April 2004 Archives

The New York Times has launched a partnership with one of Germany's leading broadsheets, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung said Friday. The New York Times International Weekly, featuring a selection of articles from the US newspaper, will appear as an English-language supplement with the Süddeutsche from May 3. Süddeutsche editor-in-chief Hans Werner Kilz said the addition was targeted at its "internationally oriented readers" and was an exclusive agreement for German-speaking Europe. The 16-page supplement will include articles selected by the editorial staff of the two newspapers and have a print run of 430,000. SZ managing director Klaus Josef Lutz said he expected the agreement to boost international advertising sales. The New York Times International Weekly already appears with several leading European newspapers including La Repubblica in Italy, Le Monde in France and The Daily Telegraph in Britain.

Source: AFP

"Silvio Berlusconi's hold on the media was blamed yesterday for Italy being downgraded in a global survey of press and TV freedoms, to the same "partly free" class as Albania, Mongolia and Burkina Faso" writes John Hooper at The Guardian. "Explaining its decision, Freedom House, a non-profit organisation partly financed by the US government, said yesterday: "Berlusconi's substantial family business holdings control the three largest private television stations and one newspaper, as well as a significant portion of the advertising market." The results come at a significant time, according to the article the Italian senate has just approved a "controversial media bill which opponents of Mr Berlusconi's government say is tailored to the interests of his vast media empire."

Source: The Guardian

Seen in the Washington Post: "Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf is now a broadcast correspondent in Abu Dhabi. Often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," he was interviewed when the U.S. military took control if Iraq but was not held. "He wasn't wanted for anything. Unfortunately, being a bad spokesman is not a crime," a U.S. official said."

Source: Washington Post

The Reading Evening Post has been crowned the UK's best regional newspaper at the 2004 (national) Newspaper Awards. According to HoldtheFrontPage, Glasgow-based The Herald won the top prize in the category for Most Outstanding Use of Colour and the Sunday Herald collected the award for Best Weekly Newspaper on the World Wide Web. Take a look at the article for a list of all the winners.

Source: HoldtheFrontPage

The Reading Evening Post has been crowned the UK's best regional newspaper at the 2004 (national) Newspaper Awards. According to HoldtheFrontPage, Glasgow-based The Herald won the top prize in the category for Most Outstanding Use of Colour and the Sunday Herald collected the award for Best Weekly Newspaper on the World Wide Web. Take a look at the article for a list of all the winners.

Source: HoldtheFrontPage

A new weekly newspaper called Shofar News has launched in Israel. According to the article by Viva Sarah Press at the Jerusalem Post, the paper was started by "a group of Rabbi Amnon Itzhak's followers" and its goal is to offer the general public "a source of news without gossip, sleaziness, or lashon hara" says Haim Kfir, its editor-in-chief. At the moment, Shofar News is free but will soon have a charge, it is said to have "a jewish angle." Take a look at the website (but bear in mind it is in Hebrew)

Source: The Jerusalem Post

"The new editor of USA Today has been named as Kenneth A. Paulson, the executive director of the First Amendment Center and a former top editor at the Gannett Company chain, writes Jacques Steinberg at The New York Times. This comes as a surprise as Kenneth A. Paulson was not one of the four candidates to be shortlisted. After the Kelley scandal, the new USAT editor said he wanted to attack "virus of fear."

Seen in the Isabelle Hontebeyrie's weblog: "The Swiss Army knife now comes with a memory stick that connects to computers through a USB port. First produced in 1891, the Swiss Army knife is now available in a USB Key Drive version with detachable memory stick connects directly to computers and is compatible with Microsoft, AppleMac and Linux software. The 64MB memory stick is password protected and there's data encryption. Download digital pictures, documents, email or MP3 music files with full-speed data transfer. The nail file extends making the ballpoint pen easier to use, the LED flashlight illuminates your writing and there are useful scissors."

Source: Isabelle Hontebeyrie's weblog

If you are interested in gaining more knowledge of the state of the press in Hungary, soon to join the EU, this really is an excellent article by the BBC. It provides a short synopsis on the country's most popular newspapers and the current state of the industry. The BBC site also features similar information for the Czech Republic and Poland, two other countries that will join the EU on Saturday. Although Romania is not one of the ten countries set to join the EU, there is an in-depth article on the state of the nation's press, which features on the Reporters Without Borders website.

Source: BBC

According to Claire Cozens at the Guardian "advances in technology and the culture of 24-hour rolling news are putting journalists' lives in ever more danger as competition to be first with the news intensifies, experts have warned." Chris Cobb-Smith, a former United Nations weapons inspector who advises the BBC on security, is quoted as saying "the demand for instant news was making it increasingly difficult to protect journalists. New technology has made our job much more difficult. Now anyone can operate in a war zone, many of them with no training whatsoever" The article focuses heavily on the safety of journalists in Iraq and highlights that news agencies do not have enough time or resources to plan for the safety of their staff in Iraq.

