Results matching “global the plight of”

French Minister for Culture and Communication Frédéric Mitterrand officially launched the program "Mon journal offert" « My free newspaper » yesterday, which offers readers aged between 18 and 24 a free yearly subscription to a newspaper of their choice.

It had been known for some time that the French government has been considering a proposal to offer free newspapers to youths as part of wider scheme to help boost newspaper readership and attempt to bail out the industry.

In many cases, journalism is one of the most dangerous professions around the world. Hundreds of journalists are arrested, harassed and threatened every year. According to a World Association of Newspapers (WAN) press release, "more than 70 journalists were killed world-wide last year, at least 670 were arrested, and 125 remain in prison." Recently, Iranian-American journalist, Roxanna Saberi has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for doing her job.

Madiha Sattar, HuffingtonPost contributor, wrote a passionate opinion piece about how the media plays a crucial role in the fight against extremists. The writer said that Pakistan is unique in its region because it has a "news media that relentlessly pursues the country's failures, with journalists routinely speaking out against the government, extremists, and the notion of a theocratic state, among other things."

American journalist, Roxanna Saberi was sentenced to eight years at Evin prison in Tehran, accused of spying on the Iranian government. At first she was arrested in January for buying alcohol, the Foreign Ministry then said she was illegally reporting without press credentials and in April was put on trial for spying. The trial was short and behind closed doors.

According to  a World Association of Newspapers press release, "more that 70 journalists were killed world-wide last year, at least 670 were arrested, and 125 remain in prison." At least two journalists have died in Evin Prison in the past six years.

"Papers facing worst year for ad revenue" screamed the New York Times yesterday, a headline topping an article about a "double-digit drop in advertising revenue" at American newspapers. But apart from the information detailed after the obvious headline, two observations can be taken from the article.

1. The general public is catching on
The headline enticed enough people to click through to the story that it was driven up to #7 on the most read stories list of nytimes.com and #3 on the 10 most blogged stories. Although media bloggers have been enthusiastically documenting the ups and downs of American newspapers for several years, the fact that the article reached both of these lists shows that the general public, or at least the audience of nytimes.com, is more aware and interested in the plight of the industry. Perhaps newspaper readers, recognizing the seemingly dire short-term financial  futures of US papers, are becoming genuinely concerned about their favorite papers, the journalism they produce and the democracies which they keep in check. As the industry struggles through tough economic times, will their readers come to the rescue by buying more subscriptions or even contributing money to help keep the newshole deep?

2. Dailies vs. weeklies
What was also interesting about the NYT article was what preceded it; a full-browser window advertisement for the analytical UK-based weekly, The Economist. Whereas the print circulation of the New York Times has remained relatively stable over the past decade (while the circs of its brothers in many American markets have decreased substantially), the circulation and revenues of the Economist have doubled.

Although the Economist is recognized as one of the smartest newspapers in the world and has undergone an ambitious global marketing scheme over the past few years, some analysts attribute its recent circ and revenue success to changes in the habits of readers. A growing number of newshounds scan the headlines on the Internet or mobile devices constantly throughout the day and thus have little need to purchase the daily paper which is often a rehash of news they already know. But weeklies such as the Economist have more time to reflect upon current events and get to the "What does it mean" aspect of news, something that is very difficult to accomplish on a daily basis. This aspect seems to be a near perfect fit in the busy daily lives of people. Where they once may have taken a couple of hours to read the newspaper front to back, now, news reading habits seem to more like this:
1. scan the headlines and first paragraph almost immediately after something happens
2. skip the details in the rest of the article
3. wait a few days for a comprehensive story that tells readers what incidents mean for the world and themselves.

In this sense, it has been suggested that newspapers scale back the frequency of their print editions to 3 or 4 days a week to adhere to readers' busy lifestyles. Even US weeklies seem to be decreasing their publishing frequency to bi-weekly in order to allow more time for reflection.

Back to the Economist advertisement. It would be curious to see what kind of success rate the Economist receives from advertising in NYT and if they'll receive converts from the NYT print daily to the Economist print weekly. On the other hand, any defectors will more than likely continue reading nytimes.com for their daily headlines. The problem seems to be that brief headline-reading visits to daily websites like nytimes.com aren't encouraging for advertisers, and in turn will not help any revenue losses from downturns in print advertising.  

The announcement that the New York Times has lost close to 20% of its hometown readers since 2001 demonstrates a subtle trend in the newspaper industry that reflects the growing cleavage between which news organizations cover local versus national/international.

This division is proving difficult for large metro papers.

The New York Times is not the only metro paper to be losing local readers. Last autumn's circulation figures showed huge declines in several metro papers, notably at the Boston Globe (-8%) and the San Francisco Chronicle (-16%). The same phenomenon occurred in France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Portugal, Korea, Japan… In the UK, if metro newspapers maintained their circulation, thanks to the give-aways distributed with the papers!