Editors Weblog: Search Results

Study looks into what news articles you share and why

Posted by Maria Conde on February 9, 2010 at 5:14 PM

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have extensively studied The New York Times list of most e-mailed articles, checking every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles, and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page, The New York Times reports.

Results from the study show that NYTimes readers have exalted tastes - seeking to inspire awe in their friends, colleagues, and family by choosing to e-mail positive articles over negative ones, and long, intellectually challenging articles over short and shocking ones.

YouCommNews: public interest journalism in Australia

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 3, 2010 at 5:09 PM

It's a question that can get lost in all the talk of business models and content creation: how might journalism best serve the public?

In Australia, the latest group to ponder this is The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism, directed by a group of journalists, editors, academics and members of the community. Part of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University in Melbourne, it is setting up a project called YouCommNews, modeled on the American site Spot.Us, which will allow the audience to commission the stories they want to see.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Dr Margaret Simons, chair of the foundation, and to David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.

Update: More time to bid for Canwest

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 3, 2010 at 12:54 PM

Potential bidders for the newspaper properties of Canwest will have an extra week to make their offers, under a ruling by an Ontario court, Reuters reports.

Parties interested in purchasing well-known Canadian newspapers including the National Post, Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun now have until 5 March to offer their bids. These will need to top a C$925 million offer made by Canwest's lenders.

NYT's paywall: of symbolic significance but unlikely to increase revenue?

Posted by Emma Heald on January 29, 2010 at 11:54 AM

Time's James Poniewozik has suggested that the significance of the New York Times's paywall is symbolic, rather than a sign that paid online content is the future for news. "Any pricing scheme that can raise actual money risks chasing away actual readers," and this why the NYT's charging method "probably won't make much difference to the Times's coffers or its readers at first."

As Poniewozik says, there are many people who won't end up paying for an online subscription to the New York Times. Print subscribers will get free access, casual readers won't have to pay, and those directed via other websites won't pay.

Guardian's Alan Rusbridger on why his paper will remain free online

Posted by Emma Heald on January 26, 2010 at 12:06 PM

Editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger made clear his feelings on paywalls and the growing importance of social media during the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp lecture yesterday, entitled 'Does journalism exist?' The Guardian reproduced the text of the lecture here.

Hugh Cudlipp was an editor at the Daily Mirror from the early 1950s to early 1970s,
a period in which, as Rusbridger pointed out, newspaper editors' key challenge was producing good editorial content, rather than trying to come up with a new business model, which is a top issue confronting all editors now.

Survey: Almost half of Google News users don't go to news sites

Posted by Emma Heald on January 20, 2010 at 2:38 PM

Forty-four percent of people using Google News said they only scan the headlines and don't actually go on to the news sites themselves, according to a survey of online U.S. news consumers by research firm Outsell, paidContent reported today. And the more a user checks the news on Google News - "power news users," or those who checks more than twice daily - the less likely they are to click on a news link.

This study is expected to "provide further ammunition" to content creators who charge aggregators with not sharing ad revenue they make on providing links to news articles, Agence France-Presse noted.

For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

Miami Herald leading the way in Haiti earthquake coverage

Posted by Trafton Kenney on January 15, 2010 at 2:55 PM

As the latest news from Tuesday's earthquake outside of Port-au-Price trickles in to the mainland, newspapers have faced many of the same logistical challenges as rescue crews as they struggle to cover the scale of destruction wreaked on this poverty-stricken Caribbean nation.

With only one foreign correspondent based in Haiti, Jonathan M. Katz of the AP, many major newspapers like the Wall Street Journal struggled initially to get their journalists on the ground. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake had destroyed what little infrastructure Haiti already had, razing government buildings, hospitals, and homes. Telecommunications and power lines have been unreliable if present at all.

Magazine launched with aim of "neatly putting the screws" on Germany

Posted by Helena Humphrey on January 8, 2010 at 12:53 PM

December saw the launch of a new German news magazine, as Zuerst or "First" hit newsagents' shelves across the country, as well as those in Austria, Luxembourg and South Tyrol, with an initial print run of 90,000. Like other monthly publications of its type, Zuerst's 84 pages are filled with articles concerning the economy, current affairs, travel and culture. Flick through the magazine and you would be forgiven for aligning the publication with established news magazines Spiegel or Stern - the very ilk of which it is infact competing against. Take a closer look and it becomes clear that the publication is offering an altogether different message.

