The International Herald Tribune (IHT) now has its own blog, Metamedia, focusing on the convergence of media and technology. The blog is commented by two reporters, Doreen Carvajal from the Paris IHT and Eric Pfanner from the London IHT. The postings, about different trends in the media, are all written in a dualistic structure, one reporter commenting and the other responding. More and more newspapers assign or encourage their reporters to work on the ‘enemy front’, blogs.
Metamedia
The Pulitzer Prize Board has established new rules allowing newspapers to submit a full array of online material such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video for its journalism awards. An assortment of Web 2.0 elements will now be permitted in all awards except for the competition’s two photography categories, which will continue to restrict entries to still images. ‘This board believes that its much fuller embrace of online journalism reflects the direction of newspapers in a rapidly changing media world,’ said Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. Last year, for the first time, the board allowed some online content in all categories. However, with the exception of the public service category, the online work was limited to written stories or still images. The breaking news reporting and breaking news photography categories of the awards will remain open to material published entirely on a newspaper’s website. In all other categories an entry may contain online material but it must also contain material published in the print edition. All changes will apply to work done in 2006 for prizes awarded in 2007. (Journalism.co.uk,November 29, 2006)
 The Palestine Times, the first English-language Palestinian daily newspaper since the Palestinian Authority was created in 1994, went on sale for the first time Monday. The Palestine Times is the first foreign-language daily to appear in the Palestinian territories since the English-language Al Fajr went out of business in the 1990s. Three Arabic-language newspapers are published daily in the Palestinian territories, Al Quds, Al Ayyam and Al Hayat Al Jadida. The Palestine Times, whose first edition was 12 pages in colour, will also circulate in Israel. (AFP, Middle East Times,November 28, 2006)
Two reporters at Novaya Gazeta received death threats last week, editors said Monday. In a statement posted on its website, the paper’s editors said the threats were made Friday to two unidentified employees in connection with an article about problems in the North Caucasus and another article about the recent murder of the newspaper’s most prominent reporter Anna Politkovskaya. One of the reporters also received a threatening text message. Novaya Gazeta has specialised in investigative reporting, especially in the area of government corruption, and has been highly critical of the Kremlin’s policies in Chechnya and other restive southern regions. Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in an apparent contract killing on October 7. She had exposed killings, torture and other abuses against civilians in Chechnya. Former spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London last week, told police he believed he was poisoned while investigating the slaying of Politkovskaya. (The Moscow Times,November 28, 2006)
One hundred and five journalists were killed in 2006, the deadliest year on
record, according to the half-year review of press freedom by the World
Association of Newspapers.
The report, presented Monday to the Board of the Paris-based WAN, meeting in
Kiev, Ukraine, said that the killings accelerated in the second half of the
year, when 71 were killed. The number of journalists killed in Iraq — 23
since June — surpassed all other countries.
The murder of journalists is the ultimate form of censorship, but by no
means the only form. “Legislative measures, financial harassment and
security laws continue to be used as means to harass journalists and limit
press freedom,” said the report. “Self-censorship, a natural response to
repression and the threat of violence or death, is an endemic problem in
Central Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.”
(more…)
Azerbaijani authorities threw a leading opposition party and newspaper out of their offices Saturday, removing furniture and equipment a day after a court ordered the evictions. About 100 police surrounded the building housing the editorial offices of Azadliq, the largest opposition newspaper, and the Popular Front, a main opposition party, while law enforcement officers removed the organisations’ property and carted it away in trucks. The eviction came one day after Azerbaijan’s first independent television station, ANS television, was pulled from the air by the government. Authorities said the station had not extended its license. (The Moscow Times,November 27, 2006)
MediaGuardian is to publish a weekly chart of the most talked-about videos being linked to by bloggers. The top 20 viral video chart will be published every Friday on MediaGuardian.co.uk and produced by Unruly Media. Unlike other popular viral videos - which typically feature extreme humour or porn - Unruly Media compiles the chart by scanning 2m blogs each day, tracking the most referred to videos on sites like YouTube, MySpace and Google video. The majority of references link to video on YouTube where content is usually very topical. Scott Button, the Unruly Media managing director, said viral video was a good reflection of the news agenda. The chart monitors English-language blog videos, but Unruly Media will shortly launch versions in Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. (Media Guardian,November 27, 2006)
The Local in Sweden has a fine post today about the Chinese news corp. Xinhua copy-pasting stories from abroad:
Yesterday The Local had this story:
Professional boxing has been illegal in Sweden since 1970, but it could be time to start booking ringside seats after the new Martial Arts Delegation has its first meeting in Örebro today, Dagens Nyheter reports.
