Results matching “ap to charge me”

First-quarter profits at the Washington Post Co. declined 39%, hit by a one-time charge at Newsweek magazine and the continuing struggles of its newspaper division.

The newspaper division, whose flagship title is the Washington Post, reported $1.2 million in operating income, down 92% year over year. Revenue was $206.1 million, down 6% from $219.2 million last year. Print ad revenue dropped 11% over the same period, mostly due to the decline in classified advertising.

"We had a disappointing first quarter as a result of several factors: steep losses in classified revenues driven by local economic factors, continued migration of revenue to the Internet and general softness as advertisers affected by the tough economy pull back on spending," said Katharine Weymouth, chief executive of Washington Post Media.

Source: Washington Post - Business Spectator through IFRA Executive News Service

Now German speakers don't need a computer to look up something on Wikipedia. Major German publisher Bertelsmann, whose divisions include Random House Inc. and Sony BMG, is publishing "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia," a collection of the most popular German language Wikipedia entries.

The project is not meant to be a re-creation of the site in book form, but rather "as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia's users," according to Bertelsmann.

"We think of it as an encyclopedic yearbook," Dr. Beate Varnhorn, the editor in charge of Bertelsmann's reference works said. "A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist."

There are more restrictions in a printed version: Wikipedia online features hyperlinks that takes a user from topic to topic, but a reader of the printed version will have to manually get to different entries. Whereas the German version of the website has more than 750,000 different articles, the 992 paged printed version will have 25,000 articles with about 1,000 photographs.

On the other hand, a staff of 10 condensed and verified the online material, so that the printed version will be an accurate, credible source.

Varnhorn is optimistic because of Germany's "strong encyclopedic culture." She hopes to especially target a younger audience.

There will be entries on French first lady Carla Bruni, Nintendo Wii, and German writers and musicians.

"The approach of 'Wikipedia in One Volume' is to give the people the information they are looking for," Arne Klempert, the group's executive director said, contrasting that approach to "the process of publishing a traditional encyclopedia put together by a select group of people behind closed doors."

"This is the most important difference from traditional encyclopedias," he said. "It's also an important thing in that the sense of the Wikipedia spirit will go into this printed volume."

If the 2008 version is successful, there is a possibility of other editions. The printed Wikipedia will go on sale in September for €19.95, or $31.80. Bertelsmann will pay €1 per copy sold for use of the Wikipedia name, which will support the site's operations, according to Klempert.

Source: New York Times, Yahoo News

"Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom"  is a conference organized by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and a coalition of leading press freedom groups, held on April 18-19 in Maison de la Chimie in Paris to raise the consciousness of the journalistic community, especially sports journalists, to the press freedom conditions they should expect to encounter in China.

A Chinese journalist jailed for her reporting told the conference today that press freedom and human rights have worsened in China and that conditions for journalists in the run-up to the Olympics are "considerably more catastrophic" than they were when she was arrested 15
years ago.

"Freedom of the press and human rights constitute the most serious problem currently facing China," said Gao Yu, who was arrested in 1993 and sentenced to six years in prison for sending two articles on current affairs to a Hong Kong review. She was charged with "divulging state secrets", a catch-all charge often used by Chinese authorities to stifle independent reporting and dissent.

Her arrest came weeks after China's failed bid to host the 2000 Olympics. It was her second jail term; she had previously served a 15-month sentence in 1989 for her coverage of the Beijing democracy movement.

She compared her case to that of Hu Jia, a human rights campaigner and citizen journalist who was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this month. "As the Olympic Games approach, this case demonstrates in a terribly emblematic fashion the position of the Communist Party in confrontation with freedom of expression," she said. "It also shows the riposte of the Chinese authorities to the demands of the international community."

Despite promises of reform made ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities have not only failed to respect them, but they have intensified their crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Foreign journalists now reporting from China in the run up to the Olympics are regularly harassed and even expelled, as was the case during the March 2008 events in Tibet. This violates the Organising Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games pledge that foreign media would have "complete freedom to report when they come to China".

Ms Gao, the 1995 laureate of the WAN Golden Pen of Freedom and the first laureate, in 1997, of UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize, said:  "At the approach of the Olympic Games, all Chinese who have suffered oppression hope to be able to utilise the occasion to seek justice; the international community hopes that the Chinese government will improve the situation of the press and human rights in line with the promise made in 2001.

"But the Chinese authorities see these internal and external pressures as 'politisation of the Olympic Games. Unhappily, counterattacking against these criticisms by repressing the freedom of the press only underlines this contradiction."

