Results matching “france daily ne”

Six countries, six leading newspapers, a huge audience and one common theme: Europe, how to explain it better, how to understand it better, how to build it better. This is the aim of an editorial project which saw six papers joining forces to produce a joint special edition on the situation of the European Union.

"The state of the Union", echoing the State of the union speech US President Obama gave on 24 January, is the angle of the first issue of Europa (more will be expected in future) produced by El Pais, the Guardian, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Gazeta Wyborcza and La Stampa.

This joint special editorial supplement aims to give a "more nuanced picture of the EU and explore what Europe does well and what not so well", as the Guardian explained.

Press freedom and freedom of expression remain under serious threat in the Middle East, despite the democracy revolutions and reforms that are sweeping the region, a panel of experts said Tuesday at the Arab Free Press Forum in Tunisia.

"The problem today is that you might not be afraid of the secret police, but you might fear the moral police," said Ghias al-Jundi, the Syrian Director of the PEN International Writers in Prison Committee and a member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange's (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group.

While the dramatic democratic upheavals "have made steps in overcoming power and overcoming the kingdom of fear," the Islamist groups who were long barred from politics and are now emerging do not have a tradition of political interaction with other groups.

France, Italy, Spain: The Huffington Post is expanding to Europe. After having launched editions in the UK and Canada last year, Arianna Huffington is now taking her news, blogging and aggregation site into continental Europe and non-Anglophone markets. 

As reported yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, the French edition "Le Huffington" will be launched on January 23, under the editorial direction of Anne Sinclair, a well-known TV journalist (and wife of the former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn.)

It was announced today (via PrimaComunicazione) that HuffPost has also signed an agreementwith Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso to land in Italy. 

Some Italian newspapers could be at risk due to the cuts in state subsidies that the new technocrat government is planning to implement.

The Financial Times reported last week that about 100 titles are facing closure as Mario Monti's administration confirmed cuts in public subsidies for the press from €170m to €53m budgeted for next year. These had already been proposed by the previous government led by Silvio Berlusconi.

At risk are wellknown papers such the leftwing Liberazione, Il Manifesto and L'Unità, the former communist party daily founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924 and the Catholic daily Avvenire. 

Hervé Guesquière and Stéphane Taponier, the two journalists of France 3, were freed today together with their interpreter, Le Point reported. The three men had been held as hostage in Afghanistan since December 2009. According to Prime Minister François Fillon, Guesquière and Taponier are expected to arrive in France later today.

Compared to the first quarter of 2010, De Pers, a Dutch free daily, has increased its circulation by 34 percent, Newspaper Innovation reported. Metro and Spits, two other free papers, saw slight cuts in circulation, but overall Dutch free circulation remained at 1.2 million copies in the first three months of 2011.

Newspaper Association of America has named Caroline Little as its president and CEO, Poynter reported. Little, who served most recently as CEO/North America of Guardian News and Media, will succeed John Sturm, who is retiring from NAA after 16 years as president.

Nieman Journalism Lab reported on WESH-TV's coverage of the trial of Casey Anthony. In addition to typical coverage, WESH-TV launched a 99-cent iPhone app dedicated to trial updates. Over the weekend, the app became the top paid news app on the iTunes.

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

Perhaps EPIQ's report earlier this year that the French press was doing well wasn't so far off after all. Le Figaro announced on its website that it was the top daily in France for the January to March period of this year, and that numbers had gone up from the same period in 2010.

The figures come from l'OJD, an association responsible for gathering the numbers of newspaper sales for governmental information and advertising purposes. This year marks the first time the organization has included digital media in its figures. Most notably, this includes PDF formats, such as the ones that appear on tablet devices.

When does an event become newsworthy? Does media coverage in itself make an event newsworthy? Can news organizations and journalism be blamed for giving a made-for-media event the attention it was looking for?

These and other similar questions arose from the coverage (or the non-coverage) of evangelical pastor Reverend Terry Jones, who runs a small church in Gainesville, Florida, burning a copy of the Quran on March 20.

The story is well summed up by Poynter's Steve Myers, who wrote an article analysing the media's ability to shape the news.
 

Etude de la Presse d'Information Quotidienne (EPIQ) has released its yearly results on the French press, claiming the French newspaper industry is doing well. Almost one in two French people read one daily newspaper. It reported the power of the press had been stabilized (at a level of -0.1 percent) in the last year.

Electron Libre reported that while Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Le Parisien saw drops from 2009 to 2010, L'Humanité, France Soir and La Croix saw rises in their audience. At the end of the article, it says, "What a paradox to see the French press progressing while the press in the rest of the world is having trouble conserving its public!"

Not everyone is as inclined as Electron Libre to rejoice over EPIQ's study. OWNI's Erwann Gaucher became curious by the claims after having heard grave statements about the newspaper industry. After analyzing the study, he suggested taking it with a grain of salt.

