Results matching “the new york ti”

16-17 February 2012, Room IV, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France

The conference "The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World" aims to gather leading media representatives, professional and "citizen" journalists and media law experts to exchange views on these issues and to discuss good practices in traditional professional journalism and citizen journalism in the digital era.

With a stunning 2 billion persons estimated to be using the Internet and producing 156 million public blogs in 2011, there has been a surge of social networks, user-generated content and micro-blogging that has enabled all Internet users to become public communicators. Along with the spread of the Internet, WikiLeaks' release of a massive number of classified government documents and its initial collaboration with traditional news media has modified the media landscape and raised crucial questions for journalism.

"Be strategic, be different, and strive for meaningful interactions," advised Liz Heron, social media editor at The New York Times, speaking about social media at news:rewired in London on Friday.

The social media world is changing fast and 2011 brought social media into the mainstream, Heron stressed. "In early 2010 we in the social media team were evangelisers, by 2011 we were highly in demand," she said.  The team has set up social media trainings, put together guidelines and experimented as much as possible with the paper's flagship accounts, she added.

With video becoming increasingly important to consumers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have each announced they are launching new daily video programmes. The New York Times has launched a new daily business-related programme while The Wall Street Journal has started a new daily lifestyle show.

On 1 February, NetNewsCheck reported that the New York Times has launched a new program called "Business Day Live."

In a related press release, the New York Times stated that "the program is broadcast live from The Times newsroom, and offers the insights and analysis of reporters and columnists from The Times's business, media and technology desks."

"No comment".

Business executives had become more and more adept at hiding behind this phrase, argues David Carr of The New York Times in an article published on Sunday. Not only that, but major figures in business are often obscured by "communications" teams that are anything but communicative. But now, suggests Carr, "Twitter has the potential to cut past all that clutter".

Carr writes that thanks to Twitter "there's a chance to get a glimpse into the thinking of otherwise unapproachable executives, and sometimes even have a real dialogue with them".

Starting from the current issue The Economist will have a weekly section devoted to China, the paper's leader announced.

This is the first time since 1942, when the a US section was introduced, that the news magazine is dedicating an entire section to a single country, the article explained. Thematic sections and blogs as well as specific columns are usually focused on a geographical area, as Banyan, the blog dedicated to Asia, which takes its name from the Banyan tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment and Gujarati merchants used to conduct business.

The name for China blog has not yet been decided and the paper invited readers to send suggestions. It will ideally need to agree with the style and 19th-century origins of the other sections and columns names, from Bagehot, the column dedicated to Britain, which takes its name from Walter Bagehot, British constitutional expert and early editor of The Economist, to Baobab, the section focused on Africa and Middle East which owes its name to the African tree.

What are the differences between Story Visualizations and Answer Visualizations?

Why human filters are the future of the web: the importance of role of real editors rather than algorithms online.

Latest numbers indicate New York Times traffic is flat since the paywall was implemented, says BuzzFeed (via Poynter).

Reporters Without Borders reported that blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad, who had been detained for 10 months on a charge of insulting the armed forces, was released on 24 January. His release was reported on Twitter by his brother Mark.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

NBCUniversal is getting into the eBook market. Digital Book World announced today that the media company is launching a publishing unit to make the most of the boom in tablet and eReader ownership. 

The New York Times is working on a project called Deep Dive to allow readers to follow specific topics through the news. Nieman Lab reports that the Deep Dive uses meta data to find connections between articles and bring users the most relevant results. 

Newspapers in Kentucky have launched a scheme to allow state radio to use their content, writes Kentucky.com. 

The Chicago Sun Times has published an editorial explaining why it will no longer endorse political candidates: "As many of you have told us, you can make up your own mind, thank you very much."

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

Has the media played a significant role in inciting the public to protest in the Arab World? Participants in the first session of the 2012 Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis discussed whether the media is a mirror that reflects peoples ideas, as Al Jazeera English senior political analyst Marwan Bishara suggested, or whether it works more actively.

Raghida Dergham, senior diplomatic correspondent for Al Hayat, although emphasizing that as she lives in New York she doesn't have a complete picture of media on the ground, said that she believes some satellite channels did not distinguish between covering the events and inciting people to engage in revolution. 

Liberalization of professional services is on the agenda of the Italian technocrat Mario Monti's government, as part of the wider plans to boost economy, from energy to transport.

Journalists appear to be amongst the professions listed in the regulation reform. Speculations about the alleged changes - the reform bill is a draft and hasn't been approved yet - that will involve the Ordine dei Giornalisti, the professional state-approved body representing Italian journalists, have raised concerns within the profession. It has also provided a boost to reinvigorate the long-time ongoing debate about the possibility of the abolition of the "extraordinary league of journalists".