"The experience of China and the Olympics is, in fact, yet one more example of the terrible naivety and short-sightedness of those in leadership of our governments, our sports organisations and our businesses as they deal with repressive regimes like the one in place in Beijing," said Timothy Balding, CEO of WAN, who opened the session featuring Ms Gao.

"History, if nothing else, amply demonstrates that dictators do not voluntarily and spontaneously give up power, do not loosen the chains, do not remove the gags, after sudden illumination and conversion to belief in freedom and other human rights. They do so when they are forced to, generally through a combination of intense internal opposition and dissent," he said.

The full program can be found at here.

For more information on WAN's international campaign, in the run-up to the Olympics, to hold China to the promises it made in its successful Olympic bid to improve the press freedom and human rights conditions in the country, please go here.

Source: WAN

Yesterday, following a historical newsroom strike at the print paper on April 14 (in the wake of a planned 129 layoffs), Le Monde's board discussed projects to save 1,000 pages of content per year.

According to CBNews, this will be achieved by a better distribution of pages between the mid-week and weekend print editions, as well as the "rebalancing" of supplements.

In reality, Le Monde will simply have less staff to produce content. Of the 129 job cuts, 89 will affect the newsroom, including 45 for staff in charge of producing written content.

Although many papers around the world have been forced to trim down their print editions in an effort to cut costs, the situation in France is critical: every year, quality papers cut back on content, thus giving less incentive for readers to buy them, leading to decreased revenues and further cost and content cuts...

Some of London's freesheets already carry more content than many of France's quality, paid-for dailies.

Le Monde's plan to restructure could also call on the currently non-integrated journalists to work both for the print paper, supplements and the online edition.

Update: Journalists at Le Monde voted in a general staff assembly today, on April 16, to stage their second one-day strike in a week, protesting against the planned layoffs. Le Monde is scheduled not to appear on Thursday, April 17.

Source: CB News (link in French), AFP

Here's a piece submitted to us by Chris McGillion, former Editorial Page Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. He currently coordinates the journalism program at Charles Sturt University in Australia. In the following two-part essay, he reviews the pros and cons of journalism school programs today, and how editors, teachers and journalists can benefit from them :


Over the years that I've spent teaching journalism more than practicing it, I've had to take a keen interest in complaints from editors about the graduates of university-based journalism courses. I detect that some of these complaints reflect an antipathy towards university degrees by people who have risen to the top of their profession without one and I suspect that some complaints are nothing more than attempts to sheet the blame for bad appointments home to someone other than the hirer.

But other complaints are not so easily dismissed. Among these are the charge that university courses over intellectualize what is basically a craft, that curriculums more often reflect the interests of academics rather than the industry, and that journalism graduates have been taught how to communicate rather than what to communicate - that they lack, in other words, the kind of knowledge that is needed to get a handle on a round.

All of this is true but it is not equally true of all journalism courses. Many are little more than media studies courses parading as journalism courses. These produce graduates who (think they) know how journalism should be done rather than how it is done and for this reason often develop a disdain for the profession they are trying to enter.

Many universities delude themselves (and their students) into believing they are the breeding ground for senior and/or specialist journalists (investigative reporters, feature writers, even columnists) when in fact the industry is most often looking to recruit junior reporters who can put their hand to any story they are given.

Many journalism courses encourage an academic study of politics and history when editors want simply a solid grounding in general knowledge (dates, events, personalities) in order to be able to contextualize stories for their readers.

And many universities compound each of these problems by requiring staff to undertake PhDs and "peer-reviewed" research in order to get promotion with the result that good teacher-practitioners develop into academics far removed from the cut-and-thrust media world they are supposed to know about.

I would be the first to argue that the best place to learn journalism is on the job. Ironically that is how I and most of the journalism teaching staff I work with came to know what we know. But I would also argue that a journalism course, properly structured and taught, is the best way to prepare most people to learn quickly on the job.

One reason is that the best journalism courses involve students unlearning inappropriate skills - not just acquiring appropriate ones. Take writing for example: most students enter university understanding writing to be something you do for a small audience of people who know more about the subject than you do and who are paid to read whatever you write. I'm referring to teachers.

Getting students to understand - as a matter of reflex - that journalism involves writing for a broad range of people who expect the reporter to tell them something they didn't know and who won't read it unless the writing itself provides good reason means combating 13 years of schooling. Is the industry really prepared to take on that task?

