Results matching “us will the com”

Boston.com, the online edition of The Boston Globe, intends to be more "neighborly" with its visitors by boosting its local presence through a number of social networking projects while focusing on publishing, aggregating and convening, reports NewsAndTech.com.

The site's convening tasks will be improved through the upgrading of the forum and commenting abilities for stories. Readers will be able to track other users' participation with more ease, according to NewsAndTech.com.

BoMoms, a section geared towards young mothers in the Boston area, is available with articles and forums on topics that may be of interest to them.

Boston.com's user-generated content and social networking plan also includes a deal with Good2Gether, a non-profit organization, which will link viewers with local non-profit associations.

"The whole area gives us a chance to provide a platform for cause-based marketing," said Bob Kempf, vice president of Boston.com. "We know that a lot of our major companies locally have cause-based marketing messages they want to get across."

A hyperlocal platform is planned to be launched before the end of 2008, featuring Wiki-based websites discussing a town's news and information, to be written by Globe writers and external contributors.

"Newspapers tend to take some of those separate brands and products and keep them isolated and not integrated with the core content experience," said Kempf. "We need to get that mix exactly right. I think isolating your user-generated content in one place makes for a difficult business and audience proposition."

Source: NewsAndTech.com through IFRA Executive News Service

Fairfax Media are planning to outsource much of the editorial production for its two flagship Melbourne and Sydney newspapers to a subsidiary of the Australian Associated Press, called Pagemasters.

Since last year Pagemasters has handled the bulk of rival newspaper group APN News & Media's sub-editing and design function in New Zealand. The hiring of Pagemasters is a key factor in Fairfax deceision this week to reduce headcount by 550.

Pagemasters will take over the production function for several Herald fixtures. According to a memo by Lloyd Whish-Wilson, Fairfax's chief executive for metropolitan publishing in NSW: "The layout and sub-editing of some sections and special reports will move to ... Pagemasters. This will enable us to reduce the current extensive reliance on casual editorial production staff."

Asked if Fairfax's Age and Sunday Age newspapers would follow the same Pagemasters route, Fairfax spokesman Bruce Wolpe said: "I don't have anything definitive."

Journalists at the paper said yesterday the outsourcing of production had created problems at other newspapers that had gone with Pagemaster due to loss of control and variable sub-editing quality

Fairfax owns 46 per cent of Pagemasters through its AAP stake.

Source: The Australian

The Globe and Mail is positive on the future of printed newspapers, and it is putting its money where its mouth is.

The newspaper is preparing for another redesign of its print edition to take advantage of new high-speed colour presses after awarding Transcontinental Inc. an 18-year, $1.7bn printing contract.

The transaction with Transcontinental comes as The Globe and a handful of other newspapers in Canada buck the North American trend of declining readership, circulation and ad revenue.

"There is a lot of mileage in high-quality newspapers," Globe publisher Phillip Crawley said in an interview yesterday after the announcement of the deal.

Phillip Crawley said that the deal is "a sign of our continued confidence in the future of the newspaper business."

Crawley said the redesign is planned for late 2010 or early 2011 and will include a reduction in the size of the paper by 13⁄4 inches to a height of 21 inches (53 centimetres).

The new printing press will allow for the newspaper to print in full colour on all pages and offer advertisers glossy newsprint stock.

"Colour on every page opens up design opportunities that previously didn't exist."

The last big redesign of The Globe - a division of CTVglobemedia Inc. - was launched in April, 2007.

Source: ReportonBusiness.com

A new free broadsheet, Briefing, launched in Dallas in the USA yesterday.

This new addition beings the number of free newspapers in the city to three. Al Día  is a free Spanish language paper and Quick is youth oriented newspaper.

All three newspapers are published by the A.H. Belo Corporation, the parent company of leading Dallas paid paper, The Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas Morning News will supply much of the content for the new daily, which will be distributed to high-income households that don't subscribe to the Dallas Morning News.

This new addition to the market is unusual in two respects, in that it is in a broadsheet format and that it will be home-delivered.