Source: mediaguadian

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the world's biggest public broadcaster, has for the first time chosen an Arab to head its Arabic news service, the 42-year-old appointee, Hosam Sokkari said. After graduating from Cairo university with a degree in pharmacy, Sokkari decided on a career in journalism, working first as a cartoonist in Egypt, Germany and Finland. He began working for the BBC in 1994 as a presenter and producer in the Arabic division before moving for a few months to the Dubai-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera in 1996. Three years after returning to the corporation, Sokkari was chosen to run the BBC's Arabic internet operation becoming an award-winning editor of BBCArabic.com.

Source: AFP

Have a read of this article written by Barbie Zelizer at Online Journalism Review. It looks into the purpose of photojournalism during wartime. The article writes "We have long heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but no one has ever figured out which words an image stands for in the news of war." The article also suggests that it is now time for the journalists to "set the standards" when it comes to war photojournalism and questions whether recent images from Iraq, and also those of the dead American soldiers, should have been published. A very relevant and in-depth article.

Source: Online Journalism Review

"The right to get it wrong only makes sense, though, if reporters who muff stories acknowledge the errors and their publications recall the pieces" said Jack Shafer, Slate magazine in a story called "The Right To Be Wrong... And the elephant in the New York Times newsroom." It's one of these numerous articles written after the Blair and Kelley scandals. For instance, Jack Shafer asked: "if The New York Times was willing to admit repeated mistakes in its coverage of the Wen Ho Lee case, then why have they remained silent on Judith Miller's many mistakes in reporting on Iraq?

Source: Slate

According to PDNonline "New York Times executive editor Bill Keller put to rest one of the best-kept secrets in the industry today by naming longtime Fortune photo editor Michele McNally as the paper's director of photography. McNally, who has been a picture editor at Fortune since 1986, will join the daily deadline pressures of America's leading paper in June."

Source: PDNonline through mediabistro

The New York-based Freedom House watchdog group has accussed press freedom around the world of deteriorating for a second year running in 2003. The organization's report is based on print, broadcast, and Internet freedom around the world and assigns each country to one of three categories: Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. Ten countries, which include, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Cape Verde, Gabon, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Italy, Moldova, Morocco, and the Philippines -- declined in their category. "Fewer and fewer people throughout the world have uncensored and unfettered access to information about their own countries," Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor said in a statement. Its a good idea to have a look at the Freedom House website, which offers in-depth results for the countries which have changed in their category and charts on the global trends that have occurred.

Source: Freedom House press release and Freedom House website

Have a look at this article by Richard Goldstein, which features on the Village Voice website. Goldstein writes "I know many journalists who would like to comment on the deep structure of their profession and its suck-up to advertisers, not to mention the dominant social order. But their editors won't let them." He believes that liberal publications currently work to prove their objectivity whilst right-wing venues have the freedom to spin "which makes them a lot livelier. For that matter, there are hardly any hardcore progs on the nation's op-ed pages." "You'd think it would be different for press critics, but it isn't. Editors who force them to stick to just the facts are doing what editors always have in conservative times: keeping faith with power."

Source: Village Voice

The New Zealand Herald writes "two Japanese held hostage in Iraq earlier this month criticised domestic media on Tuesday for echoing a government stance that blamed the captives and their families for putting Japan's military mission in Iraq at risk." Nobutaka Watanabe, a former member of Japan's military is quoted as saying "there is a tendency in Japan's media and all of Japanese society to go along with the government."

Pioneering online journalist Michael Kinsley is leaving Microsoft's webzine Slate to become editorial and opinions editor for the Los Angeles Times. Picked up in the New York Times: "Michael Kinsley, a former editor of The New Republic and Harper's who later conceived and edited the online magazine Slate, has been named editorial and opinion editor of The Los Angeles Times, the newspaper announced. Mr. Kinsley will give up the column that he writes for Slate, which is reprinted in The Washington Post. At The Times he will succeed Janet Clayton, who had been editor of the editorial pages since 1995... Mr. Kinsley, who will also write a regular column for The Times, is married to Patty Stonesifer, who leads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."

Source: MSNBC.com and New York Times

Its interesting to read in this article by Syed Zarir Hussain at OneWorld South Asia, who writes that the newspaper industry in India's north-eastern state of Manipur is 'booming.' According to the article new journals and dailies are "regularly hitting the stands, even though journalism is a high-risk profession here." The state is seeing particularly strong growth in English and other dailies, which are published in several local dialects.

