The Finnish presidency of the European Union on Thursday proposed the creation of a common standard for European technology in the field of mobile television. ‘Europe must not get behind the rest of the world for the implementation of mobile television,’ said the Finnish Communications Minister Susanna Huovinen during a press conference. Mobile television, the transmission of television programmes to mobile phones, is at an experimental stage worldwide but is set to allow subscribers to watch regular television channels via a high-speed network connection. There are fears that a proliferation of different technologies with different norms could hold back the development of the market by preventing consumers from being able to view a full range of content. European Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is to publish a report on mobile television next year, said she would work to establish a European norm which might then become the world standard. She told a press conference the commission would work with manufacturers to define frequencies and norms. Mobile television subscribers are forecast to number between 65m and 250m by 2010 with the market worth between EUR 6bn and EUR 19bn in sales. (AFP, EU Business,September 29, 2006)
Seventy-two percent of U.S. newspaper executives feel that they are missing out on numerous online opportunities by not coordinating functions, according to a recent poll by the American Press Institute. However, almost half of those surveyed didn’t feel that this would occur successfully. Online advertising was especially emphasized as the area in which publishers could work together most efficiently as most advertisers complain of the different practices of each company with which they deal.
Fifty-four percent of the polled top executives felt that partnerships with tech companies such as Google would benefit their business in forming online business models. Some publishers have joined forces on online editorial. But from the results of API’s survey, it seems that online business practices will be more difficult to integrate.Source: Business Week via John Burke at The Editor’s Weblog
I got myself a new laptop. Mainly because a had a conference to cover with many interviews, but also because my older one had a dead battery. So I started shopping and I have for a long time been thinking about a tablet pc. The great feature is that the screen can be turned around and used for handwriting with a special pen. After a week and many interviews I am surprised how great it works. My desk is cleaner than ever, I have no pieces of papers, notes or pencils around anymore. Everything is stored on the tablet.
Several programs can handle handwriting. I use the OEM Microsoft Onenote, a part of Microsoft Office (I use Open Office for all other office programs) The program lets you create pages and sections as easily as if you were writing on paper. You dont have to save anything as files in folders because the program keeps track of all your notes by date.
Now the great thing is that OneNote learns your handwriting and can convert it to machine text. This makes editing so much faster. I can now do my interview in handwriting, convert to text, paste to open document and I allready have most of my story done when the interview is over.
Another cool thing, is that one note can activate the build in microphone and store recordings in your pages. My job is much easier now and I warmly recommend the tablet computers to anyone who works in journalism.
Foreign media will be free to travel around China and enjoy uncensored access to the Internet during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, organisers said on Wednesday. ‘We have no restrictions on travel for foreign journalists in China,’ Sun Weijia, BOCOG’s head of media operations, told the Olympic World Press Briefing on Wednesday. Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), said detailed new regulations on the operation of foreign media would be put into place early in 2007. Media services head Li Jingbo said the internet service provided to news services at the Games would be uncensored. Organisers also told the briefing that foreign media would have access to the Chinese team, although journalists would have to apply three weeks in advance to interview local Olympians before the Games. (Reuters, Yahoo News,September 28, 2006)
We have build a new section to Newspaperindex.com where you can subscribe to a range of high quality and truly free magazines. Take a look here: Link. There are no fees and the subscribtions are not trials but one-year subscribtions to industry leading publications. For example you can sign up for magazines like Computerworld, Edge, Publishing Executive, Broadcast Engineering World Edition, InfoWorld, CommunicationNews and many, many more.
     
Some of the magazine are restricted to subscribers from USA or Europe. Here is a list of magazine you can subscribe to for free if you live in other areas: International eligible Magazine Subscribtions
I hope you find this service valuable, let me know if you are having any problems.