…compare it with this from Xinhua this morning:
Professional boxing has been illegal in Sweden since 1970, but it could be time to start booking ringside seats after the new Martial Arts Delegation has its first meeting in Orebro, local media reported on Wednesday.
-And it goes on like that for more that 10 lines. But that is not all. The Local did some researh at Google News to find out if this had happened before and the result was kind of surprising:
“Xinhua have also plagiarised us in this article about Saddam Hussein, (The Local’s article), a piece about the elections (The Local’s piece), and in this piece about whaling (The Local’s piece). They’ve also done it here (TL’s piece), here (TL’s article), and here (TL’s article).”
(more…)
WSJ correspondent Daniel Harrison has a great article in todays Wall Street Journal about the glowing free sheet market in Scandinavia.
Snip:
Still, the market for free newspapers is becoming quickly saturated, and it’s just “a matter of months” before some of the newly launched titles fold in the face of financial pressure, says media pundit Hans Henrik Lichtenberg of Newspaperindex.com. But distribution is a huge problem for the freesheets, Mr. Lichtenberg says, which raises the question of whether the advertising is effective. “They are all over the streets, in trains and in coffee shops,” he says. “It’s annoying and it adds another meaning to the word junk-news. There have been many incidences of entire truckloads of free newspapers left at parking lots.”
The entire article can be found behind the pay-walls here: Link
 The Romanian villagers used to portray fictional peasants in the hit Borat movie are suing producers for USD 30m (EUR 23m), the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. Attorneys representing the villagers are set to sue in New York, Florida and Germany asking for more than USD 30m in damages and are seeking to stop further screening of the controversial comedy if scenes making fun of the villagers are not cut or changed. The villagers claim that they were manipulated by the crew and lied to about the true nature of the film, and that unlike others in the movie, they did not sign release forms, a claim disputed by a spokesman for 20th Century Fox, which is distributing the film. The villagers also contend in the suit that the film ridicules them on ethnic grounds. The report said that the suits seek USD 5m (EUR 4m) to improve infrastructure in the impoverished village, an additional USD 25m (EUR 19.5m) dollars for humanitarian aid and an unspecified amount for fair compensation for the villagers, who were paid roughly USD 4 (EUR 3) a day for participating in the film, writes DPA, Expatica Germany.
Nearly one-third of journalists say they have been bullied, according to a union survey. The National Union of Journalists’ 2006 membership survey questioned 1,436 NUJ members and 31 per cent of respondents said they had been bullied. Sector by sector, 40 per cent of those working in newspapers had experienced bulling, while it had also affected 21 per cent of those in TV and radio, 25 per cent of those in magazines and 25 per cent per cent of those in PR. The survey also found that 16 per cent of respondents said they experienced discrimination either on the grounds of race, sexuality, age or childcare arrangement. The survey found that 47 per cent of Asian respondents had experienced discrimination, as had 33 per cent of black respondents, 33 per cent of white respondents and 18 per cent of mixed race respondents. Ethnic minorities and women were the main targets of discrimination. The survey found that 68 per cent of women as opposed to 32 per cent of men reported being discriminated against. (Media Guardian,November 22, 2006)
A computer platform that allows newspapers to share news and classified advertising will launch early next month. US-based CityTools will enable newspaper publishers to create content networks with one another and draw on articles written by members of the public. Developers claim that several US newspapers are interested in the service, which they hope will eventually become a none-proprietary standard for exchanging content. ‘If you spin the CityTools model forward, you can go to your local newspaper website and suddenly, because they have built smart networks and smart relationships with other publishers, you get reliable content. The same kind of mass but its all relevant to the local readership,’ said Robert Cauthorn, president of CityTools. Publishers pay a USD 650 (EUR 506) flat monthly rate for the service which also allows them access to articles submitted to a public-facing CityTools website where people can share original news pieces under a creative commons licence. The public can also establish networks on the platform. (Journalism.co.uk,November 21, 2006)