The state-regulated body defines who, after passing an exam, can officially be called a journalist and has the power of sanction these people in case of ethical misconduct that can lead to their removal from the official journalists' list and a ban on exercising the profession.

Under house arrest in England, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange gave a long interview to Rolling Stone, talking about the future of journalism and the "battle" he engaged against the New York Times.

"Will fact-checking go the way of blogs?". Felix Salmon on his Reuters' blog reflects on the debate that was sparked by the New York Times's public editor Arthur Brisbane.

According to a graphic in this Sunday's New York Times (via Poynter), 7,282 reporters and editors are in the rarefied circle of the 1 percent.
Poynter's article explains - as Guardian's Roy Greenslade says too - that to be included in the graphic, at least 2% of people with these jobs have to live in households with incomes of $380,000 or more.

Le Huffington Post, the French version of Arianna Huffington's creation, has appointed Anne Sinclair, wife of the former I.M.F. director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, as its editorial director L'Express reported. The French Huffington Post will be launched on January 23.

In its latest step to better control China's wildly popular Twitter-like websites, the government's propaganda and information arm announced that China will expand real-name registration for microblog users, Reuters reported.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

Today the Associated Press opened the first fully-operated news bureau in North Korea from a Western news organisation, a press release announced. The international news wire's office in Pyongyang will be the first to offer, with a full-time staff, a video and text coverage from the country. The plan to open the bureau was announced last June.

According to the Guardian, the opening arrives after months of discussions with the Korea Central News Agency, inside which the new office will be based, and it was originally planned to open last December but it has been postponed after the death of leader Kim Jong-il.

The agency already had a video office in North Korea six years ago through its London-based Associated Press Television News (APTN) and it has been the only independent foreign media news agency operating in North Korea till now, as reported on the APTN website. 

On January 12 Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times Public Editor wrote a post on his blog entitled "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?"

"I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about," he continued.

The community promptly reacted and the debate grew fast. Tweets gathered and readers, journalists and media commentators flooded the web with comments. Often sarcastic comments.

Even the New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson answered in a note that Brisbane appended to the update of the blog-post he wrote to clarify his original question.

The crucial marriage between print and digital and the path to integration does not involve just news organizations and brands. It is also a question of attitude, and therefore people.

Nicholas Kristof, well-known reporter for the New York Times, provides an example of an experienced journalist who is embracing new digital opportunities.

David D. Burnstein of Fast Company spoke to him about how print and traditional journalism (and journalists) can jump into the digital world and social networks. 

Whether or not regulatory reform of the press is necessary has been on the agenda today at the Leveson inquiry, the public inquiry on the role of the press and the police in the wave of the phone-hacking scandal.

The future of press regulation, including the role of the Press Complaint Commission, has been at the centre of the Financial Times editor Lionel Barber's participation.

Responding to Barber's evidence, Lord Justice Leveson has signalled that he expects the newspaper industry to undertake substantial regulatory reform, the Guardian wrote. The reforms will need to be recognized as credible by readers if they want to be effective, he added. 

Somalia is usually in the limelight for crises: civil war, famine, drought, Somalian pirates attacking international shipping... And when the spotlight turns off it's hard to maintain the international community's attention focused on the country.

This is the aim of Somalia Speaks, a project launched recently by a joint team of partners "to catalyze global media attention on Somalia by letting Somali voices take center stage", as Patrick Meier of Ushahidi, one of the founder organizations, explained - and all this via SMS services. 

Twenty-nine US news organizations launched yesterday, January 5, NewsRight, a digital content licensing organization. Amongst the affiliates are the Associated Press, the New York Times Co, Hearst Newspapers and the Washington Post Co.

The aim is to keep track of newspapers' content as it moves around the web in order to license and profit from it. It "will measure the unpaid online use of their original reporting and seek to convert unauthorized websites, blogs and other newsgathering services into paying customers", AP (via the Washington Post) reported.

NewsRight is an evolution of the News Registry, a project started in October 2010 by AP and some partners. 

Former News of the World editor Colin Myler - the paper's last edtior, in charge during the fallout after the phone-hacking scandal - is to become editor-in-chief at the New York Daily News, where his key rival will be Murdoch's New York Daily Post the Guardian reported.
More coverage from the Guardian can be found here and here.

Also in the wake of the hacking scandal, Metropolitan police have been warned against a "cosy relationship with the press". The report, by former parliamentary commissioner Elizabeth Filkin, calls for tighter controls over how the Met Police service deals with journalists to prevent erosion of trust in police not just among the public, but among police ranks, the Guardian says.

If your New Year's resolution is learning to program, you should sign up for Code Year, a new project that aims to teach neophytes the basics of programming over the course of 2012, Slate reported. Code Year's minimum commitment is one new lesson every week. The company says that it will take a person of average technical skill about five hours to complete a lesson, so you're looking at about an hour of training every weekday, the article says.

