 and 16 are particular enthusiastic about publishing their thoughts in a weblog. The study which was carried out by Mediappro questioned 9,000 people between the ages of 12 and 18, from nine European countries. 38 per cent of young Belgians are bloggers with the figure rising to 42 per cent among girls between the ages of 14 and 16. Bloggers share their thoughts, as well as publishing photographs and articles on their own special webpage. The researchers say that weblogs are generally temporary, having a life-span of between six months and a year. Thierry De Smedt, who headed the research team said that the success of blogging in Belgium is no doubt connected to the fact that it is a relative new phenomenon in the country.
Religious courts shut cinema halls and barred residents of the Somali capital from watching the football World Cup, prompting scores of people to protest the ban in which two people were killed, court officials and residents said on Sunday. Gunmen loyal to the Joint Islamic Courts (JIC) cut electricity, cleared cinema halls and warned residents against watching the football tournament in areas they controlled, forcing a violent protest late on Saturday in which two people were killed, residents said. JIC deputy chairman Abdul Kadir Ali Omar said the tribunals would crack down on halls that defied the order to show western films and video, including the World Cup. “This is war against all people who show films that promote pornography, drug dealing and all forms of evil,” Mr Omar told AFP.”We shall not even allow the showing of the World Cup because they corrupt the morals of our children whom we endeavour to teach the Islamic way of life,” he added. Islamic courts officials said they were against some elements of World Cup, notably the advertisements for alcohol. Residents said gunmen were roaming in Sukahola and Huriwa neighbourhoods to ensure that the ban was enforced. Asian Media, Media News Daly
Google Earth zooms in
Google unveiled yesterday a new version of its Google Earth application, which features greater coverage and higher resolution, even showing people walking in some locations - detail you get with aerial photography and not usually satellites. The downloadable Google Earth 4.0 runs on PCs, Macs and Linux-based machines and is available in localised versions in French, Italian, German and Spanish, according to Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google Earth. Jones, speaking at Google Geo Developer Day, said the improvements will eventually show up in the web-based Google Maps site. Developers can use Google’s SketchUp 3D modeling software to make the images as lifelike as possible, such as adding texture to buildings. Users can also overlay different data on top of the same view. In a product demonstration, Jones showed a 3D view of San Francisco from 2005, and with a click, showed the same view of San Francisco in the 1940s. (CNET News, June 13, 2006)
Some people do weird things when browsing late nightly. I just had a look at the logs of this blogs and it is funny how people end up here. Most people search for things like “newspapers”, “Mohammed Cartoons”, “free speech” and other strings and keywords that matches this blogs topics. But sometimes I get hits from search engines via incredible and amusing search combinations. Here are just some samples of search strings people have used this month so far to enter blog.newspaperindex.com:
“what is greater than god …..worse than the devil……. the r” - I have no idea - and you have read too much Dan Brown lately.
“venezuela mens magazines” - Good luck, next.
“the swedish lie” - I actually got so interested in this string that I did the search myself.
“smoking and newspaper” - Best 3 things in the world?
“samsung ceo bastard” - LOL, how about “just fired”
“paul mccartney wordpress blog” - Wrong address.
“pinup blog” - Certainly wrong address.
“kurdish sex grills” - Jesus Christ! What exactly did he hope to find?