 A Moscow journalist was sentenced to five years in prison Monday on charges of inciting ethnic hatred in reports about the conflict in Chechnya. Human rights activists and lawyers said the sentence for Boris Stomakhin, editor of Radikalnaya Politika, a Moscow-based monthly newspaper, was unprecedented in its severity. Stomakhin, who also contributed opinion articles to the rebel Kavkaz Centre web site, frequently called the presence of federal troops in Chechnya an ‘occupation,’ and compared President Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Stomakhin’s lawyer, Alexei Golubev, said he planned to appeal the ruling within 10 days, saying it hinged on a dubious linguistic analysis of the journalist’s articles. (The Moscow Times, November 21, 2006)
The new partnership will see newspapers embrace the technology they once feared. The deal will enable the newspaper industry to tap into the online ad market. Initially, it will involve job advertising on Yahoo’s HotJobs service and will take in other types of online advertising in the future. The newspapers will supply local news content for Yahoo, who will provide mapping tools and links back to the news sites. The group of newspapers includes major metropolitan dailies such as The Denver Post, The San Fransisco Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News and has a combined circulation of around 12 million, writes BizReport.com
 Kazackstans Romania’s biggest selling newspaper has launched a campaign branding British people ‘paedophiles, drunkards and hooligans’ after what it claimed were repeated negative reports about Romanians in British tabloids. The tabloid daily Libertatea began its anti-British campaign, titled ‘Look Who’s Talking’, on its front page today using a logo of a hand with an extended middle finger (no longer online). The report, which covered the entire front page, singled out The Sun for a recent article it said claimed Romanians could bring Aids to the UK. Romanian officials had already responded to the Sun story by announcing that registered HIV/Aids cases in the UK were eight times higher than in Romania, but Libertatea went further, writing: ‘We are sick of English paedophiles.’ In a double-page spread inside, the newspaper wrote that as Romanian officials had reacted to the Sun article, it was also the paper’s ‘duty’ to ‘tell the truth about the English’. The paper also provided readers with The Sun’s email address and phone number and encouraged them to write describing how they feel about the article.
Internet surfers in China once again have unfettered access to Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia, after the Chinese government quietly dismantled its digital barriers against the service, according to the founder of Wikipedia. The move restores access to the Chinese version of Wikipedia and comes less than a month after the Chinese government moved to extend access to the English version of the website from within the country. In removing restrictions on Wikipedia, the Chinese government appears to be choosing to rely on keyword filters that block specific material on all sites, including Wikipedia, rather than banning entire websites. Subjects that are still off-limits on Wikipedia include high-level politics, the crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the Falun Gong movement and certain historical events. (International Herald Tribune,November 17, 2006)
Right-wing Danish radio station Radio Holger is continuing to broadcast despite having its licence suspended last week. The Documentation and Counselling Centre for Racial Discrimination recently filed a complaint against the station, and the Radio and Television Board (RTB) followed up by requesting a copy of the broadcast in question. The station did not comply, so its licence was suspended. Radio Holger says it will only obey an order to stop broadcasting if it comes from a court. Radio Holger broadcasts on a shared, public access frequency, making an immediate shut down of the station impossible. RTB has since reported Radio Holger to the police, who will probably fine the station and possibly confiscate its broadcasting equipment. Station spokesperson Kaj Wilhelmsen says, if that happens, they will move broadcasts to the internet. (Copenhagen Post via Media Network Weblog,November 16, 2006)
Reuters invests in blog company
