May 2004 Archives

At the World Editors Forum today, Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin (biographies below), Co-Directors, Media Center at the American Press Institute, modeled the digital future of the newspaper industry. Through research, seminars and symposia, the Media Center has been creating models for "the visible future -- the things we know are happening, and how things are emerging," said Mr. Peskin. The goal is simple but ambitious: "to build a better-informed society," said Mr. Nachison.

At the World Newspaper Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, which is running concurrently with the World Editors Forum, there has been discussion of comments made last month by investor Warren Buffett, who said the newspaper business is going to deteriorate. Brendan Hopkins, the CEO of APN News & Media, which is Australasia’s largest regional newspaper, radio and outdoor advertising group, had an interesting reaction -- he says Buffet singled out US newspapers and that innovations elsewhere in the world are keeping the business strong. Here is what he had to say at the Congress:

At the 11th World Editors Forum today, Mr. Oh Yeon Ho, CEO and Founder of OhmyNews said goodbye to 20th century journalism and invited everyone to the 21st century, in which “Every citizen is a reporter.” His online publication, OhMyNews, based in South Korea, has offered its readers since 2000 a new media proposition : to become active readers in an environment where every citizen is a (potential) reporter. In a south Korean market where (mobile & broadband) internet penetration is 75 %, online technologies give citizens the unique opportunity to produce OhMyNews' content. The intent of blurring the line between contributor and consumer is to "change the world together," Mr. Ho said.

According to the New York Times, "Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the principals of the Walt Disney Company's Miramax Films division, on Friday personally acquired the rights to the Michael Moore documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," bringing the movie a step closer to American theaters. Although Miramax had bankrolled the documentary, which harshly criticizes President Bush and his decision to wage war in Iraq, Disney refused to let the unit, its art-house subsidiary, distribute it. Under the deal worked out with Disney, the Weinsteins will reimburse Disney for the $6 million production cost of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Miramax and Disney also agreed to donate any "monetary benefit" from the deal to charity, according to a joint statement.

Source: New York Times

Well done by BBC news and today by the Sunday Times (UK): "In his first interview since his release, Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician jailed for 18 years for leaking Israel's nuclear secrets has said he was trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. "I felt it was not about betraying; it was about reporting. It was about saving Israel from a new holocaust." In the interview for the BBC's This World programme, Mr Vanunu said he had no regrets over his actions. "I have no regrets despite the fact I have paid a heavy punishment, a large price," he said. Mr Vanunu, 50, who is widely regarded as a traitor in Israel, spent nearly 18 years in prison for revealing details of Israel's clandestine nuclear arms programme. Under the terms of his release, Mr Vanunu is forbidden from leaving Israel, meeting foreigners and revealing secrets about the Dimona nuclear plant.

Gunmen shot dead the editor of a conservative daily in Montenegro early Friday, The assailants used an automatic rifle to shoot Mr Dusko Jovanovic, the editor-in-chief of the Podgorica-based Dan daily, as he entered his car in front of the paper's head office, witnesses and investigative judge Mr Radomir Ivanovic said... The Dan paper has been embroiled in several libel lawsuits. Mr Jovanovic was indicted last year by the UN war crimes tribunal for revealing the identity of a protected witness at the court. Mr Jovanovic, a controversial journalist, was considered close to conservative opposition parties in Montenegro.

Source: European Journalism centre

From Slate: Thank the self-proclaimed narcissism of Slate editor-at-large Jack Shafer for this amusing tidbit. While scanning Google News Alerts mentioning his name, Shafer noticed that practically the same paragraph appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, citing him as a prominent media critic calling for the New York Times to own up to its pre-war reporting mistakes. To make a long story short, the Los Angeles Times ended up running a correction apologizing for an editor's "accidental" lifting of the Post paragraph in the midst of searching for background info. But Shafer is skeptical. Is the lifting of text ever truly an accident? If you want a good laugh, read the entire piece.