For more industry news please see WAN - IFRA's Executive News Service.

The Associated Press has gone a step further in its social media strategy: Eric Carvin, an AP Nerve Center news producer and former National Desk editor, has been named the organization's social media editor, a press release announced.

Carvin, who has spent the past two years overseeing social media efforts at the news wire, engaging with readers and gathering user-generated content, "will work to ensure that social media becomes an integral part of every AP journalist's skills". 

"Is 2012 the year for India's internet?" asks the BBC News. It's estimated that as many as 121 million Indians are logged onto the internet. Even though this is a relatively small proportion of the country's 1.2 billion population, Internet use is predicted to grow and open the way for mobile, tablet and social networks diffusion.

In an interview on challenges.fr the president of French news site Médiapart Edwy Plenel talks about the success of the website after three years of its launch: more than €5m in revenue, up 66% year-on-year, net profit of €500,000 and 58,000 subscriptions which generate 95% of revenue. This success proves the effectiveness of the paid model, Plenel said.

After The New York Times raised its daily price to $2.50, Jeff Jarvis on the Huffington Post reflects on the increase wonders if, while today's Times is clearly a better product than the penny press a century ago, he wonders if it is worth 10x as much.

For more industry news please see WAN - IFRA's Executive News Service.

As normal workflows are restored after the Christmas breaj, Poynter has put together a list of stories published during the final weeks of December: "a quick guide to the media news you missed". Amongst them, Rupert Murdoch joining Twitter - here's a comment from the Guardian - and The New York Times selling 16 regional papers to Halifax Media.

Starting from today, Jan 1, the St. Petersburg Times becomes Tampa Bay Times, a press release published by Editor & Publisher announced. The name change reflects the wider regional identity the paper recently acquired as it has become the largest newspaper in Florida by growing its audience throughout the Tampa Bay region and three-quarters of Times readers live outside St. Petersburg, the release says. 

"In 2011 cameraphones entered the mainstream of photojournalism", the Guardian says. Citizen participation now boasts a significant role in giving and sharing news from important events scenes from the Arab uprisings to Occupy protests. Newswires and major news media started publishing many more cameraphone and video images from both professional reporters and citizens, the article reported.

Good news for newspaper circulation from India. The India Times quoted the 55th Annual report of the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) saying that circulation in the country maintained its upward trend clocking a growth of over 8% in 2010-11 with regional language dailies accounting for a significant rise.

For more industry news please see WAN - IFRA's Executive News Service.

2011 was a big year for news in more ways than one. Reporters were amply tested in their coverage of big breaking news stories such as the death of Osama Bin Laden or Muammar Gaddafi, major disasters such as the Fukushima earthquake, and complex political unrest much of the Arab World.

Meanwhile, newspapers continue to seek an effective digital business model, to tackle the challenges posed by social media and community involvement, to create innovative tablet applications and respond to ethical dilemmas. Looking forward to 2012, what can we expect?

Social media - will Facebook remain the undisputed leader?

Social media sprang to the forefront of the global stage in early 2011, with many directly attributing the extent of the uprisings in the Arab World to the power of Facebook and Twitter. Citizen reporting and commentary on events using social media has also flourished in the Arab World, and Anglophones have followed Twitter coverage via NPR's Andy Carvin. Will this use of social networks to provoke and cover dramatic uprisings continue?

Facebook, with its 800 million plus users, has been a top priority for news organisations in terms of their social media strategy in 2011, dwarfing smaller players such as Foursquare and so far fending off competition from new arrivals such as Google+. Most publications now have at least one Facebook page and several are experimenting with new apps using Facebook's Open Graph initiative. So far, readership levels seem to be high and it is likely that more news organisations will be keen to tap readers through Facebook.

Will Facebook's dominance continue into 2012, or will a network like Google+ - which has just introduced changes to make it more appealing to brands and businesses - put up a worthy fight? Twitter is also planning to introduce brand pages - what impact will these have?

Already, many journalists have vast numbers of fans and followers of their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts - will 2012 see a growing divide between brands and individuals on social media?

Bringing the community into the newsroom

In the world of the overwhelming information on the Web, newspapers are struggling to sustain their role as a central hub for news, and in 2011 many started to focus on interacting more closely with their communities and encouraging conversation among their readers as well as between readers and the papers.

Readers have been invited to participate in the process of local journalism in JRC's Register Citizen's newsroom café, where the paper's new office allows the public into the newsroom on a daily basis to influence, comment on and enhance coverage. Involving readers in the daily editorial decision making process is also the aim of Swedish local paper Norran's live chat eEditor, where readers can discuss story ideas with journalists in real time. Becoming accessible also means becoming more transparent, which is what the Guardian set out to do by publishing the paper's newslist online.