What do the Nobel Committee, Google, a Tunisian novelist and a Mexican journalist on the front lines of a drug war all have in common? They all have contributed to a package of editorials, essays and other materials being offered to newspapers world-wide to commemorate World Press Freedom Day on 3 May.

The wide ranging editorial and advertising materials, provided to newspapers and other media for publication on or around 3 May, are offered free of charge by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Thousands of newspapers publish WAN-IFRA materials each year to remind readers of the central role a free press plays in democracy and in economic, cultural, social and political development.

"The French are more and more «médiavores» and the traditional media are still competing and withstanding the inexorable wave of new media," commented Le Figaro, referring to  the annual study «Media in life» carried out by Médiamétrie.

The study examines daily media consumption, registering the number of contacts that people of more than 13 years old have with one or more media during the day.

The research shows that from 2006 to 2009 the number of contacts with both traditional and digital media increased of 9,7%. 

The morning panel of WAN-IFRA's conference in Paris on managing sport news, "Make sports news the mainspring of your growth," started with reflections on trends and future perspectives: multimedia and social media tools emerged as the main points.

As Matt Kelly, Publisher of Mirror Group Digital (UK) and chairman of the conference, underlined, social media shows how important is building a relationship with readers. Cristiano Ronaldo's Facebook page has around 20 million fans, he said, and this is an extraordinary example about how social media are an incredible tool that make it possible to have a real interaction with fans, who are, after all, the readers. 

Fréderic Filloux's Monday Note looked at the problems facing Le Monde as it moves towards a revamp under new ownership. The "iconic" French daily was bought in September 2010 by Pierre Bergé, Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse and president of the paper's management board, Eric Fottorino, was ousted from his position in December due to "differences of opinion" with the new owners.

Fottorino has been replaced by Louis Dreyfus, who announced that Le Monde will now separate the managerial and editorial leadership of the paper - Fottorino had held both. The company is now looking for a new editorial director of the paper, and according to Agence France-Presse, nine people have announced their candidacy, including the paper's editor, Sylvie Kauffmann and four other Le Monde journalists, Arnaud Leparmentier, Rémy Ourdan, Olivier Biffaud et Jean-Michel Dumay. Bernard Guetta, journalist and columnist and Claude Leblanc, editor-in-chief of Courrier International are also candidates, and the remaining two are anonymous. 

French daily Libération and weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur are looking at ways to cooperation, it was widely reported in the French media. Last Friday, Libération vice president Laurent Joffrin was asked by Claude Perdriel, president of the Nouvel Observateur group, and Edouard de Rothschild, Libération's main share holder, to study all possible forms of cooperation, reported Le Nouvel Observateur.

Joffrin will spend three months in deliberation, Agence France-Presse reported. As a former director of Le Nouvel Observateur, he is very familiar with both publications. It had recently been speculated  that he was to leave Libération, which is currently undergoing a recapitalization process, and re-join Le Nouvel Observateur. Both are left-leaning but non-communist publications.

Last week in Paris, Social Media Club France hosted an event titled "Audience Engagement and Monetisation: Social Gaming, a model to follow?" where the crème-de-la-crème of France's fast-emerging social gaming sector partook in a fascinating panel discussion. Presenters included notables such as KRDS, one of only two agencies in France to be included in Facebook's Preferred Developers Consultant Program, and IFeelGoods, which is the first platform that lets retailers provide Facebook Credits as marketing incentives.

Moderated by Benoit Raphael, co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Le Post.fr, the discussions covered the elements of success for social games and Facebook apps, as well as the enormous potential for virtual credits to revolutionize the way money is exchanged online. Highlights of the panel discussion can be found here, what this post is about is how this lesson in game dynamics can be applied to news sites.

One of the catch phrases heard frequently these days amongst the digerati is "adding a social gaming layer" to, well, everything. For a brilliantly clear explanation of what that means, have a look at this TED talk delivered by Seth Priebatsch. Below we'll delve into what that could mean for news sites.



Social Games: a logical extension of user generated content initiatives

For any community manager, the following statement should make complete sense: positive reinforcement is key to encouraging participation. If step one is allowing your audience to participate more, step two should be rewarding them for doing so (and steps three and four: enticing them to continue the interaction regularly and then share the experience with their friends).

This thinking is nothing revolutionary, in fact it can be traced back to social loyalty schemes that existed far before the internet did (think about your super market club card), and there are a plethora of companies that have already adapted the model to work online (Foursquare, Groupon, and recently Facebook itself just to name a few). It's adding game dynamics to these social loyalty schemes that is innovative, and this is where news publishers could stand to profit immensely.