The rumoured change at Quick from a daily to a weekly has not occurred, and the newspapers website is still running and does not mention any such move.

Briefing will have an initial circulation of 200,000 and will be distributed four days a week, from Wednesday to Saturday.

Source: Newspaper Innovation

Lippo Group, a substantial Indonesian conglomerate, announces the launch of The Jakarta Globe, an English language daily newspaper that will be available both in print and online.

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, who worked with the AFP for over 20 years, is to be the paper's deputy editor. The editorial team also includes Ahmad Pathoni, who previously held senior positions at both AFP and Reuters, and A. Lin Neumann, former executive editor of the Hong Kong Standard and editor-in-chief of South Korean daily JoongAng.

The Globe will be released in the next two months and will be aimed at both Indonesians and expatriates. It will receive funding through advertisements and subscriptions.

The paper intends to be in competition with The Jakarta Post, Indonesia's prominent English-language paper.

Source: Brand Republic

Russian authorities propose that every region of the country should publish a sports-oriented newspaper so that sports in the country will acquire more dynamism, reports gazeta.ru in an article yesterday.

The article suggested that it was the press that helped hire athletes that are "strong" and have a lot of potential in order to compete at the Beijing Olympics this year, outlining that Russian journalists had a "truthful" prediction in the matter.

It may be viable for Russian media to create a network of sports journalists who will have the support of local authorities and who will aid in providing exposure for talented sportspeople for future events, gazeta.ru writes.

Source: Gazeta.ru

He may be an investigative journalist by trade, but Guardian (UK) writer Nick Davies is not shy to criticize his own profession. Davies made headlines across the globe with the February 2008 publication of his book, Flat Earth News, a searing indictment of investigative reporting and modern journalism. The book, which details issues such as illegal acts committed by journalists on the job and "churnalism", or barely fact-checked information rehashed from PR professionals and spin-doctors, turned the spotlight on the news industry, launching a debate within the ranks of news professionals about the challenges facing the industry.

Davies is the author of five books, has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, and Feature Writer of the Year. He was also the first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting in 1999.

To launch our series on the Future of Investigative Journalism and the challenges ahead, the Editors Weblog spoke with Davies to see what all the controversy was about and to ask Davies his views on the future of his profession.

EW: What skills does it take to specifically be a good investigative journalist? How is it different to being a beat reporter or is it similar?

ND: In principle, the skills of investigative reporting are exactly the same as those of any other kind of reporting - because all reporting is investigative, all reporting is an attempt to get at the truth, so the distinction is a false one.

There is a sub-set of reporting where somebody is actively obstructing the reporter's access to information, which means the job will be more difficult and so the skills will be more obvious, but the key difference is not in the skills required but in the time that is required. The beat reporter is liable to be under pressure to produce several stories every shift and, therefore, will be unlikely to have the time to dig into anything which is being deliberately concealed.

EW: How has the business changed over the past 10 years, ie, skills necessary, training, and so forth?

ND: The big change in the business over the last ten years is precisely the reduction of time available for almost all reporters to do their work. The beat reporter as much as the 'investigative' specialist suffers from this, because so many news rooms have been taken over by profit-hungry corporations who have cut staff and increased output and thereby made it extremely difficult for any of their reporters to work effectively. The required skills have not changed (apart from the minor technical skills of dealing with websites).

The training, however, is in decline along with the industry as a whole, primarily because colleges now train students to fit with the demands of time-starved newsrooms, eg, the quick re-writing of press releases, the recycling of agency copy; and also because colleges set up courses with 'media' or 'journalism' in the title because they know it will attract student numbers even though they have nobody qualified to teach the course, so you have sociologists and literary specialists teaching the skills of a profession which they do not understand.

EW:  Is your job harder or easier with the advent of multi-platform news? Do you see podcasts and video content as useful?

