Results matching “asian newspaper”

The series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Indian financial capital Mumbai have gained worldwide attention, and the speed with which Internet users were able to read first-hand reports within hours of the initial attacks is proof of a revolutionized way that information reaches an audience.

Although mainstream news coverage has dominated headlines thus far, social media has been a major outlet for news at the scene and around the world.  Internet users are sharing news and information for updates and reactions.

Megapolis, a Kazakh newspaper was forced to quit publishing due to financial problems.  The editor-in-chief, Igor Shahnovich, attributes the financial difficulties to crisis situations in other economic industries.

Employees were forced to take leave for the rest of the month.

Sources: Central Asian News

LOK Media Corp., an American South Asian media company, launched LOK News, a free weekly publication for South Asians living in the United States.  

LOK will be distributed in grocery stores, restaurants, places of worship and community centers.  The paper will focus on Indian, Pakistani, Fijian, Bangladeshi, Afghan and Sri Lankan communities.  

The goal of LOK is to be a one stop source for the South Asian communities in the US by covering topics such as news, politics, art, literature, business, finance, religion and more.

According to Parampreet Singh Sandhu, Chief Editor of LOK News, the paper is designed for the next generation of American South Asians to establish their own voice.  Sandhu stated in an interview that "the current South Asian media is being operated by people who are out of touch with the needs of the next generation of American South Asians" and that they have divided the South Asian community."

Sources: Ifra, India PR Wire

At a time when any local or national news outlet can potentially become an international online brand, and as newsrooms adapt to a 24-hour news cycle, editors can learn from The New York Times' most recent attempt to 'kill' both birds with one stone.

Last week, top execs from The Times and the International Herald Tribune announced plans to merge iht.com and nytimes.com into a co-branded international section, in order to increase both sites' reach and appeal to international advertisers.

In this two-part series, the Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.

Through these moves, The Times intends to accomplish at least four ostensible goals:

Part 1:
- Build an outpost for its Continuous News Desk in Paris, and eventually Hong Kong.
- Integrate operations, streamline some resources by increasing efficiency and avoiding overlap.

Part 2:
- Reinforce its international reach and further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.
- Use the strength of NYT's online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

IHT: an outpost for the Times' continuous news

Although the proposed changes are currently undergoing a consultation process with the IHT's works council, as required by French law, the process of integration of both papers began ever since the NYT acquired full control of the IHT in 2003, and has accelerated in past months.

In Feb., NYT executive editor Bill Keller had already announced plans to integrate operations and develop an "organic, global, 24-hour news operation," in order "to create a Continuous News outpost in Paris."

In May, the IHT dropped its 142-year-old logo from its nameplate to replace it with the phrase "The Global Edition of the New York Times."

"That says, we are one, and we are," although both arms are managed separately, said Jim Roberts, digital editor at The Times.

Video: Roberts talks about the 'integration' of both newspapers. Footage was collected during an interview at the 15th World Editors Forum in Sweden.


Thanks to this outpost and the six-hour time difference, the NYT is now able to upload content to its site nearly 24 hours a day (from about 6am to 1am, New York time). The paper eventually hopes to establish a similar outpost at the IHT's Asian headquarters in Hong Kong in the next six months.

The creation of these outposts does not mean that the IHT is becoming a full-blown Paris bureau for The Times. "We have a Paris bureau," said Roberts, "and the newsroom of the IHT still has a print edition and right now they still have a website."

Integration, streamlining resources: evolution, no revolution

Since all proposed changes are undergoing a consultation process, editors couldn't give any firm preview of how workflows could be affected.

In the past, there has been "very regular contact between individual desks at the Times and corresponding desks at the IHT," said Martin Gottlieb, newly appointed editor of the Global edition. Many IHT editors come from The Times, regularly do edits on NYT pieces, and this past year IHT-written articles have appeared on nytimes.com with no distinctive byline.

However, there is no formal process of exchange between both newsrooms, and "There have been a couple of occasions when we've had IHT and NYT reporters covering the same thing," said Roberts.