Another reason is that a journalism student has generally had three years to think about whether or not they actually want to pursue a career in journalism. Whenever I've asked editors if retention rates are higher among journalism graduates than other graduates (or non-graduates), I'm met with a stony silence. No one seems to have done the research and yet the answer - which I strongly suspect is in the affirmative - would seem to me crucial in determining the investment of time and effort an editor makes in a recruit.

The other challenge I constantly put to editors is to work with those journalism courses they know produce the better graduates in order to help produce the best ones. Too few respond positively with internship placements, offers of industry-funded workshops, training manuals, etc. But until the firewalls between academia and the media are broken down in this way, editors must bear some responsibility for the graduates they get.

Source: written by Chris McGillion, who coordinates the journalism program at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Before taking up his teaching position, he was the Editorial Page Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Boston Sunday Globe will combine its Business & Money and Career sections beginning on April 20 to offer readers coverage on investing news and career advice in "one convenient place," according to the Boston Globe announcement. The announcement also stated that this move in eliminating weekly publication of stock and fund listings will also reduce costs.

The new section will be called Money & Careers, and it will have a new two-page package of stories and graphics on the most significant investing events of the week, replacing the stock and mutual fund listings.

Marketweek, the first page of the package, will contain summaries of the world's major markets, five companies whose stocks had major gains or losses for the week, and the biggest national and local gainer and losers.  

MoneyWeek, the second page, will include:
- New data and an investor calendar to spotlight upcoming events in the business world. to aid consumers make informed financial decisions with
- A series of graphics to visually aid consumers in understanding movements in economic indicators such as price of oil, gold, and milk, the unemployment rate, and more.
- Expanded listing of money rates to guide consumers in shopping for mortgages, car loans, CDs, government bonds, and more.
- A new table showing weekly and annual returns for the 50 most popular mutual funds in the country.

The Globe also will maintain 24-hour access to up-to-the-minute price quotes on stocks and mutual funds, free of charge, by telephone.

Featured columnists will be Scott Kirsner, Maggie Jackson, and Robert Weisman. Cheryl Costa, a financial adviser with Family Financial Architects Inc., will begin a personal finance blog on Boston.com, providing advice and answering reader questions.

Source: Boston.com

On Wednesday, Ibrahim Eissa (shown in photo), Egyptian Editor-in-Chief of Al-Dustur, was sentenced to six months in jail on the charge of spreading "false information [on 79 year old President Hosni Mubarak's health].. damaging the public interest and national stability." He faces up to three years in prison with the ability to appeal to sentence.

Eissa's reports were accused of causing foreign investors to withdraw more than $350mil.  from the stock exchange, thus harming Egypt's economy.

In September, at least seven journalists were sentenced up to two years in prison because of misquoting the justice minister and writing speculative reports in Egypt's independent press of Mubarak's hospitalization, travel abroad for treatment, and even death.

23 papers have suspended publication for one day in October in protest.

Eissa said the verdict showed the regime's hostility to the press and "affirms the holiness of President Mubarak and the rejection of any criticism of him or his policies. I don't know if this is a judicial decision or a political one."

Source: AFP (photo) through EJC

Free newspaper group Metro International is planning on building "an interactive capability" for all of its newspapers to target young professionals, with Metro France as the pilot launch, according to Brand Republic.

Each city based website will hopefully become, as Brand Republic describes, an "indispensable source of news and information", with a network of blogs on relevant themes and local perspectives.

Tom Symonds, Managing Director of Metro Interactive, said: "With this investment Metro will define its own space, where we not only draw on our users' appetite for relevant news and information but provide a space that is completely focused on urban living and increases the users' influence."

Vice-president of Corporate Development Christian Toksvig, who was hired earlier this month, is in charge of launching free Metro titles in new markets. Currently, Metro publishes 84 editions.

Eventually Metro wants a website for all the 23 countries it operates in.

The blog network can distinguish Metro sites from other local news sites for users. Instead of just browsing through news, users can browse through opinions or other relevant information on local news.

Source: Brand Republic

Microsoft is building BLEWS, a political blog aggregator that will arrange posts by their reception in the liberal and conservative blogospheres instead of categorizing blog posts by topic.

The news site will also indicate the level of emotional charge in the discussion in both political parties and compare views from different sides of the political spectrum on the same story.

BLEWS analyzes a real-time feed of political-blog posts provided by the Live Labs Social Media platform by adding a link and text analysis of the posts.

Source: Cyber journalist.net, Microsoft (picture)

In October 2007, Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet launched a new educational tool. Redaktionen is an internet-based editorial platform where schools produce their own newspaper totally free of charge. It is the only product of this kind in the world. 2-3 days after deadline Ekstra Bladet delivers 1000 colour prints of the paper directly at the school.