Investigative journalism in India: Tehelka

Posted by Emma Heald on December 16, 2009 at 3:57 PM

Tehelka is an Indian English-language weekly news magazine whose motto is "free, fair, fearless." It focuses on investigative journalism in the public interest: stories that can make a difference. The Editors Weblog spoke to founder and editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal and Shoma Chaudhury, executive editor and one of the original Tehelka team, about the challenges that the news magazine faces within the Indian media landscape.

Humble beginnings

Tehelka began in an online-only form in 2000 with $750,000 of investment and Tejpal's desire to "bring back the hard journalism of the 1980s," which he said had been far more combative and adversarial than the softer journalism of the 1990s. Tejpal also hoped that the publication would be a "place for refined and complex writing," but that its journalists would retain "the ability to dirty our hands."

The power of print

Tejpal started Tehelka as an online-only news magazine because the dot.com boom seemed to offer great potential. However, after the website was forced to close due to a barrage of legal action after breaking what Tejpal described as "the biggest story in Indian journalism," Operation West End, Tejpal decided that the web was not the best medium for his publication. "It was not a weapon for battle in India," he said. "I realised if I had had a printed publication, even one with a small circulation, most of what was done to us would not have happened."

So when it came back in 2004, Tehelka appeared as a weekly news magazine. Tejpal had believed it was imperative that Tehelka did make a return: "if it didn't, it would send out a terrible message: if you take on power, you will be rendered extinct." But by making a new start, the message became "if you do the right thing, you might pay the price, but you could still win in the end."

Faced by a lack of investment, Tejpal travelled and addressed gatherings, and managed to persuade 15,000 Indians to write out cheques for advance subscriptions of Tehelka, stressing the importance of the journalism that the title had produced. The first edition of the magazine was launched with this money.

More than just a magazine

Some of Tehelka's 'sting' methods may be controversial, but it is clear that to its staff, the publication is an entity striving for justice that plays a fundamental role in society. "It has sort of acquired a character of its own in the Indian landscape," Chaudhury said, and added how heartening it is to meet people who equate Tehelka with "probity and uprightness and integrity and courage. There comes a kind of covenant that you have to keep."

Chaudhury explained how the experience of being shut down was "very important" for her and how she thought that the magazine shifted in its goals: from being adversarial to looking at any kind of public interest story: "covering the stories of the dispossessed and bringing these to the readership of the rich and powerful." The magazine looks at areas of the country that other urban journalists do not usually address, she said. Tejpal stressed the important he puts on not trying to simplify complex issues, but to respect their complexity.

Operation West End was a sting investigation into corruption in defence procurement, targeting several political figures who were then members of the ruling coalition. Tehelka reporters masqueraded as arms dealers and taped senior politicians and army officers accepting bribes to approve arms deals. "We became famous beyond all that was due to us," Tejpal said. "For the next three years we just combatted the state's onslaught."

Chaudhury highlighted a couple of important issues that Tehelka has since sought to address. One was exposing alleged state collusion in the Gujurat riots of 2002. "The immediate aftermath of that story was disappointing," Chaudhury said: "it was such a political hot potato that nobody wanted to touch it." But Tehelka's recordings made during their investigation have become part of the official investigation into the issue, and the story "has had a huge impact," she added.

Another story covered the government's plan to launch an operation to tackle Maoist influence in some areas of the country. Feeling that this was not getting enough attention and had the potential to cause civil war, Chaudhury wrote an article entitled "weapons of mass destruction," in which she argued that this operation was not the right way to address the problem. The government has now "back-peddled," she said.

Tehelka now has about 35 journalists, "a small but motivated team," Tejpal said. The journalists only produce original journalism.

The language question

India is a country of multiple languages and dialects, which raises different challenges for the media. English is spoken and read only by a small percentage of the population. For a publication such as Tehelka, which is so firmly committed to spreading awareness of its public interest journalism, this could appear to be a frustrating limitation. However, as Tejpal said, in such a vast country, even a million copies would be a drop in the ocean, and "the real job of journalism in India is to impact those who take decisions for millions of people: the people who wield political power, or corporate power." And for this, English is the most appropriate language.

A fortnightly Hindi edition of the magazine does also exist, including about 50% of the same content as the English edition, the other half being original. Half a dozen journalists make up its staff.