According to MosNews "Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon and a staunch critic of President Putin has decided to get rid of his media assets, the Sovershenno Sekretno (Top Secret) newspaper has reported." The article writes that Berezovsky will sell the Kommersant publishing house, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper and the Grani. The Sovershenno Sekretno has named the buyer as head of the Interros holding Vladimir Potanin. The Interros holding already owns a number of Russian mass media such as the popular daily Izvestia, the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, sports daily Sovetsky Sport, radio stations and information agencies. However, the story has yet to be confirmed.

Source: MosNews/The Moscow News

The CPU (Commonwealth Press Union) is to hold its next Biennial Conference and Senior Editors' Forum in February 2005. The forum will run from the 20th of February to the 22nd of February, with the conference running from the 23rd of February to the 25th of February. According to the CPU website the forum "offers editors the opportunity to meet their peers, discuss issues of mutual concern and take home new ideas and alternative ways of improving their business and solving their problems." The conference is designed to involve high ranking editors, publishers and media practitioners and the aim is to "encourage debate on the issues of the day and review strategies for development." More information about the organization and its events can be found on the CPU website.

Source: CPU April 2004 newsletter and CPU website

"The Derby Evening Telegraph and Leicester Mercury have been rewarded for their printing quality in a prestigious worldwide competition." According to HoldtheFrontPage "the two regional newspapers are among 50 titles to have been awarded membership to the Ifra International Newspaper Colour Quality Club 2004-06 - and are the only two UK publications to have made the grade." The other winners this year include the Irish Independent, the Boston Globe, The New York Times and the Toronto Star. Its worth having a look at this article in more depth to find out more details of the awards.

Source: HoldtheFrontPage

"Egypt is experiencing an expansion in privately owned media outlets and breaking down years of state control" writes Alaa Shahine for Al-Jazeera. It looks as though this could be a positive time for private newspapers in Egypt as the private sector is also attempting to compete with dominant state-owned print media. Two new daily newspapers will launch in May. The first, Nahdit Misr - Egypt's Renaissance - is owned by Adib's Good News group, while the second, al-Masri, is reportedly owned by a group of businessmen including Dream TV's Bahjat. Lets wait and see whether these new titles will prove a success and significantly change the landscape of Egyptian press.

Source: Al-Jazeera

Ron Rosenbaum at The New York Observer believes that management theory within newsrooms needs to be scrutinised in more depth. In his article he writes "nobody knows whether the great institution of the free press in America is being shackled (sorry restructured) by self-proclaimed experts who don't know what they're doing." This really is a useful article as it also touches upon the lessons that can be learnt from the Jack Kelley scandal. When talking of newspaper executives who use modern jargon Rosenbaum writes "but do the management consultants who invent the jargon even know what the hell they're talking about? Are they any good at what they're doing? Has anyone ever measured the efficacy of their techniques, their "retreats," their role playing games? This is a useful and interesting article, which looks at whether the best practices are being used by newsrooms. It provides very in-depth information and has a strong argument.

Source: The New York Observer

According to By Brian Braiker at Newsweek Controversial liberal radio journalist Amy Goodman has accused the mainstream U.S. media of becoming corrupt. In her new book “Exception to the Rulers" Goodman puts the alleged corruption down to journalists being too close to those in power and has written the book because she believes the media has reached an all-time low. She says "the lies take lives. ‘Exception to the rulers’ should be the motto of every news organization." She is also quoted as saying "as Big Media goes ever more corporate the public hungers for independent outlets." Amy Goodman spent 10 years as the controversial host of the liberal Pacifica Radio network’s “Democracy Now!” program and her brother David Goodman is co-author of the book. Have a read of this article as it features the interview between Amy Goodman and Brian Braiker.

Source: msnbc news and Newsweek

According to The Mercury News one of Hong Kong's leading newspapers, Ming Pao, is to launch a new daily paper on Wednesday aimed at the San Francisco Bay area's fast growing population of Chinese-language speakers. Ming Pao already publishes North American editions in Vancouver, Toronto and New York. According to the article "the newspaper will start out with a circulation of more than 20,000, but hopes to eventually publish 100,000 papers in the Bay Area and plans to expand its reach to other parts of California."

Source: The Mercury News and Associated Press

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has written a very good article that looks at recent editorial and journalistic errors (such as the Blair and Kelley scandals). "When news organizations screw up, their executives often fail to admit culpability or tell readers and viewers they're sorry. In many cases, they merely issue canned statements and slink into the shadows without answering questions from the sort of nosy reporters they employ to harass everyone else."