This is just a few examples from the last two weeks. I will keep an eye on the logs and keep you updated in the future :-)
Google research scientists want your computer to watch television with you so it can deliver personalised internet content at the same time. In their paper Google researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja propose using ambient-audio identification technology to capture TV sound with a laptop PC to identify the show that is the source of the sound and to use that information to immediately return personalised internet content to the PC. The scheme is described as mass personalisation. With such a system, Google could extend its online dominance into television, and presumably radio, by offering advertisers unparalleled insight into the mass media audience. The paper specifically contemplates the proposed system’s potential as an advertising tool. A similar procedure to Google’s online keyword bidding process could be adapted to mass-personalisation applications. Content providers or advertisers might bid for specific television segments, the paper says. Those appalled by the prospect of Google tapping your television take heart: The proposal suggests user privacy would be respected. (Information Week via Merit-UNU ,June 12, 2006)
A new report by the International Federation of Journalists highlights a worldwide trend of experienced senior staff being replaced by younger graduates who are often employed on a casual or freelance basis and on less pay. The report, entitled The Changing Nature of Work: A Global Survey, polled 41 journalists’ organisations in 38 countries that are affiliated to the IFJ. The report also documents a trend toward the privatisation of state media and said younger journalists were being hired in new areas of employment, including new media and some areas of the developing world where media ownership is expanding. As a result, journalists’ average rate of pay appears to have declined in real terms over the past five years. Insecurity in employment and a lower rate of pay appears to be having a negative impact on the quality of editorial content and may be jeopardising the media’s role as a watchdog for society, the report says. (Press Gazette,June 12, 2006)
I am working on a project that will serve you a range of popular tv-channels free to watch online. Work is still in progress, but you are wellcome to take preview here:
http://www.newspaperindex.com/tv.php
Do not hesistate to contact me with any suggestions or ideas.
A Turkish court Thursday acquitted a prominent Turkish journalist in a freedom of speech case linked to debate over the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, the Anatolia news agency reported. The court ruled that Murat Belge, a columnist for the daily Radikal, did not insult the judiciary when he criticised a court decision that briefly blocked a landmark conference last year on the massacres, a long-standing taboo that Turks have only recently began to discuss. The judge dropped similar charges against Belge over a second critical article on the same issue, citing the statute of limitations, Anatolia reported. Belge risked up to 10 years in jail for the two articles. The European Union has repeatedly warned Ankara that the prosecution of intellectuals for exercising their right to free speech is damaging Turkey’s membership bid. Charges against four other leading journalists, who had been indicted with Belge in the same case, were dropped in April because their articles fell under the scope of the statute of limitations. (AFP, EU Business, June 09, 2006)
The Chinese government has ordered cinemas to stop showing The Da Vinci Code. It said that the ban was to make space for locally produced movies. It is the first time the government has withdrawn a foreign movie from cinemas. But the official explanation appears to be contradicted by the release of another Hollywood blockbuster, Ice Age: The Meltdown, in China today. Another possible explanation is that officials do not want the film to do well in China. Having made CNY 104m (EUR 10m) since its release on 19 May, it was on its way to becoming one of the highest-earning foreign films in China. The Da Vinci Code has been opposed by Christian groups because it suggests that Jesus fathered children who continued his lineage. China’s state-backed Catholic Church urged followers to boycott the film, but only a few of China’s 1.3bn people are Christians, with estimates ranging from 16m to 47m. The film had been given the widest release yet for a foreign film in China, with 393 prints sent to cinemas. (The Independent,June 09, 2006)
Former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev today announced that he had become a media proprietor by purchasing a minority stake in independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Gorbachev has purchased a 49 per cent stake in the paper, which is highly critical of the Kremlin, together with banking billionaire Alexander Lebedev, his friend and the deputy in the Duma, the Russian parliament. The former president said that as a new shareholder he would respect the paper’s editorial independence. Novaya Gazeta, which has a circulation of about 600,000, is printed in Moscow and is distributed in some Russian regions outside the capital. Gorbachev used the money from his 1990 Nobel Prize to help set up Novaya Gazeta in 1993 and provide its first computers. The paper has specialised in investigative reporting, especially on government corruption, and has been highly critical of the Kremlin’s policies in Chechnya, but has lost several libel suits. The other 51 per cent of shares belong to the paper’s staff. (Media Guardian,June 08, 2006)
