Results matching “asian newspaper”

The Pink Paper has been forced to suspend the publication of its printed edition, due to the 'economic downturn', it was announced on the paper's website yesterday.

The fortnightly paper, the only national in Britain to cater for a gay readership, will cease printing after the current edition, due to insufficient advertising revenue.  As a free publication, it relied entirely on advertising revenue, which has fallen sharply with onset of the economic recession.

MarketWatch has redesigned its site, "showcasing the breadth and depth of its original content" and the market data and "valuable tools" it offers to investors, according to a press release. The site is part of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, published by Dow Jones.

The new design features new navigation, "expanded content and features and better surfacing of the site's leading personalities and columns." Within the site there are two new tools, a "Terminal Header" at the top of each page and the "Dock" which is a floating tool bar. Both can give "on demand quotes, news and customized data and charting," A new advertising element has also been introduced, the "Kiosk," which offers "a blend of content and advertising delivered dynamically in a rotator format." There is also increased coverage on emerging markets and key European, Asian and Latin American markets.

James Murdoch, son of the media magnate Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, is being talked about as a hope for the newspaper industry and a potential heir for his father. James Murdoch has been the CEO of News Corp's European and Asian operations since 2007, running News International: Britain's largest newspaper group.

On April 20th, New York will have one more Spanish-language daily called N.Y. Al Dia. The paper will be printed in tabloid format and will be sold at 1,800 points in New York at the price of $0.40. Al Dia is the fruit of the ideas of former journalists at Hoy, which was closed in December 2008 by Impremedia, owner of another Spanish-language daily, El Diario La Prensa.

Speaking to the Australian, Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Thomson has explained that the demise of America's newspapers "creates a tremendous opportunity for us to gain readers". Thomson believes that one of the reasons for the increase in the WSJ's core circulation is the "diminishing" state of US newspapers. Thomson feels that the situation leads to the WSJ gaining "readers who are increasingly internationally aware and also aware of their need to be well informed about the world."

Thomson also described how changes within the News Corp owned WSJ are having a positive effect on the publication. He cites News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch's emphasis on "leveraging (content) across platforms to generate revenue". The WSJ recently launched new Asian, Indian and European sites, each focusing on the Journal news most relevant to its respective country.

The International Herald Tribune's website is no more, but is being rebranded as 'The Global Edition' of the New York Times (global.nytimes.com) in a move that is part of a wider attempt to further integrate the publications. The new joint site "combines the international voice of the IHT, the breadth and depth of The New York Times's international journalism and the digital expertise and reach of NYTimes.com," according to the a note from IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, to provide 24-hour coverage "from a truly global perspective." The global home page retains the IHT logo.

IHT.com users will be automatically redirected to the new Global Edition, and buttons on the home pages of both the US and global editions will allow readers to navigate easily between the two. There is also a mobile site: mobile.nytimes.com/global, and readers will be able to sign up for a 'Today's Headlines Global Edition' email service which is delivered twice a day, to coincide with both Asian and European mornings. Plans to combine the websites were announced last summer, along with a redesign of the IHT print edition.

In the Boston Globe yesterday journalist Sally Lehrman called attention to the danger of losing the ethnic media in the United States. Many ethnic newspapers are folding or making cutbacks: San Francisco's AsianWeek and the San Francisco Bay View have abandoned print editions, Spanish-language paper Siglo21 is returning to only publishing weekly, New York's Ming Pao Daily is shutting down, and employees at Chicago's Ebony and Jet must all reapply for remaining jobs.

Though these losses could be overlooked in the sea of newspaper difficulties, Lehrman points out the harm these specific losses will be to the mainstream media. "Ethnic media play a vital role in the communities they serve and do a great deal of unrecognized work for journalism," she says.

As US newspaper groups declare bankruptcy and some fold due to the economic recession and web competition, the printed newspaper continues to thrive in Asia. The World Press Trends 2008 by World Association of Newspapers reports that eight of the world's top ten daily newspapers with the highest circulation are printed in Asia, and the largest newspaper markets are Japan, China, and India.

According to a Time article, some media expansion in Asia corresponds with the fall of dictators as readers appreciate a freer press devoid of government propaganda. For example, Indonesia has seen a tremendous rise in the number of newspapers after the deposition of President Suharto in 1998. Though state censorship still exists in China, a press revolution is in progress as the central government reduces state subsidies for newspapers, creating a free-market that forces editors to print stories that sell.

Chinese language newspaper Ming Pao Daily announced on Saturday that it is withdrawing from the US market due to economic conditions.  It announced in its San Francisco edition that publication would cease, two weeks after printing of the New York edition was halted; although it will still retain an online presence.  David Lee, a professor at San Francisco State University and an expert on Chinese media said that the move was a particular blow as "Chinese heavily rely on print media, which is a cultural difference from other ethnic communities."