ND: Multi-platform news has tended to make it more difficult for all reporters - beat, specialist, 'investigative' - to do their work because filing for audio, video and print
a) consumes precious time, and
b) dilutes concentration.
And I am not at all sure that our consumers are particularly interested in or attracted to the vodcasts and podcasts that we make available to them. Occasionally, there are stories where the print version is hugely enlivened by video - for example, the passenger video of the scenes inside the Qantas flight which blew a hole in its fuselage last month. But to make the production of audio and video versions a standard requirement for all stories is bad management and highly likely to accelerate the declining standard of our product.

EW: Do you use any of the new technologies in your reporting, ie, video, and mobile? Have these new technologies made your job easier or harder?

ND: As a reporter, I'm not concerned with the way in which my words are used. What I file may go into the print edition or onto the website or be subbed down for emails or mobile messages.

The one way in which electronic technology does impact me is my access to the worldwide web. That is a wonderful research tool, and I use it all the time. It is no substitute for dealing with human sources, but it enormously increases the amount of information that is available in the public domain. Personally, therefore, it has made my working life much easier.

However, for 'beat' reporters or for any reporter who has not been able to negotiate the time to do the job, the web does also represent a threat because it means they no longer have the benefit of a deadline at the end of the day: for most of them the deadline is always here and now because even if the printed edition is not calling for copy, the website is. Time - reporters can't do their job without it.

EW: What are your thoughts on lobby groups, such as the Taxpayers' Alliance, setting up investigative reporting units themselves and sending their articles direct to newspapers?

ND: The danger with funding by lobby groups is clear - that, at best, they will select story subjects and/or angles which suit their agenda and, at worst, that they will inject outright falsehood and distortion directly into them. But not all dangers are realised. I think most reporters would say that if they could find a lobby group which was prepared to back genuine journalism without imposing its agenda, they'd take it in a heartbeat.

The underlying point is that the inherent dangers of allowing corporations to take over ownership of news media are certainly being realised with highly destructive results for truth-telling journalism - and so any alternative is worth considering.

Over the coming weeks, The Editors Weblog will be examining how investigative reporting has been affected by multi-platform publication and the 24-hour news culture.  

A UK Government counter-terrorism unit is using news websites including the BBC to channel messages and plant volunteers in internet forums in an attempt to "taint the al-Qaida brand".

The Guardian newspaper broke the story after seeing a secret Home Office paper. The Guardian reports that government unit is deliberately targeting the BBC and other media organisations as part of a global propaganda push.

The operation is being conducted by the research, information and communication unit (RICU), which was set up last year by the previous home secretary John Reid.

The Guardian quoted directly from the secret paper, entitled 'Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications'. It said: "We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg, a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media."

The unit has been set up due to the government's belief that al-Qaida's popularity is waning worldwide and is vulnerable.

The paper also reveals that the propaganda is aimed at "overseas communicators" in embassies and consulates around the world, people that work with influencers and opinion formers.

This unit's existence and actions raises serious questions question about editorial control and freedom in light of this government attempt to manage the media.

Source: Brand Republic and The Guardian

Internet users will be able to send questions to political figures during Democratic and Republican conventions though a project called Digg Dialogg, a joint venture between Digg and CNN.

Questions may be in text or video format and can be transferred through iReport.com, CNN's user-generated content site, or Digg.com. Users can then vote for or "Digg" the questions and the most popular ones would be asked in real interviews that are to be published online.

Source: MediaWeek

User comments on websites has become standard fare for most media organizations. But according to the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele and Kelly McBride, who spoke at the Unity: Journalists of Colour Convention, news organizations must make it easy and inviting for users to comment, otherwise they may inhibit the discourse they purport to initiate.

Editor and Publisher looked into the matter in order to see the mechanisms that newspaper sites were employing when dealing with user-generated content and found a range of methods.

The research found:

-All of the top 10 US newspaper websites reviewed have mechanisms to monitor the content, be it screening comments or urging users to report offences
-Some sites require registration
-Some sites preview comments prior to their publication
-Some used both

According to Editor and Publisher, the most "liberal" policy about user's posts is from the Wall Street Journal, since neither registration or moderation are used and readers are pushed to self-police and report offences.