Nearly 200,000 people have signed up and paid a special fee to use The New York Times’ TimesSelect service since it launched one year ago, the newspaper revealed Wednesday. The service allows access to all of the newspaper’s Op-Ed columnists, archives, and other features that are unavailable to non-subscribers. Since it launched on Sept. 19, 2005, the paid service has drawn 198,690 users who do not subscribe to the print paper, but pay a special online fee for access. That is up from 156,000 in January and 183,000 in June, suggesting growth may be levelling off. Since January, the Times reports the service has brought in about USD 6m (EUR 4,7m) in additional revenue. Those online-only paid users account for roughly 37 per cent of the total TimesSelect audience, which includes another 338,310 users, or 63%, who receive free access to the TimesSelect service as part of their print subscription, but who must also register. That means a total of 537,000 people have registered to use the service in the first year, a number the paper considers successful. (Editor and Publisher,September 22, 2006)
The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the prosecution for criminal insult of a Russian journalist who satirised President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to boost the birth rate. Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor-in-chief of the independent news website Kursiv, went on trial Thursday in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, charged with insulting the president in a May article titled ‘Putin as Russia’s phallic symbol.’ The article satirised Putin’s goal, outlined in a May 10 speech to the Federal Assembly, of increasing Russia’s population. Under Article 319 of Russia’s criminal code, ‘Insulting a Public Official,’ Rakhmankov could be penalised with up to one year of corrective labour. Local prosecutors brought the case without the involvement of Putin or presidential representatives, according to local press reports. ‘Prosecutors should never resort to the criminal law to shield public figures from the press. Satire is an essential and vital element of democratic discourse’, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. (Committee to Protect Journalists,September 22, 2006)
A newspaper photo of a politician from the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats was sabotaged so that he appeared to be sporting a scribbled-on Hitler moustache. The photo of Richard Jomshof, the leader of the Sweden Democrat group on Karlskrona Council in southern Sweden, appeared on page 4 of the newspapers Karlshamns Allehanda and Sölveborgstidningen, local versions of Blekinge Läns Tidning. The newspaper was printed at the Sydostpress printing works, where one of the presses was scratched with a sharp object to create the effect, according to Aftonbladet. The paper and the printing works have reported the incident to the police. The managing director of the newspaper group, Kerstin Johansson, said the incident was ‘very serious.’ (The Local,September 20, 2006)
Internet giant Google said yesterday it would appeal against a Belgian court ruling that threatens to undermine the rationale behind its hugely popular global network of news sites. The court ruled that Google was breaking the law by including headlines and links to online stories from the Belgian press in its Google News service. The case was brought by Copiepress, an organisation that manages copyright for the French and German-speaking Belgian press, including La Derni’re Heure, La Libre Belgique and Le Soir. In its judgment, details of which only emerged yesterday despite being originally issued on September 5, the court said Google would be liable for a fine of EUR 1m for every day it did not remove the offending content from the recently-launched Belgian site. Google, which said it only learned of the judgment last Friday, confirmed that it had removed any links on its Belgian site pointing to the newspapers concerned, and was in the process of removing them from all its global sites. (Media Guardian,September 19, 2006)
Norwegian media group Schibsted on Friday said its Aftonbladet arm was to launch a free newspaper in Sweden next month with an initial circulation of 300,000. The paper will be called “.SE” after the Scandinavian country’s internet suffix, and is set to be distributed in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmø. .SE is expected to contribute with an operating loss of around SEK 50m (EUR 5,4m) for 2006, falling to a loss of SEK 135m (EUR 38m) in 2007. However, adjusted for extra advertising revenues for the Aftonbladet group, the operating loss from the paper is expected to be around SEK 80m (EUR 8,7m) in 2007. Schibsted said that .SE is expected to become profitable after three years of operation. The company had already announced ‘new initiatives’ that would cost it between SEK 350m (EUR 38m) and 370m (EUR 40,2) in 2006. Schibsted is already a major player on the Swedish, and Scandinavian, newspaper market, as the owner of Svenska Dagbladet and a minority shareholder in Aftonbladet. (AFP, The Local,September 18, 2006)
