Results matching “do you practice”

The idea of an ombudsman, or reader's editor, is not new, but its practice is still relatively infrequent.  Journalism.co.uk discussed with Siobhan Butterworth, The Guardian's ombudsman, why the post is "more important than ever" in the web environment.

There are an increasing number of articles are published straight to the Web.  In fact, there are 10 times as many articles online than there are in print.

Reader complaints are in large supply. Butterworth dealt with 23,000 corrections and complaints via email, telephone and fax in 2007.  The Press Complaints Commission received 10,000 communications last year.

An event hosted by Goldsmiths Media Research Centre sparked a "provocative" discussion on a new book exploring the impact of digital technology on modern news practice and operations, which will influence the final draft.

Colleagues of the Guardian were "divided" during the discussion of "New Media, Old News:  Journalism and Democracy in a Digital Age," with some journalists agreeing with the Guardian's Nick Davies' belief that "modern news involves plagiarism." 

The editorial integrity of journalism is "threatened" by traditional and citizen journalists using the Internet to "distort" information, Reuters' global editor of multimedia for news Chris Cramer said last night.

In an address at Nottingham Trent University, Cramer emphasized that news organizations must work to separate themselves from the nascent 'electronic mob rule' of online journalists who seek to strengthen their own messages.

The American Press Institute's exclusive "crisis summit" concluded Thursday, establishing that the print news industry is in the "phase" of a crisis right before dissolution, Editor and Publisher reports.

James Shein, a "turnaround specialist" and professor at Northwestern University, explained that newspapers are "blinded," and the biggest issue facing the industry's progress is senior leadership.

The media has been focused on a recent incident involving a story posted by a blogger on CNN's site, iReport.com, a citizen journalism site that is not reviewed or checked by any editors.  The blogger published a story about Apple's Steve Jobs suffering from a heart attack.  The news sent the stocks tumbling until it was revealed that the story was in fact false. 

Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University questions the ethics of New Media and the basic principles of journalistic practice in his article, Boring old values and the New Media. 

"We have committed $25 million over five years to the Knight News Challenge because we believe in media innovation through experimentation," says Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation's president and CEO. "Each winning project is an experiment with the potential to transform how we practice journalism in the digital age."

According to Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, there is a shift in the balance-of-power of journalism; the power is shifting in favor of new media. Barber believes the "mainstream press lost touch with its audience at the very moment when technology, via the Internet, was dramatically lowering the barriers to entry."

According to Barber, "the imperial status of the mainstream media - the television networks, big metropolitan dailies and lofty commentators - has been shaken.  The lay-offs of hundreds of US newspaper journalists this summer are a symptom of a wider malaise."

He continued, "we are witnessing a shift in the balance of power towards new media, with wholesale repercussions for the practice of journalism."

Jay Rosen of PressThink and a New York University journalism professor, has created "spinewatch" through Twitter and Publish2 Spinewatch Newsgroup. The goal of "spinewatch" is to encourage the "political press to grow a spine."`
 
Rosen describes spinewatch as a "newsgroup and link bank for campaign 2008 stories where we can keep track of reporting from the mainstream media."  Spinewatch works through Twitter allowing reporters to call out lies, describe untruths, and provide clear reporting on statements at odds with well-established facts.  Rosen hopes that this will provide Americans with a more informed understanding of the candidates and their claims.
 
In an interview with PBS, Rosen stated, "The premise behind spinewatch is more this: It's hard for me to see how you can have a more legitimate or consensus practice in campaign journalism than fact-checking the empirical claims candidates make -- in ads, speeches, interviews -- as they compete for votes."
 
Recently presidential candidate, John McCain has been criticized for defying the press, refusing to answer questions, and even denying things that report.  Rosen argues that the media should do more fact checking in order to become more of a challenge to the presidential candidates.  "If the press cannot at least do that, what is it good for? Can we even use words like "watchdog" or "check on power" if it cannot fact check the candidates?"
 
Sources: PBS, Publishing2
 

"I think the glitz of technology has taken over common sense," says Michelle Ferrier, Daytona Beach News-Journal's columnist and managing editor, in relation to the Twitter reporting done by Rocky Mountain News (RMN) Berny Morson at the funeral of a three-year-old boy killed in an accident. She goes on to say that live reporting from funerals of private individuals shouldn't be allowed.

Newspaper publishers, graphic design companies and publishing BPOs in India are gearing up to grab a slice of the USD3.5billion newspaper outsourcing market.

ValueNotes Database, an Indian business intelligence and research company, has released a research report, "Offshoring by US Newspaper Publishers: To understand the opportunities for buyers and vendors in the newspaper-publishing sector".

Arun Jethmalani, the CEO of ValueNotes, says, "Currently, offshoring has been initiated by tier 1 newspaper publishers in the US, and is largely limited to advertising production services. However, as service providers mature, we believe that tier 2 and 3 publishers will also send work to India. This trend is set to gain traction in the next few years."

ValueNotes Outsourcing Practice has estimated India's share of the market at $35 million in 2008. "The current Indian penetration into this market stands at around 1%. We estimate the revenues to grow to $120 million and manpower to grow to over 5,500 by 2012," said ValueNotes.

The majority of cost overheads of publishers can be outsourced, however, offshoring provides maximum leverage for advertising production services since it is easier to provide from India.