The pricing question

Tejpal described the low pricing of publications in India as "an Indian malady" as it has meant that proprietors have become "entirely dependent on advertising" and subsequently, "the reader gets the journalism that that advertiser wants, not that that the journalist wants." The business model "is badly skewed," he added. Chaudhury was equally vehement that current prices were unfeasible, pointing out that many people would spend far more on a bag of crisps than on a newspaper or magazine. The Times of India, for example, costs 2 rupees (€0.02) and Tehelka, though expensive by comparison at 15 rupees (€0.22) still does not cover its costs with its cover price.

Chaudhury said that it is impossible for one publication to tackle this problem alone, but she believes that if five or six powerful proprietors got together and decided to change the pricing strategy then they could make a difference. She is convinced that publishers need to free themselves from the stranglehold of advertising by generating enough income from their cover price to allow them to break even. "Advertising should be used to make a profit but not to survive," she stressed, "the entire construct of this business is wrong."

Hope for the future

Having recently received some investment that should mean that the publication is here to stay, at least for now, Tejpal hopes that Tehelka will be able to move beyond its struggle to survive, and start to grow. "We have a very very big reputation, we want to physically acquire a size that matches the reputation," he said. "We would like to have a much stronger web operation, some sort of a TV presence and even expand a little in the print space."

"I hope that the struggle for resources is behind us," he said, "it's been a tough nine years."

Chaudhury also holds much hope for the publication, taking into account the fact that "the idea of Tehelka exists outside me or Tarun or the others... it has sort of acquired a character of its own in the Indian landscape." She has hope that India's troubles will force other journalism "back to doing what it should be doing" and believes that the younger generation is likely to do this better.

News Corp joins online newsstand

Posted by Nestor Bailly on December 7, 2009 at 6:12 PM

News Corp is joining Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith and Time in putting its publications up for sale in a variety of digital formats for various platforms on an online newsstand for both magazines and newspapers.

Each of these major publishers are investing and creating a new company to run the digital newsstand. An official announcement is expected on Tuesday.

Hailed as an 'iTunes for magazines,' the new company and service will have the four rival publishers as equity partners.

Wikipedia sees huge decrease in number of editors

Posted by Betsey Reinsborough on November 26, 2009 at 11:54 AM

Wikipedia has been loosing editors at an alarming rate in recent months, reports the Wall Street Journal. In the first three months of this present year, Wikipedia lost 49 000 English-language editors, as compared to the 4 900 they lost during the same time frame the previous year. This has caused many to raise concern for the future of the fifth most-popular website on the Internet.

Roughly 325million people visit the online-encyclopaedia each month. Despite the drop in editors, the site traffic has grown considerably- traffic went up by 20 percent between September 2008 and 2009. So what's the rub? Is Wikipedia just out of things to write about?

NYPD, district attorney raid NY newspaper offices

Posted by Nestor Bailly on November 18, 2009 at 1:44 PM

The circulation and printing offices of several large national and local papers have been raided by investigators of the Manhattan district attorney's office in a union corruption investigation.

The ongoing investigation into the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union had offices of The New York Times in Queens, The New York Post and Daily News in Manhattan, and El Diario in Brooklyn searched by police officers looking for paperwork related to the union.

DigiDave's take on redefining journalism

Posted by Helena Humphrey on November 18, 2009 at 12:35 PM

In his latest blog post, David Cohn a.k.a. "DigiDave", founder of crowd-funded news site spot.us, states that journalism needs to be redefined - and moreover, that "honest communication" must be preserved:

"Journalism as a word is loaded because of the ministry it invokes. The profession that, since Watergate, has laid claim to it. That ministry is now a diaspora. Much like after the Gutenberg revolution the ministry lost its authority in interpreting the bible. Martin Luther showed us how. In reaction many journalists cling even tighter to that word," writes Cohn, who states that his key motivations as a journalist are "speaking truth to power" "afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted", as well as enabling communities to inform themselves "so they can make better decisions."

Jeff Jarvis and Paul Carr duke it out over citizen journalism

Posted by Betsey Reinsborough on November 13, 2009 at 5:28 PM

Tuesday's episode of The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC featured a spirited debate between Paul Carr, author of the article NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how 'citizen journalists' can't handle the truth from TechCrunch, and Jeff Jarvis, CUNY professor and journalist. The two discussed the idea of citizen journalism and its uses for mainstream media, particularly in regards to last week's shootings in Fort Hood, Texas.