The news and information company Reuters Group has taken a stake in the web media syndication site Pluck and agreed to distribute blogs worldwide as part of its new-media strategy. Reuters has invested USD 7m (5,4m) in Pluck, based in Austin, Texas, in return for an undisclosed ownership stake, the Pluck chief executive, Dave Panos, said. Pluck operates the world’s biggest blog syndication network, called BlogBurst, which connects newspapers and other media sites to 2,800 selected blogs, helping traditional media organisations supplement their journalism with other viewpoints. As a provider of syndicated text, pictures and video, Reuters plans to offer Pluck’s BlogBurst syndication service to thousands of media customers worldwide, said the agency based in London. BlogBurst’s customers include US news outlets like The Washington Post, the Gannett newspaper chain and The San Francisco Chronicle. In Britain, it also links bloggers to The Guardian newspaper site and Reuters sites. (Reuters & Pluck),November 15, 2006)
More than half of European households have access to the internet, the European Commission said on Friday. According to figures from the European Union’s Eurostat data agency, 52 per cent of households could log onto the internet in the first quarter of this year, compared with 48 per cent for the same period of 2005. About 32 per cent had a broadband connection, which allows fast access, compared with 23 per cent last year. However, internet penetration rates vary widely from 80 per cent in the Netherlands and 79 per cent in Denmark to 23 per cent in Greece and 27 per cent in Slovakia. Eurostat’s data showed that 47 per cent of Europeans used the internet at least once a week. Internet use was much higher among youths with 73 per cent of those between 16 and 24 years old surfing the web at least once a week. Men also used the internet more than women, with 51 per cent using it once a week compared with 43 per cent for women. The data showed that 94 per cent of EU companies had internet access in the first quarter of the year and that 75 per cent of them had broadband access.
Over half of the top 25 US websites attract more traffic from surfers outside America than from within, new research has claimed. Web monitoring firm comScore Networks said that the top-five web properties in the in the US (Yahoo, Time Warner Network, Microsoft, Google and eBay) are among the 14 top US sites that are most visited by non-American visitors. The research found that, although international users represent a larger proportion of the overall traffic to many of the top-ranked US sites, US users are more ‘engaged’ with many of these properties. Two notable exceptions were Google and Lycos. Google’s non-US users represent 79.8 per cent of total traffic to the site, but account for a higher share of page views at 89.1 per cent. Lycos, which has non-US users representing 39.4 per cent of its visitors, draws a disproportionately higher share of pages from outside the US at 73.3 per cent. (VNU Net,November 10, 2006)
The Russian Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the acquittal of three suspects in the killing of US journalist Paul Klebnikov, a court spokesman said. The court, acting on an appeal by prosecutors, ordered a new trial with a new judge, said court spokesman Pavel Odintsov. Klebnikov, 41, who was editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition, was gunned down on a Moscow street in July 2004. Two men went on trial on charges of carrying out the killing on behalf of a Chechen separatist who was the subject of a critical book written by Klebnikov, but they and another man on trial on related charges were acquitted by a jury. The trial was marked by criticism that prosecutors failed to pursue other lines of investigation in the case. Observers have suggested that Klebnikov may have made powerful enemies because he investigated corruption and sought to shed light on the closed world of Russian business. (AP, Editor and Publisher,November 10, 2006)
Less than three weeks before a feature film about Borat, a character created by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was to open in Russian movie theatres, the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency refused to license it out of concern that the film could offend audiences in this country. The movie, ‘Borat: cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan,’ about a misogynistic, wife-beating Kazakh journalist with a penchant for moustaches, thus becomes one of the first non-pornographic films to be banned since the breakup of the Soviet Union. It was scheduled to open in 300 theatres nationwide November 30. The movie opened in the United States on November 3, and took in USD 26.49m (EUR 20.73m) in its first weekend, setting a box-office record for movies that opened in fewer than 1,000 theatres, according to Moscow Times.
Censored from Russian theatres.
I love this one:
Thanks Attu!