Source: Washington Post

The European Journalism Centre is organizing a Seminar for editor-in-chief and media managers on how to efficiently run a newsroom. The seminar will be taught in English and will run from June 21-23. It has been designed to tackle aspects such as leadership techniques and how to deal with conflicts in the newsroom. Course leader, Per Andersson, is a former editor of the Swedish Channel 1 news programme and has been a trainer in newsroom management since 1995. The course fee is 1,500 euros, and the venue is the EJC headquarters in Maastricht. More information can be found on the website.

Source: European Journalism Centre

The Shafta Awards took place in London last night and recognized the biggest mistakes made by UK tabloid press. Take a look at this article, writen by John Plunkett, which highlights some of the incorrect assumptions that have recently been made by UK daily tabloid newspapers in their anticipation to break the news first.

Source: mediaguardian

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It's three minutes of your time and a big deal for us: please help the WEF staff to improve the Editors Weblog by answering nine questions about how you read the blog. Click here to begin the questionnaire.

According to Editor & Publisher, the short list of candidates for the new USA Today editor is down to four: "Mark Silverman, editor and publisher of The Detroit News; Bennie Ivory, executive editor of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.; Ward Bushee, editor of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and Susan Goldberg, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News (Calif.). All except Goldberg are current Gannett employees."

Source: Editor and Publisher.

Sette, the weekly news supplement to the daily newspaper  Corriere della Sera, will have a new size starting May 13, 2004 and will be renamed Corriere della Sera Magazine.

Source: Publicitas. 

Written by Paul J. Gough, MediaPost staff writer: "March 2003 might have been like a lamb for many newspapers, but a year later the industry seems to be roaring just fine, thank you."

Source: MediaPost.

It seems the new BBC's news delivery service (which we reported on last Wednesday) could be adopted by other news organisations. According to an article written by Jemima Kiss at journalism.co.uk Skinners, the developer of the news service, is in talks with News International in Australia about possibly installing the software and has also announced plans to roll out a Mac version. The new service sees a news information box pop up on subscribers desktops when relevant stories break.

Source: journalism.co.uk

Have a look at this transcript of a conversation between Tony Ridder, outgoing Newspaper Association of America chairman, and his new successor Gregg K Jones. The conversation, from the NAA website offers a great deal of insight into the beliefs and backgrounds of these two influential individuals. The article focuses on attitudes towards community newspapers, the diversified business of community newpapers and what will be the NAA’s future agenda according to Gregg K Jones.

Source: NAA

It seems the focus on introducing tabloid versions of newspapers is continuing throughout the world. According to Publicitas Swizz daily newspaper Blick is to trial a tabloid version, which will launch on May 3. The motto of the test is "Two Formats - same content" according to the article. The launch makes Blick the first daily newspaper in Switzerland to have two formats. The tabloid size will be published as a "single section" and attached to the broadsheet version with the trial lasting for several weeks, accompanied by market research. Subscribers will continue to receive the larger format, but will also receive vouchers they can exchange for the compact size at a newsstand. At the end of the trial a decision will be made as to which size is most effective.

Source: Publicitas

Mark Jurkowitz, of the Boston Globe has written a useful article on Boston.com about the apparent vulnerability of newsrooms after the recent Blair, Kelley scandals. "In the wake of recent revelations of Kelley's misdeeds, a panel of outside journalists concluded that "lines of communication [at USA Today] are palpably defective" and cited "a virus of fear" that "clearly infected some staffers . . . and inhibited them from pushing complaints about Kelley" writes the article.

Gregg K. Jones, new chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, used the NAA Annual Convention as an opportunity to highlight what he expects for the future of newspapers. He urged his fellow newspaper executives "to innovate and press for improvement rather than being content with the acknowledged strengths of their industry" writes Greene County Online.

German newspaper Spiegel Online has launched a service, which translates certain articles into English. The website states that cover stories or the most important feature articles whenever they concern international affairs will be translated into English along with concise summaries of other important Spiegel articles. It will be interesting to see whether the readership figures increase and the website gains a solid reputation within English speaking communities.

Source: Spiegel Online

Have a look at this essay written by Jay Rosen, press critic and writer, on the new york university website. The essay focuses heavily on President Bush's statement to the press that they do not represent the public and studies the President's relationship with the media and his opinion towards it.

Source: New York University and The New York Observer

For a chance to look at an effecitve regional newspaper take a look at The Sentinel newspaper in England, which has been named West Midlands Newspaper of the Year at an event to reward the best of the region's press. For the second year running the top prize at the West Midlands Media Awards went to the Stoke Sentinel and Sentinel Sunday, which are produced by the same news team.

Source: holdthefrontpage