The question isn't whether or not people are gaming on the web: more than 50% of Facebook users go online to play social games and Zynga has over 200 million individual players each month. For news publishers this poses very exciting possibilities, and the obvious question arises, as Harvard's Nieman Lab put it, "...could adding a little gameplay - and some circular icons - turn casual readers into engaged ones?"

Badges, badges, badges...and MORE badges!

It has already been more than 6 months since the Huffington Post launched its HuffPo Badges initiative, which, as Ariana Huffington explained, focuses on three key member activities, "connecting with others, engaging with our content, and moderating comments." The idea was to take the HuffPo community "to the next level" by offering recognition to top users in these areas, and perhaps even more importantly from a social gaming standard, they had plans to "add more badges and more features that will make being a part of the HuffPost community even more dynamic and rewarding."

As far as we can tell, no new badges have yet been added to the HuffPo experience, which is a big no no according to Thibault Viort of WEKA Entertainment. He explained at the Social Media Club event that at WEKA, the aim is not just to make a social game, but "to make a living game, one that grows and changes everyday". Although the very concept of badges and member ranking involves a dynamic progression, if new objectives aren't regularly introduced, the game play risks becoming stale, and as we know, the novelty factor doesn't last forever.

A new news-related social gaming experiment has just emerged on Philly.com, website of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News, which looks to offer a more Farmville-esque experience to users. The company behind the badges system found on Philly.com is called Badgeville, and the name is indeed a play on the stupefyingly popular Zynga game. On Philly.com, users earn points for activities they already do, such as visiting the site, reading articles, sharing content, and leaving comments. 

A visitor gains different sized trophies according to the number of points they've accumulated, and various badges for completing specific tasks, such as the "Wanderer Badge" awarded to members after their 5^th visit to the site. Through the tallying of points and badges, a site's most active users can be identified and a new dimension of analytics is possible.

Engagement Analytics

There is a massive bonus to adding game dynamics to news websites in particular, and that is engagement analytics. By tracking specific actions you want to encourage with a simple point system, you can keep a close eye on the health of your community. Furthermore, with a dynamic system that allows you to introduce new badges at a moment's notice, you can actually target specific activities that you might want to encourage more.

For instance, say you notice there has been a lull in the sharing of articles over the last week, you can take this knowledge and actually act on it by creating a new badge that is unlocked after sharing 5 articles in the next week. What's more, you can link this badge to a real world incentive by allowing sponsors in on the fun. This could be branded, for example, the Pepsi Broadcaster's Badge, and earn users a free six pack of the Pepsi product of their choice.

By coupling game dynamics with an ambitious advertising department, news publishers have a real opportunity to both increase engagement AND boost ad revenue. This can be taken a step further however, by adding a social gaming layer with real incentives to a UGC initiative, such as CNN's iReport or BBC's Have Your Say. In doing so, news outlets can also benefit from richer editorial content, thus addressing virtually every publisher's ultimate goals of providing better content, improving reader engagement and loyalty, and bringing home the bacon.

This is a guest post from Garrett Goodman, a new media consultant currently working with Citizenside, a French start-up that specialises in increasing audience engagement with its UGC hub solution, the Reporter Kit. This solution uses a proprietory system that integrates badges, grades and points to add a social gaming layer to news gathering.

The Guardian has joined forces with Leeds Trinity University on a new local project, reports Journalism.co.uk. 

Jeff Israely has announced his new international news project, WorldCrunch, on Nieman Lab. WorldCrunch, inspired by France's Courrier International among others, will collect and translated news content from around the world.

Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev has written a thought-provoking piece on the state of journalism in Russia on Journalism.co.uk: "The problem with journalism in Russia is not censorship, that would be easy to deal with."

The New York Daily News' collaboration with Foursquare offers users historical photos of the place in which they are standing, About Foursquare explains.

The International Press Institute has criticised Hungary over its media secrecy law, and has launched a press freedom mission to Italy to look at editorial independence and media concentration.

Two Ugandan journalists have been arrested for extortion, reported AllAfrica.com.

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

Free French daily 20 Minutes has dropped the Agence France-Presse news service, Le Monde reported. The paper's CEO Pierre-Jean Bozo tried to negotiate a lower price with the French national news agency but failed, and 20 Minutes now subscribes to Reuters' French wire.

Le Monde quoted AFP's commercial director Erik Monjalous who said that the paper and the agency had been in discussions for two years but that the AFP could not go below a certain price. 

According to the 2010 world press freedom index from Reporters Without Borders (or Reporters Sans Frontières, RSF), France and Italy trail the rest of Western Europe, ranked 44th and 49th respectively out of the 178 countries rated.

"It is disturbing to see several European Union member countries continuing to fall in the index," said RSF secretary-general Jean-François Julliard. "There is an urgent need for the European countries to recover their exemplary status."