Jarvis, a longtime advocate of citizen journalism, argued that the ability for the media to gain information from eyewitnesses through Twitter and other social media, and then use said information in a journalistic story following vetting and fact checking, was a large advantage that the Internet has provided.

Carr, calling in form his home in California, argued that social media was instant, and thus did not allow for the kind of vetting that would constitute traditional reportage. To Carr, there is a difference between tweeting and tweeting the truth.

Washington Times fires three top executives

Posted by Betsey Reinsborough on November 10, 2009 at 2:33 PM

The Washington Times announced Monday that it has fired three top executives- president and publisher Thomas P. McDevitt, cheif financial officer Keith Cooperrider, and charman Dong Moon Joo, according to the New York Times. Former vice president, Jonathan Slevin has been named acting president and publisher.

Executive editor, John Solomon, was not present in the offices on Monday, but it has been rumoured that he may be planning to step down following the shake-up. He is said to be "taking a few days to consider his options," according to Talking Points Memo, as quoted by the New York Times.

RIA-Novosti hits out against claims that it launched a PR campaign to improve Stalin's image

Posted by Helena Humphrey on November 2, 2009 at 5:06 PM

Russian Information Agency Novosti, a state-owned news agency based in Moscow, has denied allegations of cooperating with a Western PR company in an attempt "to justify Russia's great power ambitions" and improve the reputation of former Soviet Union dictator, Joseph Stalin.

Following EUobserver's online publication of an article entitled "New pro-Russia campaign comes to EU capital," in which a journalist states that the news agency is attempting to secure a contract with one of Europe's top PR firms, RIA Novosti deputy general director, Valery Levchenko, dismissed the claims as nothing more than "utter rubbish". According to Levchenko, when interviewed by the EUobserver.com journalist, he was never asked about plans concerning RIA Novosti's cooperation with the RJI Company and has since questioned the journalist's level of professionalism.

Politico owner to launch local Washington website

Posted by Jennifer Lush on October 29, 2009 at 11:11 AM

Allbritton Communication Co., owner of popular political news website, Politico, is to launch a website next spring that will cover local news in the Washington area, AFP is reporting.

In a memo released to staff yesterday, chief executive Robert Allbritton confirmed the venture, which will the run by ex-WashingtonPost.com editor, Jim Brady. Allbritton said the website "will harness the power of the Web, social media and new technology to connect Washingtonians with each other and with the information that matters most in their family, civic and work lives.

La Repubblica editor Ezio Mauro receives support for his press freedom efforts

Posted by Emma Heald on October 26, 2009 at 5:59 PM

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy have presented a statement of support to Ezio Mauro, editor of the Italian daily La Repubblica which is being sued by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi for alleged defamation.

The citation recognises Mauro's courageous leadership and his newspaper's essential efforts on behalf of press freedom, according to a statement from the Nieman Foundation. "At a time of grave jeopardy for freedom of the press in Italy, La Repubblica, under the editorial guidance of Ezio Mauro, has courageously insisted in its pages that government must be accountable to the citizens and that the role of the press is to demand that accountability."

Twitter signs on with Microsoft and Google

Posted by Jennifer Lush on October 22, 2009 at 1:38 PM

Twitter, the microblogging service, which asks users to anwser the question 'What are you doing?'in 140 characters or less, announced it has made deals with both Microsoft and Google yesterday. The agreement now makes 'tweets' searchable on the respective search engines.

Early yesterday, Paul Yiu, head of newly rebranded Microsoft search engine, Bing, wrote on a blog: "Twitter is producing millions of tweets every minute on every subject you can imagine. The power of those tweets as a form of data that can be surfaced in search is enormous."

Oakland Local launches non-profit website to cover community issues

Posted by Jennifer Lush on October 22, 2009 at 10:40 AM

Oakland Local is one of many non-profit community news websites currently springing up across the globe as the need for quality local news coverage becomes more obvious. The recession has seen the local news industry suffer staggering financial blows and several news organisations, small and large, have had to heavily cut back on resources or close altogether.

The situation has caused many to express concerns about the dangers of not having a local media watchdog to keep those in power in check: "It makes me worry about all of those public authorities and courts which will in future operate without any kind of systematic public scrutiny. I don't think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting," Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger has said.

BBC to appoint social media editor

Posted by Jennifer Lush on October 20, 2009 at 11:56 AM

The BBC is creating a new 'social media editor' position, the Guardian is reporting, amidst growing interest in the value of web services such as Twitter and Facebook to news publications. The BBC's decision comes as part of a wider campaign announced last month, designed to relaunch its websites with a greater social media focus.