According to Jethmalani, the offshore vendor landscape is at a nascent stage with only a handful of service providers in India actively focusing on the newspaper segment. These providers include, Express KCS, Affinity Express, 2AdPro and Mindworks.

Source: Financial Express via IFRA Executive News Service

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announces its third annual Knight News Challenge, a contest that will grant up to US$5 million for ideas that transform local community news with the help of digital tools like social media, Web 2.0 or multimedia content. A new "incubator" site, the News Challenge Garage, was created in order to offer online criticism and advice for applicants.

Referring to the Internet, Russian Minister of Communications Igor Shegolev says that there is an "illusion" that anyone can become a journalist, reports Lenta.ru.

Legislation covering the media may be updated and authorities are currently looking into the ramifications to this, according to Shegolev. However, he says that the government doesn't plan on introducing any legislation obliging the media to edit content and neither would it "heavily" regulate online content, according to Gipp.ru.

Shegolev points out that Web censorship may not be viable but that things that aren't permitted offline shouldn't be authorized online. Instead, he proposes that Internet users should practice self-censorship, since the government may have difficulties regulating online content, writes Lenta.ru.

Source: Lenta.ru, Gipp.ru

Saudi bloggers launched a campaign complaining about the publication of "gruesome" images portraying a decapitated 15-month-old boy in some of the country's newspapers. Although the letters that were sent out to the editors and columnists weren't answered, the event put into question privacy issues and called for the need to have a standard when it comes to publishing photographs.

Dr. Samir Arar, a psychologist from Jeddah's family-counselling Maharat Centre and a psychology professor at King Abdulaziz University, pointed out that whether or not violent images should be printed must be a matter of adding "relevance to the news story" and not to "appeal to voyeurism", reported Arab News.

According to Arar, reporters publish crime stories in order to "elicit strong reactions" that might help boost paper sales.

However, he said that the problem is that the stories may affect children and those who are sensitive to such content, including the people linked to a particular event.

NWN Media, which owns the Wrexham-based daily the Evening Leader as well as weekly titles in Shropshire, North and Mid Wales and Cheshire, and Glyndwr University have established a Certificate of Higher Education in Print Journalism. The Certificate will allow students to gain weekly newsroom experience to supplement their classroom studies.

The certificate, which will start next month, is a one-year program.

"The time at Glyndwr University will cover lectures and practical workshops," explained Janet Jones, journalism lecturer at Glyndwr University. "But in addition... students have the opportunity to put all this into practice in structured work placements at one of the NWN Media titles for two days each week."

Source: Holdthefrontpage.uk

After Zoriah Miller was "disembedded" from his Marine unit in Iraq, following the publication of graphic photos of a suicide bombing, the New York Times questions "what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war."

Miller, in fact, was surprised by the attention the image received, noting that his were not photographs of exceptional circumstances. They were, "photographs of something that happens every day all across the country." Miller continued, "the fact that these photos have been so incredibly shocking to people, says that whatever they are doing to limit this type of photo getting out, it is working."
 
"If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists -- too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts -- the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme," notes NYT. "After five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers."

By a recent count, just six Western photographers are covering the war in which 150,000 American troops are engaged.

When the War in Iraq reached its fifth anniversary in March - it didn't make the front page in many American papers. The decreased coverage, of course, is in response to a range of issues - a public weary of the war, costs of maintaining foreign bureaus for economically ailing papers, journalists' safety - but increasingly, embed restrictions - or retribution even against photographs abiding by the rules - is an issue.

According to NYT, "New embed rules were adopted in the spring of 2007 that required written permission from wounded soldiers before their image could be used, a near impossibility in the case of badly wounded soldiers... While embed restrictions do permit photographs of dead soldiers... in practice, photographers say, the military has exacted retribution on the rare occasions that such images have appeared. In four out of five cases that The New York Times was able to document, the photographer was immediately kicked out of his or her embed following publication of such photos."

Further, in many cases, the military has simply restricted access to combat. When Franco Pagetti tried to cover heavy figting in Baghdad's Sadr City in April 2008, "The commander there refused to let me in... He said it was unsafe. I know it's unsafe, there's a war going on. It was unsafe when I got to Iraq in 2003, but the military did not stop us from working. Now, they are stopping us from working."

Sources: Editor & Publisher, The New York Times

The offices of Hali Halisi, the Tanzanian publishing group which prints MwanaHalisi, Mseto and Hali, three popular papers, were raided on 18 July. The Tanzanian security forces confiscated computers and other material and arrested the paper's editor.

Police went so far as to take editor and publisher, Saed Kubenea, to his home, where they continued their search and seizure.

MwanaHalisi has been critical of government corruption and the most audacious in naming names.

Earlier this year, two MwanaHalisi editors were attacked when acid was thrown on their eyes - rendering Kubenea temporarily blind. Additionally, in February, security officers raided the home of JamiiForums.com editors, seized computer hardware and detained them for a little over 48 hours.

East African Editors Forum chairman David Makali denounced the raids, saying, "The trend of attacking papers is becoming standard practice among East African states. It is cowardly for any government that has any pretence to democracy to raid a newspaper when it can use the right judicial process."

Source: EastAfricaPress.com