November 2005 Archives

An interesting article by media lawyer Ian Felstead criticizes threats made by the UK Attorney General to prosecute newspapers under Section 5 of The Official State Secrets Act if they publish any material concerning the infamous leaked Al Jazeera memo (see previous postings here and here). 

Borrell Associates recently published a report in the US entitled 'Independent City Sites Gain Steam: A New Threat to Old Media", which highlights the threat that such websites pose to newspapers. The report states that independent city sites are growing quickly and "elbowing in on territory that traditional local media properties have been trying to stake out for the past decade."

A new international newspaper called Newsademic targeting younger readers (from age 9 onwards) has been launched. The objective of the paper is to be a source of information "for younger people who are keen to begin to understand what’s going on around them and to make sense of the world they are growing up in." 

It is well known that American newspapers have been rapidly shedding jobs as of late, the latest being at the Orlando Sentinel which will lose 21 employees and leave 33 vacant positions unfilled. Over the past month, that epidemic has jumped the puddle to the UK.

An interesting article by Michael Massing debating whether US journalists are failing in their responsibility to produce hard nosed reporting and uncover the truth for their readers.

Corante, "the world’s first blog media company", has launched its new Media Hub. The company has partnered with a network of well respected media bloggers to provide news and commentary on the trends currently affecting the media industry.

For the first time in its history, The New York Times began printing outside the United States, in Toronto, this Sunday. The move will expand the paper's daily availability in the city; it has so far been distributed through delayed delivery and sold at retail outlets.

Guardian Unlimited today launched its new RSS news reader NewsPoint (see previous posting), which has automatic subscriptions to a number of news feeds across the Guardian website. The reader also allows users to subscribe to Guardian reccommended feeds and feeds from thousands of other websites.

The German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which is already very successful in selling collections of books, CDs and DVDs under its brand (see former posting), launched a new project: Last week it started publishing a series of books dealing with the history of the Football World Cup. The new series is called WM Bibliothek (= World Cup Library).  Each volume will deal with a Football World Cup from 1954 to 2006, the first volume covers the Cups between 1930 and 1950.

"We're over you, Rupert," is how Emily Bell at the Guardian responds to the first interview News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch has given to the British press in five years. Ms. Bell thinks the interview marks the end of the mainstream media era that has now been ceded to a host of "accidental entrepreneurs" in new media. But looking more closely, it seems that the lines between the two are crossing.

Swiss publishing group Ringier yesterday launched a new free Prague daily called 24 Hodin (24 Hours). The paper targets the "Internet Generation" (under 35) and will have a distribution of 250 000 at key sites in the city.

Received from Ehsan Ahmed Sehar, convenor of the Rural Media Network in Pakistan about the latest Al-Jazeera story. It begun with an article in a British newspaper last week, it spreads all over the world and now it reaches Peshawar in one of the most remote parts of Pakistan. Good case study about globalization (and anti-Americanism).

"Like other parts of the country, media persons in Peshawar staged a protest demonstration to condemn the statement of US President Bush and UK Prime Minster Tony Blair regarding attacks on Al-Jazeera offices..."

According to accounts filed at the UK's Companies House, converting The Independent to tabloid format has cost Independent News and Media over 12 million pounds sterling. Group accounts for the company show outgoings of 6.3 million in 2003 and 6.1 million last year, both related to the tabloid conversion.

"I don't know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper," media baron Rupert Murdoch said recently. Murdoch, who is quoted as having once praised classified ad revenues as "a river of gold" has retracted that statement for the Internet age saying, "Sometimes rivers dry up." Below is a roundup of online advertising that echoes Murdoch's changed perception.

WatchingAmerica.com is a website dedicated to showing Americans how their country is reported on in the foreign press. The site is edited by William Kern, former copy editor for the International Herald Tribune, and provides translations of interesting stories sourced from newspapers and broadcasts in Europe, The Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The German national daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung changed its design yesterday. The changes include slimmer and bigger headlines and the introduction of the colour red into the paper to facilitate the navigation. Infographics and maps will be in colour as well. (To see the new front page click here.)

The act of hyperlinking, adding a link from one webpage to another, is now a standard practice among bloggers. Newspapers, on the other hand, have been rather slow to adopt the practice. But some journalists are catching on. If it becomes more common, hyperlinking could have the potential to change the way in which newspaper journalists write.