The Independent has announced plans to publish in India, making it the first British newspaper to be printed on the subcontinent. Pending government approval, it will be printed on the presses of its Indian associate, Jagran Prakashan, India’s largest newspaper company, in which its parent company, Independent News & Media plc (INM), has a 20.8 per cent stake. The Indian edition will be aimed at the high end of the local market, plus the leading hotel groups and embassies, mostly around the major cities, with estimated sales of 5,000 copies a day. Jagran, which listed on the Mumbai Stock Exchange earlier this year, publishes the Hindi daily newspaper Dainik Jagran, which has a readership of over 20m daily and recently reported a 32 per cent increase in advertising revenues. It is controlled by the Gupta family which, in partnership with INM, is also moving into India’s rapidly growing radio and outdoor advertising markets. (The Independent,September 18, 2006)
Pressrelase from Jagran Prakashan about this: Link
Today’s indian frontpages: Link
Spain’s two largest newspapers, El País and El Mundo, have launched into a fierce row over their reporting of investigations into the Islamist train bombings that killed 191 Madrid commuters two and a half years ago. The outbreak of hostilities between the country’s most influential dailies follows the publication in El Mundo of a series of interviews with a small-time Spanish crook accused of supplying the explosives used in the bombings. In the interviews José Emilio Suárez claims the bombings hid what was effectively a coup d’état that brought the Socialist government of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to power. On Wednesday El País published part of a conversation between Suárez and his parents - apparently recorded by authorities during a prison visit - which it claimed showed El Mundo had paid him. Socialist-supporting El País accused El Mundo of ‘yellow’ journalism and stirring up conspiracy theories, including the idea that Basque group Eta may have been involved in the attacks. El Mundo yesterday denied paying Suárez and claimed El País had taken his words out of context. In a widening of the media war, privately owned radio stations have taken sides. The conservative ABC newspaper, the third largest Madrid-based daily, has also attacked El Mundo. (Media Guardian,September 15, 2006)
With a daily circulation of 12m, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun is the world’s second largest newspaper in terms of sales. But the Asahi goes far beyond paper - it is one of the world’s leading innovators of the digital newspaper. How the Asahi Shimbun collects and analyses consumer behaviour online and uses that information to create its multi-media business model will be examined at the World Digital Publishing Conference, a new event from the World Association of Newspapers, to be held in London from 26 to 27 October next. Takashi Ishika, Director of the Asahi’s Digital Business Project Team, will explain how the newspaper looks at the consumer market across multiple media in a conference session on understanding and exploiting consumer behaviour online. He will be joined in the session by Alexander Burmaster, European Internet Analyst for Nielsen/NetRatings, which tracks the changing internet landscape and its impact on news and information delivery. (World Association of Newspapers,September 15, 2006)
Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in US cities in 2001. Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 per cent of media conglomerate News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The US channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests. Washington’s response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider ‘war on terror’, has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack. A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West. ‘Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world, Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech. (Reuters via Media Network Weblog,September 15, 2006)
An exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust, some suggesting it was fabricated or exaggerated, has been a flop in Tehran. It drew audiences of fewer than 300 a day in its first week and now, three weeks after sparking international furore when it opened, attracts just 50 people a day. Thousands of foreigners have visited the exhibition’s website at www.irancartoon.com, some of them engaging in angry debate. A conference on the Holocaust is planned in Tehran for October. The exhibition followed a Holocaust cartoon competition designed to show Western double standards in freedom of speech. The angry response of Westerners to President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial this spring caught many Iranians off guard, while Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohamed provoked outrage in the Muslim world. (The Independent,September 14, 2006)
In one of those only-in-Japan innovations, the daily Kochi Shimbun announced Tuesday it is partnering with IBM Japan and a manufacturer of hospital monitors to distribute its newspaper articles to terminals at the bedsides of hospital patients. In the three-day field experiment beginning Thursday, the daily located in the southeast of Japan will distribute articles from its print newspaper to 590 bedside terminals managed by the Kochi Health Sciences Centre. According to the announcement through Japan Corporate News, IBM Japan will convert digital article data into a digital paper and display images and text on the beside terminal. There are also plans to provide functions to link a certain area in the digital paper to a video site or related website, the announcement said. The terminals involved in the experiment are multi-functional, working not only as TV and video monitors, but providing internet access and medical diagnosis logs. They are rented out by PERS Japan, the third partner in the newspaper-to-hospital bed experiment. It rents about 5,000 terms to 13 hospitals across Japan. (Editor and Publisher,September 14, 2006)