"Like a lot of other news organisations, we are at the beginning of something very exciting, " said Nic Newman, the BBC's future media and technology controller, journalism. "We recognise social media plays an important part. With the new position we are co-ordinating best practice. We think that the decision to appoint a social media editor is the best way to understand what works."

Beware The Beast

Posted by Helena Humphrey on October 16, 2009 at 4:04 PM

When ex Vanity Fair and New Yorker Editor, Tina Brown, turned her back on print to launch The D aily Beast website, many were left open mouthed. Brown had enjoyed a highly successful career and was at the top of her game - so why the decision to leave a world she knew so well for a foray into the unfamiliar territory of cyberspace? And more importantly, would she be able to pull it off?

One year down the line, and Brown's blog, offering curated news aggregation plus reporting and opinion, is enjoying significant success - currently boasting a top 10 spot on Technorati's ranking of influential blogs, ahead of celebrity gossip site TMZ.com and Andrew Sullivan's well-established politics blog, The Daily Dish, according to the Financial Times. Last month the site attracted its highest monthly audience yet, ringing in with a respectable 3.9m unique visitors total.

Whilst the site still has a way to go if it wants to reach the dizzy HuffPost heights, an aim Brown has set in her ambitious sights to fulfil by the 2012 American elections, it is well on the way. Although Brown admits that adapting to the fast-pace of publishing online was initially a challenge, she insists this has not hindered the site's progress and that the team of writers is ever growing. Sub sites such as Sexy Beast, Art Beast, Book Beast and Hungry Beast have already been launched before the main site has even had chance to break even.

Investigative journalism gone global

Posted by Helena Humphrey on October 12, 2009 at 1:28 PM

The image of the lone wolf journalist, sniffing out local crime and corruption, may be a thing of the past - that's according to the results of a new enquiry launched by the International Journalists' network, which has summarised the latest changes in the field of investigative journalism.

Hunting in packs

Collaborative efforts have proved both efficient and effective. Editor of the International Journalists' network, Jessica Weiss cites the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist's recent 13-month investigation into the illegal global tobacco trade as one such success. The investigative series, "Tobacco Underground", unearthed stories surrounding a multibillion-dollar business of trafficking, which has contributed to crime, corruption, terrorism and illness internationally. Its team was composed of some 22 reporters in 14 countries, spread across a dozen different time zones, reporting on anything from "counterfeiters in China and renegade factories in Russia to Indian reservations in New York and warlords in Pakistan and North Africa".

The pragmatics of "Tobacco Underground" were by no means unusual. In the Internet age many of today's investigative journalists are working in regional and cross-border networks, enabled by technology and tools that are revolutionising reporting. The European Fund for Investigative Journalism actively encourages this- providing research grants from a fund of €20,000 for stories that have the potential to make an impact; its main stipulation being that projects should include "cross-border research, networking between colleagues, established and innovative investigative methods" and be "original, innovative and intensive".

Without doubt, the web facilitates this: On a basic level journalists have the means to communicate with each other effectively and cheaply, benefiting from the use of a secure, online workplaces to communicate, share documents, photos and videos, and edit each other's work. But the web offers other advantages too: The information super highway is being tamed by social networking sites, such as the journalist's virtual grapevine, Twitter. Fans or otherwise, few journalists would refuse to acknowledge the speed with which the tool relays news stories globally, often providing important leads. Latest reports regarding the development of Wikileaks - "the online clearinghouse for leaked documents", permitting access to sensitive documents, is another exciting development for journalists and could provide a powerful investigative tool.

The importance of watchdog journalism

According to ICIJ director and Tobacco Underground lead editor David Kaplan, good investigative journalists delve "deeply into complex subjects, and look at whether people in a given society who have power are exercising that power in an accountable way". Put like that, one can hardly ignore its necessity as a direct means to regulate society. Yet newspapers seeking to cut costs have cut jobs, and with Investigative journalism proving to be time-consuming as well as costly, floundering local papers no longer have the means to support it.

As a result citizen start-ups have been cropping up around the globe, particularly in the U.S. The most well-known publications to date, MinnPost and Voice of San Diego, exist on a total budget of a little more than $1 million a year (with almost all of the budget going directly on reporting). The start-ups have done away with expensive print, delivery and ad sales costs as well as sports reports, breaking crime news and so on, in order to deliver serious reporting. A number of the n ew non-profit units, such as Pro Publica, focus exclusively on investigative reports also. The UK's newly set up "Investigations Fund" is also looking to support "risky, challenging reporting" for which it has recognised that there is a "crying demand".

