March 2004 Archives

Thanks to Rafat Ali to report about Topix.net, a new and useful - but almost 100% American - news search engine. There are different categories like Journalism, Media or Blogs and the engine is now crawling 6,000 sources. And the same day, Rafat reports on Google's new services providing search results based on personal interests like "Personalized Web Search" and "Personal Web Alerts". Try both new services and compare them! I'll do it for sure.

Thanks to Rafat Ali to report about Topix.net, a new and useful - but almost 100% American - news search engine. There are different categories like Journalism, Media or Blogs and the engine is now crawling 6,000 sources. And the same day, Rafat reports on Google's new services providing search results based on personal interests like "Personalized Web Search" and "Personal Web Alerts". Try both new services and compare them! I'll do it for sure.

A friend of mine just gave me this info about a book published in 2003. "Journalism can do little to reduce the political imbalance between citizens and the economic, political and other organizations that dominate America" said Herbert J. Gans in a very well informed book dedicated to the American journalism in the twentieth century. The sociologist is not 100% pessimistic... if journalists succeed in changing their current news practices. Few weeks ago the "2004 State of the Media" report said more or less the same thing.

The book: Democracy and the News, by Herbert J. Gans, Oxford University Press.

"I have not read the Blair book and hope I can avoid it" said Ken Auletta to Mark Lewis, the Forbes.com books editor in a recent chat. Ken Auletta is the author of Backstory: Inside the Business of News (Penguin Press, $24.95), a collection of pieces on the subject of American journalism. Most of the articles originally appeared in The New Yorker. 50% of the chat is dedicated to the New York Times editors' strategy.

Source: Forbes via Mediapost. See also jaysonblair.com, set up last year by the UK freelance journalist Kieren McCarthy and don't miss this very good paper on the Ken Auletta's book in the Globe and Mail website.

"I have not read the Blair book and hope I can avoid it" said Ken Auletta to Mark Lewis, the Forbes.com books editor in a recent chat. Ken Auletta is the author of Backstory: Inside the Business of News (Penguin Press, $24.95), a collection of pieces on the subject of American journalism. Most of the articles originally appeared in The New Yorker. 50% of the chat is dedicated to the New York Times editors' strategy.

Source: Forbes via Mediapost. See also jaysonblair.com, set up last year by the UK freelance journalist Kieren McCarthy and don't miss this very good paper on the Ken Auletta's book in the Globe and Mail website.

Received from the Balkan Studies Seminars 2004, which will be held in Olympia, Greece. This year's program will include a seminar on international journalism arranged in collaboration with Duke University's DeWitt Wallace Center for International Journalism and Communication. If interested in, please download file.

If you want to understand how many European newspapers react to terrorist attacks, please read the Juan Varela's article in Poynter Online. He explains why Europe (and Spain in particular) has a long history of seeing terror and why European newspapers show more photos of killed or injured people than US newspapers.

Source: Poynter Online and Juan Varela's blog, Periodistas21 (in Spanish).

If you want to understand how many European newspapers react to terrorist attacks, please read the Juan Varela's article in Poynter Online. He explains why Europe (and Spain in particular) has a long history of seeing terror and why European newspapers show more photos of killed or injured people than US newspapers.

Source: Poynter Online and Juan Varela's blog, Periodistas21 (in Spanish).

If you want to understand how many European newspapers react to terrorist attacks, please read the Juan Varela's article in Poynter Online. He explains why Europe (and Spain in particular) has a long history of seeing terror and why European newspapers show more photos of killed or injured people than US newspapers.

Source: Poyner Institute and Juan Varela's blog, Periodistas21 (in Spanish).

If you want to understand how many European newspapers react to terrorist attacks, please read the Juan Varela's article in Poynter Online. He explains why Europe (and Spain in particular) has a long history of seeing terror and why European newspapers show more photos of killed or injured people than US newspapers.

Source: Poyner Institute and Juan Varela's blog, Periodistas21 (in Spanish).

"There is not much room for new mastheads but we can boost circulation of our existing product range... We are now riding on the growth of regionalisation" said Dahlan Iskan, president director and CEO, Indonesian Jawa Pos group, to the Business Times - Southeast Asia. The 53-year-old president concentrates on building his fast-growing business empire. From a company with only one newspaper with a circulation of 6,000 copies in 1982, when he took over Jawa Pos, the group's total circulation today stands at 1.4 million in East Java.

Good news for the Press freedom in Poland: on 29 March 2004 the Polish prosecuting authority represented by the prosecutor office in Warsaw decided to drop the case against three members of the Presspublica management for having entered into business agreements to the detriment of the company. It was the Polish state-owned company PPW, a minority shareholder in Presspublica or Rzeczpospolita, that reported the three in June 2000.

Sorry, I was four days in Istanbul to prepare our next 11th World Editors Forum (30 May - 2 June 2004) and I was unable -- I don't know why -- to update the blog. Now I'm back in Paris and I'm taking up my regular duties again.

Sorry, I was four days in Istanbul to prepare our next 11th World Editors Forum (30 May - 2 June 2004) and I was unable -- I don't know why -- to update the blog. Now I'm back in Paris and I'm taking up my regular duties again.

"I think newspaper editors need to think of their Page 1 as like a [magazine] cover. It's there to draw the reader into the pages of the newspaper. I also think it's important to not only have local news. I mean, when you're traveling, and if you can only get a local paper, you really feel like, "What's going on in the world?" You're hungry for the New York Times or USA Today." said Bonnie Fuller, the editorial chief of American Media Inc., the publisher of magazines and tabloids including Star, Men's Fitness, Shape and National Enquirer. He added magazines had to reach readers "both visually and textually."

Source: I Want Media and Patrick Philips.

People who regularly visit newspaper-produced Web sites are younger, better educated and more likely to be employed than general Internet users, according to a recent consumer study conducted for the Newspaper Association of America by MORI Research of Minneapolis (see former posting). These visitors are also affluent and more likely to shop for and buy products online.

People who regularly visit newspaper-produced Web sites are younger, better educated and more likely to be employed than general Internet users, according to a recent consumer study conducted for the Newspaper Association of America by MORI Research of Minneapolis (see former posting). These visitors are also affluent and more likely to shop for and buy products online.