Iran closed down two opposition newspapers on Monday, one of which had recently poked fun at hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the way his government has handled nuclear talks with the West. Iran’s most prominent reformist daily, Shargh, or East, ran a cartoon Thursday depicting a horse and donkey facing each other on a chess board. The donkey a symbol of ignorance in Iranian culture has his mouth open and light around him, while the horse shows no emotion. Iranian judiciary officials apparently took the donkey to represent Iran in nuclear negotiations with the West, journalists said. Iran’s official news agency reported the paper was ordered closed down for ‘dozens of violations,’ including the cartoon’s publication and ‘publication of material against the rulings by the Supreme National Security Council.’ The council handles Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the West. The Press Supervisory Board also ordered the political monthly Nameh, or Letter, to be closed down, IRNA reported Monday. The paper’s editor, Majid Tavallaei, said the reason behind the closure was the publication of a poem from dissident female poet Simin Behbahani. The text of the poem was not immediately available. (AP, ABC News,September 12, 2006)
Some 43 journalists from Sweden’s public TV broadcaster SVT criticised the company’s leadership in an editorial published on Monday. They say the broadcaster is ‘underestimating the public and being too greedy.’ In the editorial, published by Dagens Nyheter on Monday, the 43 SVT journalists said the company’s management, led by CEO Christina Jutterstrøm, is allowing viewer statistics to guide the public-service channels in the same way the figures affect commercial channels. ‘SVT’s management is undermining the basis for its existence’ was the name of the article. It said viewing figures was the method by which decisions makers came to the conclusion to cut back on news and cultural programmes and supplant them with talk shows and drama programmes created to pull in the much sought after 20-44-year-old viewers. In July, SVT said it was cutting its news budget in favour of more drama programmes aimed at a younger viewing audience. SVT said was planning on cutting SEK 70m (EUR 7,5m) from the news and society programmes in order to fund more popular drama programmes. (The Local,September 12, 2006)
All analogue TV broadcasts will be switched off, in the early morning of 27 November 2006. This makes the Netherlands the first European country to be completely digitalised. The switch off involves the 3 national channels and the 13 regional networks. In this heavily cabled country it is estimated that approximately 74,000 households rely on the terrestrial platform for their main TV reception, whilst second TV sets in the main residence and also holiday homes account for an additional 220,000 households. (European Broadcasting Union,September 11, 2006)
The Bush administration’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid 10 journalists in Miami to provide commentary on Radio and TV , which transmit to Cuba government broadcasts critical of Fidel Castro, a spokesman for the office said Friday. The group included three journalists at El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish- language sister newspaper of The Miami Herald, which fired them Thursday after learning of the relationship. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba for El Nuevo Herald, received the largest payment, almost USD 175,000 (EUR 138,000) since 2001. Other journalists have been found to accept money from the Bush administration, including Armstrong Williams, a commentator and talk-show host who received USD 240,000 (EUR 189,400) to promote its education initiatives. But while the Castro regime has long alleged that some Cuban-American reporters in Miami were paid by the government, the revelation on Friday, reported in The Miami Herald, was the first evidence of that. (The New York Times,September 11, 2006)
The government imposed new controls Sunday on the distribution of news by foreign agencies, further restricting foreign access to the already tightly regulated Chinese media market. The regulations give the state news agency Xinhua broad authority over foreign news agencies, requiring them to distribute news, photographs and other services through Xinhua or entities authorised by Xinhua. The rules will affect Associated Press, Reuters and other foreign news agencies seeking wider access to the rapidly expanding Chinese market. (AP via Media Guardian,September 11, 2006)
Amid an election-year debate over who can best defend America, US congressional Democrats urged ABC-TV on Thursday to cancel a miniseries about the Sept. 11 attacks that is critical of former Democratic President Bill Clinton and his top aides. In recent days, members of the Clinton administration also complained about the movie and urged ABC and its parent company, the Walt Disney Co., to fix or eliminate what they called errors and fabrications. Chronicling events leading to the Sept. 11 attacks, the movie suggests the Clinton administration was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to deal properly with the gathering threat posed by Islamic militants. A number of Clinton administration officials, including then-national security adviser Sandy Berger, are portrayed as having bungled an opportunity to capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1990s. ABC issued a statement saying the production, ‘The Path to 9/11,’ was still being edited and that criticism of the film’s specifics were thus ‘premature and irresponsible.’ ABC said the movie, set to air in two parts on Sunday and Monday nights, was not a documentary but a dramatization drawn from the official 9/11 commission report, personal interviews and other materials. (Reuters,September 08, 2006)