The appointment of Gottlieb as editor of the Global Edition - note, no mention of the IHT in his title - is significant in that respect. In addition to fulfilling the role of editor of the paper, his mission will be to ensure that staff understands both papers are "two parts of one news-gathering operation, that should work in unison as much as possible in delivering the news 24 hours a day seven days a week," said Gottlieb.

A series of new editorial appointments at the IHT will be the symbols of this top-down integration. "There will be people coordinating the work of both staffs to, pretty much, make them as much as possible act as one staff," said Gottlieb.

For example, Alison Smale, who becomes European editor of the global newsroom, will be responsible for "coordinating the work of all NYT and IHT reporters in the region from the IHT newsroom in Paris," said the memo. To oversee the process, The Times also named Alan Flippen "Editor, Newsroom Organization."

It seems too early to say whether the planned reforms will lead to radical changes in workflows or content. Evolution, not revolution, said Roberts.

Currently, an IHT reporter based in Hong Kong might build upon a Times' story about the rise of airline fuel prices by interviewing Asian carriers, whose input might not have been as relevant to the core readership of the Times in the US. Likewise, an IHT story published in the Times might be fine-tuned to be more pertinent to the American audience (see the example of Der Spiegel in Part 2, looking at different newspaper approaches towards international editions).

Future workflows will likely build upon these current processes, rather than start from scratch. "It's continuing synergies that are taking place and maximizing them and regularizing them," said Gottlieb.

The planned changes can also be seen as an attempt to streamline resources - terminology often equivocated with cost cuts and layoffs. But according to Gottlieb, there are no planned newsroom layoffs at this point (this is subject to change during the next six months). It is possible that an online merger of iht.com and nytimes.com could lead to redundancies for some technical Web production positions.


Editors couldn't comment on any upcoming changes concerning the IHT's planned print redesign.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which will examine The Times' international branding strategy, and how newspapers can grow a previously inaccessible international readership.


Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition

Robert Thomson, recently appointed managing editor of News Corp.'s Wall Street Journal, replacing Marcus Brauchli who quit in April, announced in a memo key editorial changes to be made to the paper by the beginning of July.

There will be an Enterprise, a National and an International team that will directly report to Thomson, the memo said. Matt Murray will become National Editor, Nikhil Deogum the International Editor and Mike Williams in charge of Enterprise.

All three will be Deputy Managing Editors, sitting "close together" in a "news hub". In this way they will be "streamlining commissioning and editing decisions" and will have " a central role in the production and presentation of copy for the paper and the website."

Mike Miller, who is feature editor, will become Senior Deputy Managing Editor and will be in charge of the paper in case Thomson is unavailable.

Cathy Panagoulias will be a Deputy Managing Editor and "will take a greater role in providing administrative support for bureau chiefs and in hiring decisions."

Jim Pensiero will be Deputy Managing Editor for operations and will be "masterminding" the Journal's "move to Midtown and the introduction of a new publishing system."

"Alix Freedman will have expanded authority as a defender of the paper's ethical and journalistic standards," Thomson said.

Alan Murray will become a Deputy Managing Editor but will also stay as an Executive Editor of the Journal Online, "which will have a more influential role at the heart of the reformed news structure," Thomson wrote.

Dan Hertzberg, Deputy Managing Editor, will be responsible for European and Asian editions and will be in charge of constructing the Journal's "editorial presence and profile in Europe and, in particular, in the U.K."

Reg Chua is appointed Senior Assistant Managing Editor and will be overlooking the Design Team and the evolution of data resources. Thompson announced that a new Director of Design would be chosen soon.

"Most news organizations in the U.S. and around the world are in retreat, but Dow Jones is expanding its reporting resources, rapidly developing its digital content and providing journalism of the highest integrity to an ever larger audience in The Wall Street Journal," said Thomson towards the end of the memo.

UPDATE: According to SmartMoney.com Deputy Managing Editor Laurie Hays is leaving to pursue a different career path after being with the WSJ for 23 years, which Thomson mentioned in a separte memo.

Dow Jones will also create a "central news desk", SmartMoney.com reports, which "will allow for significantly enhanced co-operation between print, web and Newswires journalists, in New York and around the world," said Thomson.