The Los Angeles Times had the "most stringent" and "severely worded" rules that referred to discrimination, false advertising and interrupted online access:

WARNING: A VIOLATION OF THESE POSTING RULES MAY BE REFERRED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

This is exactly the kind of unappealing, and threatening phrase that Poynter's Steel and McBride warned against, saying that they could be perceived as "hostile."

Less "threatening" in tone, the Denver Post's Neighbor forum includes the following guidelines:

Think of Neighbors as a neighborhood gathering, where conversation is lively and civil. What's important to you is probably of interest to others - if your neighbors don't know about something, they will appreciate if you share your knowledge. The community and its users will decide what the site becomes, but it is not intended to be a free-for-all.

Retaining more "civility", the New York Daily News writes:

Be nice. Think about others. People often say things on boards that they would be ashamed to say to someone face to face. Please treat other users with respect.

Source: Editor and Publisher

Yahoo! News may be considered as a news organization, according to Jessica Barron, director of editorial programming. Unlike online news outlets that aggregate news content from the Web, Yahoo! is not only investing in its own journalists but is also signing agreements with wire services and "traditional" sources.

"Our aim is to reach these bigger names and use our reporting talent to break news. We are really going for the kinds of questions that will make news," said Barron."We have been doing a lot of original reporting and we are going to be doing a lot more."

The original reporting she refers to include interviews with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, US leader George W. Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Yahoo!'s global audience of 500 million helps to formulate its news judgement, since the outlet pays attention to what stories get most traffic. According to Barron, online readers have shown that they are interested in both hard facts and the human value of stories.

Barron intends to make Yahoo! the premier independent online news source.

Source: AFP through IFRA Executive News Service

The Star Tribune announces that it is transforming its online edition into a blog that will allow for the site to be updated regularly and for interaction between readers and editorial staff to be increased so as to "reinvent" print and online opinion journalism, reports StarTribune.com.

"We have two products, the Web-based one and the newsprint one. The newsprint one doesn't change during the day, because it can't. The Web-based one can, but it doesn't, because we use it mainly to present a snapshot of what we were thinking and writing about yesterday. I realized we could turn that model on its head by making the Web version change throughout the day and letting the newsprint version handle the snapshot,'' said Eric Ringham, the paper's commentary editor.

On weekdays, the Opinion Exchange section will feature a summary of daily Editorial Board meetings and encourage readers to provide their opinions, which may "inform" and possibly "influence" editorial views. "Traditional" editorials will be posted alongside opinions that evolve throughout the day, such as columns and YouTube videos.

The "best" of Opinion Exchange will be published in the following day's paper, writes SrtarTribune.com.

Source: StarTribune.com

The launch of Economia e Financas, an Angolan state-owned economics weekly newspaper that is published by Edições Novembro-EP, may indicate that there is a growing interest in the Angolan economy, according to Manuel Miguel de Carvalho "Wadijimbi", Deputy Minister of Social Communication, reports AllAfrica.com.

According to AllAfrica.com, the paper, launched last Tuesday, will "help publicise locally and abroad the advances in agriculture, industry, expansion of the country's electric network and other achievements."

Around 10 contributors as well as some contributors will be writing for the paper. The first issue of Economia e Financas (to be published on August 29 with 20,000 copies) will be released as a special edition that will be given out for free to invitees.

José Ribeiro, the Director General of Edições Novembro-EP, suggests that the amelioration of the design and contents of the publisher's titles are part of an initiative by the Social Communication Ministry.

In 2007, the only daily in Angola was redesigned in order "to adjust it to the modern standards of the world journalism", according to AllAfrica.com.

De Carvalho pointed out that the Social Communication Ministry is optimizing its media outlets and that the Angola Press Agency is advancing its information services by launching an online portal that will provide "privileged" and "reliable" information, writes AllAfrica.com.

Agostinho Chitata, director of the newly launched Economia e Financas, is urging sources to cooperate with the media.

Source: AllAfrica.com through World News