Adult entertainment brand Playboy is extending its business into casino-style interactive gambling on TV and mobile phones across the UK and Ireland. Under the multi-year deal, struck with interactive content company YooMedia, Playboy Enterprises intends to develop gambling capability for channels including Playboy One on Sky and on mobile phones. Playboy has been building its presence in the gaming market. Earlier this year it announced a major tie-up with The Palms in Las Vegas to launch a Playboy Club casino, the first new casino in 22 years, in October. The YooMedia deal, which would see a ‘red button’ gambling portal exist under the TV channel, will see the launch of around 20 games such as roulette, keno and hi-lo. The company already runs an online casino service at playboycasino.com The Playboy divisional vice-president, Jeff Georgino, said the company was always looking for ‘innovative ways to embrace technology and extend its brand’. He said the deal enabled Playboy to ‘move into the UK and Irish TV and wireless gaming markets with confidence’. (Media Guardian,September 08, 2006
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I was quoted last week in some articles in the South African Magazine, Marketing Mix about the future of newspapers. Great Magazine they have come up with this time, I just recieved it by mail. The journalist who interviewed me has done some nice in dept stories about the global newspaper-scape, but unfortunately I have been mixed up with someone else. I am titled founder of Newspaperindex.com - and journalist at the Skt. Petersburg Times. The last one is incorrect, don’t call Skt. Petersburg and ask for my desk :-)
A Chinese trademark application for a condom brand has been turned down because the name of the product sounded too much like China’s state-run television company, state press said Wednesday. An entrepreneur from southeast China’s Fujian province caused a stir early last month when he applied to name his condom brand ‘Zhongyang yitao,’ which sounds like ‘China Central Television (CCTV) channel one’ but also means ‘central condom number one.’ The play on words has not been taken well by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce which oversees trademark registrations, the Southeast Express newspaper reported. (AFP via Media Network Weblog, Taipei Times, September 07, 2006)
Kommersant’s editor said Sunday that the sale of his newspaper to metals magnate Alisher Usmanov had been completed but the new owner had yet to send any representatives to the newspaper’s offices. The sale nevertheless threatens to alter irrevocably Russia’s media landscape by putting the country’s last independent-minded national daily into the hands of a billionaire who is thought to be close to First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Usmanov is the head of Gazprominvestholding, a Gazprom subsidiary that handles some of the parent company’s assets. National newspapers that criticised the authorities - including Izvestia, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Gazeta and Moskovskiye Novosti - have been snapped up by Gazprom or businessmen loyal to the Kremlin in recent years and adopted a more pro-Kremlin line on their editorial policy. (Moscow Times (subscription),September 05, 2006)
The Online Training Toolkit is a new website for journalists interested in free, online training. The first training focuses on coverage of gender-related issues. The Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) launched the initiative in August in an effort to provide journalists worldwide with easily accessible training on specific topics. The first training, ‘Gender for Journalists,’ was written by British media consultant Trish Williams and includes eight chapters on media trends, facts related to the topic and research resources. CPU is a newspaper organisation with about 750 members in 49 Commonwealth countries. It organises training events, works to improve facilities and monitors press freedom in its member countries. (http://www.cpu.org.uk/cpu-toolkits/) (International Journalists Network,September 01, 2006)
US military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, USD 20m (EUR 15,6m) public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of US and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq. The proposal, which calls in part for extensive monitoring and analysis of Iraqi, Middle Eastern and American media, is designed to help the coalition forces understand ‘the communications environment,’ according to the statement of work that is publicly available through the website http://www.fbodaily.com The proposal calls for monitoring ‘Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international and US national and regional markets media in both Arabic and English.’ That includes broadcast and cable television outlets, the Pentagon channel, two wire services and three major US newspapers: The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. (The Washington Post,September 01, 2006)
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