The internet search engine Google has admitted compromising its principles by accepting censorship in China and raised the possibility of pulling out of the country. In a meeting with reporters yesterday, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company had agreed to censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service. Google’s rivals agreed to the same demands, which Brin described as ‘a set of rules that we weren’t comfortable with’. Google’s China-approved web service omits politically sensitive information that could be retrieved during searches. The company’s agreement with China has provoked considerable criticism from human rights groups. The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday that Google’s main site was no longer accessible in most Chinese provinces due to censorship, and was completely inaccessible throughout China on May 31. Brin said Google was trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company’s customers in China used the uncensored service. (The Guardian,June 08, 2006)
A French publishing group said Tuesday it was suing the US search engine Google for piracy over its controversial effort to digitise millions of books for online viewing. La Martini?re, which owns publishers Le Seuil in France, Delachaux and Niestle in Switzerland and Harry N. Abrams in the United States, accuses Google of ‘counterfeiting and breach of intellectual property rights’. The lawsuit, to be filed in a Paris court, targets both Google France and its parent company, the US group Google Inc. Last year, Google launched a project to scan millions of books taken from the collections of several major world libraries. Users can search and access the full text of books in the public domain, as well as short extracts of copyrighted books. Google, which has undertaken to copy every book in the libraries’ collections unless specifically denied permission from its publisher, has already faced several lawsuits over the scheme. France’s National Publishers’ Union (SNE), which represents 400 publishers, has repeatedly condemned the library project and threatened legal action. (AFP, Expatica France,June 07, 2006)
A second edition of Playboy hit the streets in the world’s most populous Muslim nation Wednesday, two months after rock-throwing Islamic hardliners targeted the magazine’s offices in the capital Jakarta after its debut. The Indonesian publisher has since relocated the toned-down magazine’s headquarters to the resort island of Bali to protect his staff against violent protests. Protesters have said the contents of the magazine are immoral and violate criminal codes, and frightened advertisers responded by pulling their ads. Police also questioned several editors from the magazine, but no charges were ever filed. Publisher Erwin Arnada, who is also the Indonesian Playboy’s editor-in-chief, said 100,000 copies of the 160-page second edition void of nude photos or advertisements were being printed. (AP, ABC News,June 07, 2006)
Newspaper circulations world-wide rose slightly in 2005 while newspaper advertising revenues showed the largest increase in four years, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has announced. WAN said global newspaper sales were up 0.56 per cent over the year, and had increased 6 per cent over the past five years. Much of the sales growth last year was again in Asia. When free dailies are added to the paid newspaper circulation, global circulation increased 1.21 per cent last year, and 7.8 per cent over the past five years. Free dailies now account for 6 per cent of all global newspaper circulation and 17 per cent in Europe alone. Advertising revenues in paid dailies were up 5.7 per cent last year from a year earlier, and up 11.7 per cent over five years, WAN said. No figures were available for free daily advertising revenues. ‘Overall, the audience for newspapers keeps on growing, both in print and online,’ said Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer of the Paris-based WAN. ‘Newspapers are increasing their reach through the exploitation of a wide range of new distribution channels, ranging from daily free newspapers to online editions.’ The new data, from WAN’s annual survey of world press trends, was released to more than 1,700 publishers, editors and other senior newspaper executives from 110 countries attending the 59th World Newspaper Congress and 13th World Editors Forum in Moscow, Russia. (World Association of Newspapers,June 06, 2006)
Reporters Without Borders has condemned the closure of online newspaper www.cursiv.ru by its internet service provider on 22 May, three days after prosecutors being investigating its editor, Vladimir Rakhmankov, on charges of ‘insulting a representative of the state’ under article 319 of the criminal code in an article headlined, ‘Putin, Russia’s phallic symbol.’ Claiming the article contained ‘phrases of an offensive nature for the president of the Russian Federation,’ Vladimir Galchenko, the prosecutor of Ivanovo (near Moscow), ordered a search of Rakhmankov’s home and office and seized his computer. Rakhmankov has been placed under house arrest for the duration of the investigation, expected to take two months. Rakhmankov said his website was closed down because local officials did not like the way it criticised them for abuse of authority. No trial date has yet been set. Rakhmankov faces a heavy fine or a sentence of six to 12 months of hard labour. As part of the investigation, a ‘linguistic expert‘ will be asked to assess the gravity of the insult to President Putin. (Reporters Without Borders, June 01, 2006)
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