Source: Slate

Here, in totality, is an important and creative piece about media ethics and black Africa written by Claude-Jean Bertrand, the editor of presscouncils.org. It reminds us all that our responsibility toward journalistic ethics extends past recent plagiarism and fabrication scandals, and proposes a sort of "adopt-a-newspaper" program between newspapers in the developed world and in Africa: "On Press Freedom Day (May 10), economist Amartya Sen repeated that there are no famines in democracies with press freedom. May I add no genocides either and few civil wars or mass epidemics ? News media in emerging democracies can help avoid such disasters. And news media in established democracies should help their less fortunate brethren...

From thedeal.com: The news could hit today that Dutch publishing company PCM Uitgevers NV has been sold to Apax Partners, a private equity house. The PCM group has been a powerhouse in Dutch journalism - it owns the national dailies de Volkskrant, Algemeen Dagblad and Trouw (which originated as an underground resistance paper during World War II), as well as NRC Handelblad, the Netherland's leading financial newspaper. According to thedeal.com article, an Apax spokesperson said Apax would become a majority shareholder, but this contradicts the reporting of de Volkskrant itself, which reported that Apax was set to purchase 47.5% of PCM Uitgevers NV instead of 63%.

Source: thedeal.com

From Richard Prince's Journal-ism's at the Poynter Institute: The Knight Foundation has surveyed 1,413 U.S. newspapers to find out which are least representative - racially - of the communities they serve. The results show that only 13% of the newspapers surveyed have reached parity between the racial makeup of their staff and the racial makeup of their readership. And 374 papers, mostly small-circulation, reported no African American, Hispanic, Asian or Native American staff members at all. As the Knight Foundation reports, one of the 374 is "The Independent in Gallup, N.M., where the circulation area is 93% non-white."

According to MediaWeek, the UK magazine, "Commuters in Leicester, Nottingham and Derby have been on the receiving end of a major marketing push in recent days in the lead up to first new Metro (free daily) for a number of years. The first day saw 53,000 copies distributed at railway stations and transport hubs in the three cities.Next Monday, a further 30,000 copies will be distributed in the West Country, as the next stage kicks in for pushing the paper’s total UK circulation towards one million copies. Working with Daily Mail and General Trust partner, regional publisher Northcliffe Newspaper, Metro will also be distributed in Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham andGloucester."

Source: MediaWeek

Each week, Jack Schafer, Slate, tries to assess the readibility of major English speaking newspapers websites. Last week, he was incredibly negative about the electronic editions of NYT, LAT and WaPo. This week, he is in better mood: "the electronic editions of Florida Today and The Guardian are changing my thinking. The future of newspapering might be closer than I thought. On the surface, Florida Today and the Guardian are very similar to their electronic edition genre-mates. Both display PDF images of each print-edition page; both allow readers to page through the "paper" with mouse clicks, skip forward to a desired section, or zero in on a subject with the search function. What sets Florida Today and the Guardian apart from the pack is the way they preserve the basic navigation principles of a daily newspaper.

Just for your weekend... and thanks to Seth Godin. "Assume that: Hard drive space is free Wifi like connections are everywhere Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster Everyone has a digital camera Everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny The number of new products introduced every day is five times greater than now Wal-Mart's sales are three times as big Any manufactured product that's more than five years old in design sells at commodity pricing The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now Your current profession will either be gone or totally different What then?"

Source: Seth Godin's blog through Buzzmachine

Just for your weekend... and thanks to Seth Godin. "Assume that: Hard drive space is free Wifi like connections are everywhere Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster Everyone has a digital camera Everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny The number of new products introduced every day is five times greater than now Wal-Mart's sales are three times as big Any manufactured product that's more than five years old in design sells at commodity pricing The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now Your current profession will either be gone or totally different What then?"

Source: Seth Godin's blog through Buzzmachine

Today, it's almost impossible to find an American blog without a comment on what the Microsoft chairman has said about the blogosphere... For lot of bloggers, it's a sort of (religious) consecration. According to BBC, In a speech to an audience of chief executives, Mr Bill Gates said the regularly updated journals, or blogs, could be a good way for firms to tell customers, staff and partners what they are doing. Mr Gates' blessing of blogs came during his keynote speech at Microsoft's CEO Summit held on the company's campus in Redmond, Seattle. Mr Gates made a point of dwelling on blogs and said that although they started in the technical community and have come to be a broader social phenomenon, businesses can use them too.