The growing trend for Citizen start-ups is mirrored by non-profit investigative centres worldwide: The current number stands at 50, with more than half of those having been established since 2000. Though the first three non-profits dedicated to investigative journalism were American: the Fund for Investigative Journalism (1969), Investigative Reporters and Editors (1975), and the Center for Investigative Reporting (1977), it is an idea that is now taking off internationally: In August of this year, the Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism lauded two exposés of public corruption in Brazil and the management of illicit accounts within the Catholic Church in Costa Rica - an important development for two countries where a tradition of investigative journalism does not exist.

Challenges

One of the biggest threats facing investigative journalism is simply that of not having enough trained professionals within the field to safeguard its survival. In countries where media freedom is seriously restricted, reporting of this kind can be dangerous - and even life threatening. Caijing, a Chinese magazine, has manoeuvred around this by training their investigators in the reportage of finance and financial investigations - which is permitted, as opposed to direct criticism of the country's Communist government. Similarly, Arab Reporters in Syria have sponsored consumer reporting on food safety in order to train people in the method. According to Kaplan "The important thing is that you establish a methodology - you get a generation of reporters trained in how to do this kind of reporting and the rest will come".

But even in countries with independent media, investigative stories have other hurdles to overcome. Kaplan commented that during "Tobacco Underground", language, cultural and technological barriers were often difficult to work with, as well as the fact that reporters were working across different time zones. Furthermore, reporters in different regions had different levels of training, varied reporting styles and standards.

A future rooted in its past

All in all however, technological advancements have had an positive effect on news reporting states Kaplan, which he refers to as the "great equaliser" at a time when so many other resources are being cut.

Technology aside, Kaplan maintains that "investigative journalism as a craft remains rooted in the same principles it was founded upon", calling upon its journalists to "think about stories systematically, think about multiple sourcing, look up public records, interview and follow trails - trails to people, trails of money, trails of accountability", drawing parallels between investigative reporters and "good cops and honest prosecutors" who ultimately, are "driven by the hope to leave the world a little better than how they found it."

With the emergence of non-profit start ups it is clear that these people do exist. But are there enough of them to fill in the gaps in reporting left by the recent financial crisis? By Poynter Media Business Analyst Rick Edmond's estimations, it would take roughly 1,600 MinnPosts or Voice of San Diegos to replace the spending on journalism newspapers have cut. Either non-profit grows or the newspaper industry faces facts, and accepts that investigative reporting is - and should continue to be - the backbone of journalism.

Sources: International Jounalists' Network, The Investigations Fund, European Fund for Investigative Journalism, Poynter

Is a video worth a thousand words?

Posted by Jennifer Lush on October 12, 2009 at 11:12 AM

Video blogging, quite simply a blog which employs video as its medium, is a phenomenon which hasn't shown the same success as its text-based parent amongst everyday web users. Despite the fact the 'tools of the trade' - cameras, editing software, and a platform to broadcast - are no longer unaffordable or complex obstacles, the significant investment of time to produce something that is of a publishable quality is still a drawback for many.

Adam Singer, in his blog The Future Buzz, writes that in video blogging professionals still have a 'leg-up': "In text-based communications, professional writers don't... In fact, amateurs are in many cases more compelling than the professionals of yesterday because they are not bound by rules that constrain and constrict the emotion possible through words." In the realm of video, however, Singer says: "It's hard to compete against professional personalities who have honed their skills in a competitive environment and have sharp writing and production staffs behind them."

Brazilian Newspapers enjoy prosperity, sunshine.

Posted by Nestor Bailly on October 12, 2009 at 10:13 AM

Despite the credit crunch, the fall of advertising, and declining circulation of newspapers in the Northern Hemisphere, Brazil continues to see rapid and sustained growth in its newspaper and tabloid industries, MediaGuardian reports.

In 2007 Brazilian newspaper circulation increased 12% compared to a world average of 2.7%, and last year's increase of 5% came among the global market crash and dire times for Europe and North American papers.

Tabloids have seen perhaps the largest growth, with colorful pages and scantly-clad women, distributed for free or very cheaply. Growth at nationally established papers remains steady as well.

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