Ling-chi Wang professor of Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley believes that "the competition from its two older and more established competitors, the World Journal and the Sing Tao Daily, is probably the major factor behind the decision".  Last month, an English language free sheet aimed at Asian-Americans also stopped its print edition, although it continues to have an online presence.  The closure of Ming Pao is a reflection of economic difficulties faced by the media industry globally.

Source: New America Media via IFRA Newsletter

Following Getty Images' decision to close its citizen journalism arm Scoopt, the venture's founder Kyle MacRae explained in an interview why "the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward." His reasoning was that even though many members of the public may well be on a breaking news scene with a camera, it is extremely unlikely that they will be a member of a citizen photojournalism organisation. But has Citizenside, a small, young company based in Paris, found a solution? The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder Matthieu Stefani and editor-in-chief Aurélien Viers about Citizenside's work and the way they see the future of citizen photojournalism.

Citizenside operates in two different ways. On its own site, it functions in a similar way to other agencies: it gathers photos from its community - 35,000 members, close to 7,000 of which are active - which are published after thorough checking of the photos' validity. Staff receive 500-600 images a day, and those which pass the checking are categorised into sections such as headlines, showbiz, or unusual, or gathered into portfolios with others along the same theme or about the same event. Media outlets can purchase the photos from Citzenside, with up to 75% of the price going to the contributor. Agence France Presse owns a 34% stake of Citizenside, and is currently trialling incorporating the company's amateur images into its image forums, where any of the news agency's 7000 partners would be able to buy them. Content is clearly labelled as amateur, and Citizenside stressed the importance of differentiating the work of 'citizens' from that of professionals.

AFP is currently trialling incorporating Citizenside's amateur pictures into its image forums where any of its 7000 partners can buy them

Staff are proactive about finding images, "we don't just wait for people to send them," explained Stefani. Their kit allows them to locate users within a certain radius of any given spot, so if something happens which they want to know more about, they can send out an email requesting photos. "We send 3 or 4 of these a day," Stefani clarified. The company tries to avoid receiving photographs straight from mobile phones via MMS as the quality is poor and it is much harder to check an image's authenticity. Developers have however released an iPhone application, and are looking at launching similar products for Blackberry and  Google's Android phone. Staff also provide feedback when contributors send in images that cannot be used.

Mainstream Media success through factchecking

Citizenside photos have recently been on the cover of French daily Liberation, and in Le Point magazine and Le Figaro magazine, so the company is making a name for itself. The Liberation photo was of a snow storm, and Viers explained how a storm was a good example of an instance when citizen photo reporting really works: anybody can be a witness and as it might be harder to travel, professional photographers will not necessarily be able to cover the whole storm effectively. He added that Citizenside members were definitely not trying to play the role of reporters, rather they are "news witnesses."

One of the ways in which Citzenside differs from other sites that gather user photos and video, such as self-declared "unedited, unfiltered" CNN's iReport, is that all images are checked for authenticity. The company's developers have created a tool through which users can send photos, and which provides various details to staff about each photo or video that they receive, such as the camera brand and model, the resolution, and the date the photo was taken. Crucially, the programme can also alert staff to whether a photo has been modified online. Using the sender's IP address, the tool also shows from where in the world images have been sent. With this information, Citizenside staff can get a pretty good idea of whether what the contributor has told them about the image is indeed true. "I think at the moment, we are the only company who can offer such a specialised tool for the media," Viers remarked, and Stefani explained that developers would continue to refine the product to make it more and more effective. If staff still have doubts, particularly in the case of major, potentially controversial stories, they will contact the sender directly via telephone or email. "We will double check, triple check, quadruple check if it is a big story," stressed Stefani. "If someone appears to be trying to mislead us, we will expel them from the community," he added.

"We will double check, triple check, quadruple check if it is a big story." 

This emphasis on checking the authenticity of the images significantly increases the value of Citizenside's service, as amateur content with no professional input can be relatively meaningless. Citizen journalism site The Observers offers a similar commitment to fact-checking, a trend which has the potential to bring citizen journalism closer to the mainstream media in terms of respectability. Stefani asserted that he believes it is the company's focus on "quality not quantity" which makes their service so appealing to clients.  "We don't believe in the idea that everybody is a journalist, just because they have a camera and a blog," underlined Viers. Rather what he believes works is a form of professional-amateur collaboration: "an association of bloggers, witnesses, journalists and editors."

A global citizen photo network?