Police report that unknown gunmen fired a rocket propelled grenade at the newspaper printer PCM in the Amsterdam district of Duivendrecht on Tuesday night. The grenade created a large hole in one of the building’s walls and three windows were broken but no one was injured. An employee said the blast could be heard throughout the building. PCM prints the national dailies de Volkskrant, Trouw and NRC handelsblad. A spokesperson for de Volkskrant said he had no idea why the printer was attacked. He said the newspaper was not planning to publish any controversial stories. (Radio Netherlands,November 08, 2006)
The weird and wonderful parallel cyber-community that is Second Life is to get its first tabloid. Axel Springer, the publisher of Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper, is poised to launch a weekly paper designed to sate the virtual population’s appetite for news and gossip. SL News will be written in English and packed with the latest from the simulation game - a rapidly expanding site where users create characters, called avatars, and go about the everyday business of chatting with fellow residents. Avatars can also use with Linden dollars, a virtual currency which can be exchanged into real money, to buy new clothes and even property. Springer plans to construct an online editorial office for SL News. A real editor-in-chief will then recruit a team of roving reporters from among the avatar community, which currently numbers more than a million ‘residents’. Due to be launched in December, the paper will cost between 10 and 15 Linden dollars. It will likely be sold by subscription - posted into mailboxes across the virtual parallel universe. Avatars already get news from Reuters’ online news agency, which opened up for business in October, run by its virtual bureau chief, ‘Adam Reuters’, writes Guardian.
Google Inc. plans to start selling advertising space in 50 top newspapers, expanding the Internet search engine’s efforts to provide services off the web and making it easier for companies advertising online to also show off their products in print. A group of more than 100 Google advertisers will be able to place bids for space in newspapers owned by The New York Times Company, Gannett, the Tribune Company, the Washington Post Company and Hearst during a three-month test period, according to news reports. Many newspaper executives see the proposed system as a way to increase sales as they struggle with reader defection and competition from online advertising. They downplayed any risks of letting Google handle their relationships with advertisers. The move also positions Google already the biggest seller of online advertising to gain more customers during its pursuit of print, radio and television advertising. (AP, ABC News, November 07, 2006)
Online journals known as blogs and virtual shops for small businesses have pushed the number of websites past the 100-million mark, an internet monitoring firm reported Thursday. A survey by Britain-based Netcraft determined that the number of websites on the internet climbed from 97.9m October to slightly more than 101m in November. ‘Blogs and small business websites have driven the explosive growth this year, with huge increases at free blogging services at Google and Microsoft,’ Netcraft said in a survey report. The internet has doubled in size since a May 2004 Netcraft survey that found 50m websites. Netcraft’s first survey was conducted in August 1995 and showed 18,957 websites. Technorati was tracking 58.7m blogs Thursday at its website devoted to searching for and organising user-generated internet content and ‘citizen media.’ More than 175,000 new blogs are created daily, according to Technorati, which estimated that more than 18 of the online journals are updated each second. (AFP, Middle East Times,November 06, 2006)
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan signalled on Sunday that he was prepared to amend a law limiting free speech, in an apparent 11th-hour attempt to prevent a crisis with the European Union. The surprise move by Erdogan came just three days before the European Commission is expected to publish a damning report criticising Turkey for sluggishness on reforms necessary if it wants to join the 25 member bloc. Fears are growing here that talks with the EU have reached an impasse that could result in the suspension of Turkey’s EU membership talks. The Commission, the EU executive branch that is monitoring Turkey’s progress, has been particularly concerned by article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes insulting Turkishness a crime. The law attracted global criticism earlier this year when the Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, who has been awarded the Nobel Prize, was put on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper that more than a million Armenians were massacred by Ottoman Turks during World War I. The case was later dismissed. (International Herald Tribune,November 06, 2006)
The Roles of Journalists in Online Newsrooms A new study of the skills and characterisitics important to online newsrooms has been released by Medill Schol of Journalism and the cooperation of the Online News Association. A few of the key findings:
- The most important skills/qualities in online newsrooms are not related to technology or the Web. They are things like attention to detail, news judgment, grammar and style, multitasking skills, communication skills and ability to work under time pressure.
- Less than half the producers and managers said reporting original stories was part of the job expectations for online newsrooms.
- HTML, Photoshop, use of a content management system and Web usability are the most important tools and technologies for online newsroom workers.
To view the study (10 pages), Download file
Two US agencies are to investigate claims that the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming, it emerged Thursday. The inspectors general for the commerce department - which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - and Nasa will search internal documents and agency correspondence amid claims there were attempts to censor scientists’ research. Officials at NASA and the Commerce Department have pledged to cooperate with the inquiry, but defended their media policies. The inquiry findings will be made public early next year. (The Guardian,November 03, 2006)
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