Expect to see more of such attempts to put readers at the heart of the newsgathering process in 2012 as newspapers realize the benefits of a strong and loyal community.

Business model uncertainty continues

In March 2011 The New York Times launched its much-anticipated paid digital content strategy and others have followed suit. Metered, intermittent, or impenetrable: no single digital paywall strategy has yet proven itself as the best. The existence of multiple digital devices means that most news organisations who do charge offer various different subscription offers across platforms.

Monetizing app content brings further complications as it means dealing with those who control operating systems such as Apple, which takes a 30% cut of all App Store purchases. Expect to see more newspapers following the example of the Financial Times, which has launched a browser-based HTML5 app that allows it to bypass Apple's store completely.   

It's unlikely that a definitive solution to the digital monetisation question will emerge in 2012: expect to see newspapers continuing to experiment with new ways to strike the best balance between charging for content and not losing readers. Hopefully we will also see attempts to find new business models as news organisations realize that there might not be just one strategy.

Delivery methods

At the end of 2011, the word 'tablet' no longer necessarily conjures up just an image of the iPad, as it did at the beginning of the year. Apple still shipped more than half the world's tablet devices sold in the third quarter of 2011, retaining a 61.5% share of the global market, and no competitor claimed more than 6%, but cumulatively they have managed to make a dent in Apple's dominance.

In 2012 we can expect to see Apple's market share continue to slide and Android-powered devices becoming more common, although there is little doubt that the iPad will remain the most common device.

In terms of what news organisations offer on the tablet, we can hope that 2012 will see some innovative and exciting new products. Although some impressive exceptions exist (such as Ringier's the collection), many papers have adopted a straightforward approach to tablet apps that does not take full advantage of what the device has to offer.

Some news organisations have already taken big steps with HTML5 and by the end of 2012 it may well be common for papers to produce HTML5 products before native apps, both for financial motivations (see above) and for ease of developing.

The tablet market is growing but it is still tiny compared to the smartphone market - maybe 2012 will also see news organisations re-evaluating their priorities in terms of digital delivery and focusing on the phone as a key device.

Newsroom organisation: digital comes first
 
The digital first mantra advocated by John Paton of the Journal Register Company has led to the creation of a new company actually called Digital First, a result of the merger between JRC and MediaNews Group, and the subsequent roll-out of this philosophy at many local US newspapers. Digital first is not intended to imply neglect of the print product, but rather a recognition of the fact that digital must come first in the news cycle, and that digital surely is the future and it is worth investing in it now.
 
The Guardian has also expressed its commitment to going digital first "in philosophy and practice," a process which involves losing staff but also taking on more developers and others with digital skills.
 
In 2012, expect to see other publishers making steps towards digital first as there is a growing acceptance of the necessity to concentrate efforts on building a business out of digital news. Many are realizing that achieving true newsroom integration is a long and complex process that requires an entire overhaul of workflows, processes and mindsets in the newsroom if it is to be truly effective, so they are looking for next steps.

New skills in the newsroom
 
Data, data and more data. In 2011 we saw an explosion of data-powered journalism, often displayed through visualizations, infographics, and interactive maps and apps. New web tools have made an incredible flood of raw data accessible which can then be visualized, organized in searchable databases, aggregated in interactive tools and used to investigate complex issues such as the UK riots that the Guardian analysed with the Reading the riots project. ProPublica also makes impressive use of data. 

Non-linear forms of storytelling are likely to feature highly on the agenda of forward-thinking news organisations in 2012 and consequently journalists will have to keep up with the skills required to shape stories and make them comprehensible to the public. The data journalism handbook published during the Mozilla Festival in London last November could be useful in this.

Technical skills such as coding will likely become more and more essential for journalists entering the trade in 2012 and we may well see retraining of more experienced journalists so that they can make best use of what data has to offer.

A high level of competence in effectively using social media is also increasingly becoming necessary as its use becomes more and more integrated into reporting as well as communicating with readers.  

Phone-hacking - will this lead to increased regulation in 2012?
 
At the start of 2011, few would have thought that the year would end with one fewer national newspaper publishing in the UK, and the entire press under scrutiny with regards to its ethical conduct. The phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch's The News of the World dominated media news in the UK in the second half of the year, and made headlines around the world as the paper was closed down and News International executives resigned. With both publishers and editors called in front of a judge, any belief that newspapers can defy the law with no questions asked has been strongly shaken.
 
2012 will see the beginning of the wider impact of the scandal as the Leveson Inquiry unfolds and recommendations are likely to be made for a more thorough regulation system in the UK. The inquiry will consider to whom the press is accountable, and how far outside interference is necessary.  Will self-regulation be deemed sufficient? Will there be an impact overseas? Will the results for journalism be positive or negative?

by Federica Cherubini and Emma Heald