Since the launch of Redaktionen, 130 papers have been produced. This amounts to 130,000 newspapers distributed among children, teachers and parents and in some cases the newspapers have even been distributed to the general public in cities across the country. In addition to this successful beginning Redaktionen has recently been nominated for two INMA-awards 2008.

If you wish to know more about Redaktionen, read more here.

Source: Ekstra Bladet

Why is the content for online journalism different than print or broadcast? And why are journalists confused about what work should be entered in which contest?

The assumption that text, photos and videos are merely the "same content" online as they are in print is part of the mindset that has helped cripple U.S. paper's online efforts. The change in thinking has been considerable in recent years, but these paradigms still surface in the award season.

The monopoly on information is no longer ours alone. The business models for monopolistic control over distribution and eyeballs is busted, too.  That much we can agree on now.

Still we see comments from photographers that somehow wished that online worked like a medium they know already.

But why are we segregating what we do for print versus what we do with the Internet? Why isn't the BOP (Best of Photojournalism) Web video judged against/with video produced for TV? Aren't they the same product?

- Will Seberger"> posted on Wired Journalists

This thinking is understandable, but unproductive. No, Web video is a different media experience in a different environment, completely. We can succeed first by serving small screens with sticky content than reproducing a cinema-experience for one-time consumption.

The assumption that photos need to run larger online or videos work better as full screen on the Web is old-line print and broadcaster thinking. In fact, chunky text, small images and user-scalable video windows work much better online.

Web video is not Television!

That is a seminar topic I have been delivering for two years now around the world. Why have so many editors and publishers been looking at the wrong models for Web video journalism? Because they haven't come to terms with the dynamics and story potential of the new tools and user expectations yet.

e.g. YouTube is the model for the experience and look at how smartly YouTube lets users scale up a video when THEY want to. Embed it share it, group it, rate it. How many of you let your users do this with your media?
The Web also makes excellent use of is a thumbnail gallery interfaces. Click on a thumb and get a slideshow or larger image. Done. Users get this.

If you are producing the same content and merely porting over - you can't succeed. Online works differently, the media user is in charge of the experience.

The Web is about 'now, not six months from now - when you decide to post up your 'Emmy award-winning' video project.  Who will be watching that work then? Contest judges? Maybe. But probably only if you tell them about it. Full-screen-only, bandwidth hogging HD video projects - who is that for - to impress the board of directors? The shareholders? The Pulitzer committee? Ask first - whose ego are you serving?

Placing undue emphasis on the work that is, let's be brutally honest, produced to impress primarily other journalists (AKA the stuff we produce to enter in contests) is harming our transition to meeting consumers' expectations. Why is it that we think that the big, time-consuming, far-flung, High-Def, special-section work is the best work we can accomplish?

Whenever I hear journalists praise the design or Flash quality of a big, expensive "award-winning" online project, I first go to the reader comments. l often see a huge disconnect from the people producing the work and the people who are supposed to be consuming it.

You'll be lucky to find many reader comments at all for some of the most celebrated stuff. Sometimes you'll be lucky to even find where the comments section is at all. Again, the complete opposite of the the YouTube video experience. If you are not connecting with your community then you are producing journalism in a vacuum and, tell me, why should that work win any awards at all?

We are in a transition and transitions are bumpy and disorienting. Getting to the point where newsrooms are producing everyday multimedia is the only foundation I know of that will accomplish the goals of getting to the promised land and still be able to produce a range of stories including doing large-scale projects.

It's just that in my world, the super-excellent, nine-month enterprise piece should run first online WHILE it is being reported and then perhaps a year later as a documentary film at Sundance. And in between the story gets better, it gains traction in the community because of the online engagement. Why can't newsrooms think like this? Awards? How about a chance to win an Oscar with your visual journalism? Hmm, Pulitzer or Oscar next year . . . . Is that enough drive for you to produce a new brand of "award-winning journalism?"
OK, looking forward to seeing you on the red carpet .

--
Robb Montgomery is the CEO and founder of Visual Editors. He has worked as a visual editor for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune and currently advises editors in the Middle East, Asia, U.K., Europe and North America on techniques for digital journalism.

His blog: www.robbmontgomery.com

Gannett Co., publisher of highest circulating US paper USA Today, has named Robert J. Dickey to become president of its newspaper division.

He will succeed Sue Clark-Johnson, who is retiring. Dickey will be in charge of 83 daily newspapers and their websites, and most of Gannett's non-daily publications.

Source: Bloomberg.com through I Want Media