The most crucial difference of Citizenside, however, is its mission to share its technology. Stefani explained that he and the other Citizenside founders quite quickly understood that, as Kyle MacRae pointed out, one agency alone will never be able to get an image from every breaking story. But what if many different publications all over the world each hosted their own UGC community that was managed by Citizenside? This is what Citizenside is aiming to do by offering its 'Reporter Kit' to traditional publications, sold via AFP. The tool was released in September 2008 and the first client to purchase it was Voici, a French gossip magazine. Citizenside is about to launch the same service for Public, one of Voici's rivals and is also in talks with one of France's biggest daily newspapers, a couple of regionals and one UK paper. The Voici community allows readers of the magazine to upload their images to the site, and if Voici decides to use them in its print magazine or on its main website, then it will pay the contributor, and Citizenside takes commission. If Voici would like to sell an image to another outlet, then Citizenside retains exclusive resell rights, and the profit will be split equally between Citizenside, the magazine and the contributor. Recently, for example, a video showing Hollywood star Lindsey Lohan being showered with flour by animal activists on her way into a Parisian club was sold to US TV channel Extra TV for a considerable sum. Stefani described how he plans for Citizenside's income to be based largely on this reselling of content, rather than on sale of the technology itself. Incidentally, a years' use of the Reporter Kit tool would start at about 13,000 euros, moving to upwards of 20,000 for premium tools and tailor-made development.

What if many different publications all over the world each hosted their own UGC community that was managed by Citizenside? 

Citizenside hopes to make the checking process easier and easier for its clients, for instance by developing a system which would make automatically judge an image's authenticity based on different variables and display a red or green light. Viers stressed that he sees citizen contributions as essential in today's media environment, if news organisations "ignore UGC they are going to make mistakes, and they are going to miss opportunities." Stefani explained that "we had a hard time being understood at first because journalists would just see us as competitors." But he insisted that rather than a competitor, Citizenside aims to be "a new tool, a new source of information." They believe that particularly in a local context, such a community could be extremely valuable to their clients, who would be able to forge better relations with readers, and provide a greater level of coverage. Viers pointed out that hyperlocal news is often incredibly important to people, and it gives citizen witnesses a real chance to flourish.

Dollars for amateurs

So Citizenside believes it has found the solution to the problems raised by Scoopt founder Kyle MacRae. Stefani brought up the example of the man with the first Hudson plane crash photo previously cited by MacRae, who argued that it was the man's instinct to share the photo rather than sell it, and that he was very unlikely to have heard of a citizen photojournalism project that would help him sell it. If Citizenside achieves its goal of establishing popular image sharing community sites for major newspapers, then in the future, a similar witness to an event may well think of sending such a photo to their favourite newspaper, where it would be shared amongst the community, but could also be sold for a significant amount of cash. The project has a great of deal of potential. Obviously, the company is still very small and is yet to break international barriers, though they hope to soon. Stefani admitted that they will need a cash injection if they are to expand beyond Europe into Asian or American markets. There is likely to be some resistance from more traditional media operations to the inclusion of amateur content in their publications, and it might take time to change mindsets.

But the current economic downturn could in fact benefit the rise of citizen journalism as news organisations look for cheaper ways to obtain coverage of events. Editor and Publisher recently ran a story on World Press Photo and Pulitzer prize winning photographer Anthony Suau, who is currently struggling to find work because media outlets do not have enough money to pay him. Using photos from readers is undoubtedly cheaper than employing prize-winning professional. Citizen photojournalism does make sense, if there is a way to prove that the photos are real. A reporter can write a story from afar, but you cannot take a photo from afar. And although many photos will not be of the quality of those taken by experienced photojournalists, professionals cannot be everywhere at once, and taking advantage of the camera-armed public is definitely better than nothing.

Photo credits: Laure Bernard

The Wall Street Journal has launched a specifically Indian edition of WSJ.com along with enlarging its Asian site, following the earlier introduction of a Chinese language China edition. According to a press release, news teams in Hong Kong and New Delhi have been expanded to manage and develop content to "provide users a more regionally relevant experience with streamlined navigation and added multimedia features." There is more data on Indian and Asian markets for investors. The paper also launched an expanded web site dedicated to content for Europe and has expanded its news team in London and Brussels to manage and develop content for the site.

The paper also has a US edition, and Spanish and Portuguese sites for the Americas. According to Paid Content, the creation of an Indian site reflects new owner Rupert Murdoch's focus on key Asian markets, and readers accessing from India will be automatically redirected to the India edition, where they will have the option to choose their edition. In conjunction with the launches of the expanded sites, the WSJ's 'Mobile Reader' is now available in Asia and Europe, with specific regional content tabs and related markets settings.

There has been no sign yet of plans for any new accompanying print edition. In India, Dow Jones has received clearance from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to launch a facsimile edition of the Wall Street Journal, but a facsimile edition would be one that is a replica of one produced abroad, including no local content. India did see the release of Mint, a financial publication born of a collaboration between the Hindustan Times and The Wall Street Journal back in February 2007.  

Source: Paid Content

San Francisco's AsianWeek newspaper announced that it will no longer continue its print edition as of January 2, 2009.  According to New America Media, in a city that one-third of the population is Asian, it leaves a gaping hole in English-language Asian-American coverage.

Janice Lee, deputy executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association, believes that "as newspapers become thinner, readers may not notice how the staff cuts are affecting coverage, but community organizations that monitor Asian-American issues will be the first to feel the impact."

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.