Source: PaidContent.Org, SmartMoney.org through I Want Media

See also:

US: Top Wall Street Journal editor Brauchli resigns

The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) conducted a survey this year that found that newsrooms have encountered the biggest loss of jobs in 30 years and that the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms is still disproportionate to the larger workforce.

The survey found:
- U.S. daily newsrooms shrank by 2,400 journalists in the past year, a "4.4% workforce decrease that's the biggest year-over-year cut in ranks since ASNE began conducting its annual census 30 years ago.
- 52,600 people work full-time in daily newspaper newsrooms. 1984 was the last time that number has been so low at 50,400, of whom 5.75% were journalists of racial or ethnic minorities.
- Nearly 300 fewer journalists of color are working in newsrooms than this time last year.
- But due to the layoffs and hiring freezes, the percentage of journalists of color in daily newsrooms actually grew by a tiny margin, to 13.52% from 13.43% of all journalists.
- "The largest number and percentage of journalists of color are black, with 2,790 or 5.3% of the workforce."
- There are 2,346 Hispanic journalists, 4.5% of newsrooms.
- Asian Americans are 3.2% of newsrooms at 1,692 journalists.
- Native Americans are the smallest minority group: 284 journalists or 0.5% of newsroom employees.
- Men still outnumber women in the daily newsroom by a 63% to 37% margin.
- Minority journalists are more likely to be reporters. Only 11.4% of supervisors are journalists of color.

In 1978, ASNE proposed an industry-wide goal of matching the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms with the percentage in the population large by 2000, which fell short. Its new goal is 2025, though with the current waves of layoffs, this goal may also be hard to attain.

Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc. declared that "the parity goal is effectively dead" and instead, they would focus on creating more diversity from the top by increasing the numbers of minority senior newsroom managers.

"The numbers represent a dual reality: It's mildly encouraging that the minority percentage held steady despite difficult economic times that are causing many cutbacks," ASNE president and editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Gilbert Bailon said. "On the other hand, the total number of minority journalists employed at daily newspapers declined by nearly 300 people, which follows the pattern for the overall newsroom workforce. Such a trend will not help newspapers in their quest to reach parity with the minority population by 2025."

Also, in its annual conference this week, ASNE gave members in Washington, D.C. directions for lobbying Congress, specifically about the Federal Shield Law. The editor's group provided Web site information, background material, and tips on ways to track down individual legislators to make such lobbying easier, including new documents on the ASNE Free Flow of Information Act page.

David Boardman, editor of The Seattle Times, said "editors are not usually in the lobbying business, but agreed it is an issue so important that it deserved extra attention: Advocacy in support of the First Amendment is entirely acceptable."


Source: Editor & Publisher: here and here

At the International Newspaper Marketing Association’s (INMA) first South Asian conference it was discussed that newspapers in India would benefit from a more open exchange of ideas.

During the Asian citizen journalism conference in Kuala Lumpur, The Guardian’s Kevin Anderson talked to Deendayal Vaidya about his work on an extremely popular supplement that featured only reader-submitted content.

Growing rapidly in popularity, newspaper websites are revolutionizing newsrooms and the entire industry more than any other medium ever has. But how are they affecting design? Art Director (NI) Projects at The Times of London and the designer behind News International’s freesheet, thelondonpaper, Al Trivino, will address the 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town to discuss how webpages and the new media world are influencing the layout of newspaper front-pages.

Roger Fidler, presently Director of Technology Initiatives at the Reynolds Journalism Institute (Columbia, Missouri), has been exploring and engineering the electronic tablet newspaper for over a decade. After years of cautious experimentation and limited interest from the industry, he now sees the breakthrough years approaching. “With the arrival of new generations of eReaders and improved, dedicated software, new ways of journalistic newshandling and distribution are becoming imperative”, he assesses.
This time, that quest should have sufficient critical mass.

Following the publishing of the World Editors Forum’s (WEF) 2007 Trends in Newsrooms Newsroom Barometer, the Arab Press Network recently interviewed WEF Director Bertrand Pecquerie, who analyzed the barometer’s findings for the Arab press.

ePaper leading firm Pressmart and mobile distribution firm IMImobile announced they have developed ‘mPaper’. The technology is supposed to enable newspapers and publishers to tap into the – still undeveloped - mobile news market.