Recently by Barbara Nguyen

Barry Bearak, a New York Times reporter, and a British journalist were released today on bail in Zimbabwe. The two journalists were jailed after having allegedly covered the country's elections without government authorization.

While the two men have been released on bail, they must still appear in court, reports the New York Times, which quoted one of Bearak's Zimbabwean lawyers.

The arrest came in conjunction with a recent onslaught of jailings after Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's election results appeared less than favorable.

Bearak won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his coverage in Afghanistan and has been described by New York Times executive editor Biller Keller as, "an experienced and respected professional".

Source: MediaGuardian.co.uk

The George Polk award for legal reporting honored a blogger, Joshua Micah Marshall, editor and publisher of US political blog Talking Points Memo. This is the first time the honor has been given to a blogger.

TPM, a New York City-based blog, features opinion-based, investigative reporting. Marshall considers blogging a new political conversation, and, with his highly-lauded coverage on TPM, consistently challenges doubts that bloggers can’t be journalists.

Marshall won the half-century old, Long Island University issued award for reporting on the controversial and politically motivated dismissals of several US attorneys. His success demonstrates blogging's growing credibility as a cutting-edge vehicle for news reporting.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

With surveys revealing the public’s decreasing trust in the media, news organizations are actively responding to the call for a more civic conscious journalism. News consumers are growing increasingly critical and are asking for more opportunities to have their opinions heard by news sources.

Dr. James Castonguay, associate professor and chair of Sacred Heart University's Department of Media Studies and Digital Culture, who helped oversee the university's recent media reliability study, elaborated on readers becoming more active and responsible news consumers.

"We have some critical citizens who are not naively accepting as truth the news they consume," he said, in an interview with the Poynter Institute. "Maybe people see themselves as taking a more responsible and active role in the democratic process to check sources and be more active consumers of news,” Castonguay explained.

Websites like the French Vudesquartiers.journalisme.co, launched by Jérôme Bouvier, president of the Association of Journalism and Citizenship, hope to improve the relationship between journalists and inhabitants of  local neighborhoods. A previous Weblog posting discussed how the goal of the project is to reinstate public trust in journalism, and encourage reporters to work closely with the people they cover.

The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash. has undertaken a similar challenge in providing readers with a forum for community feedback. With its online feature “The Transparent Newsroom”, the Spokesman-Review offers readers the chance to voice criticism, needs and concerns they may have about the paper’s content or editorial choices.

Some highlights include an “Ask the Editors” section, where Spokesman editors field readers’ questions about the paper’s operations and editorial processes. A live webcast of daily newsroom meetings and a total of 10 blogs encourage readers to observe and participate in the quotidian operations of the paper.  

Spokesman-Review editor Steven A. Smith expressed why the paper has taken on such a strong civic responsibility.

"Journalists always retain the right to say no. Transparency is not the same as passivity," Smith said. "When you’re as open as we are, it's possible to engage in a debate with readers in ways that we couldn't in the past. When people pitch us an idea it still has to be vetted in all the ways that stories do: Is it important enough? Does it match up with our values?" he said.

While becoming ‘transparent’ allows for sometimes unwanted criticism, Ryan Pitts, online director for the Spokesman maintains that the challenge is worth it.  The Spokesman’s undertaking, editors hope, will represent a trend towards fostering a more democratic relationship between readers and news organizations.

Source: Poynter Institute

In a Tuesday press release featured on PR.com, FeedJournal announced its launch of the Feedjournal Reader, a free internet tool that allows users to create personalized newspapers from over 100 million online news and blog sources. Users will be able to gather content from their choice of online sources and print out the stories in newspaper format.

"The realization of FeedJournal Reader turns every blogger into a journalist", says Jonas Martinsson, who founded FeedJournal in early 2006, and manages the site’s software development. "The long tail of the blogosphere has finally reached printed traditional media. Today's newsrooms cater to a general audience while FeedJournal puts the editorial decisions in the hands of each reader."

FeedJournal reader also transforms RSS and Atom feeds into PDF, printable format—which permits users to read online content offline.

Source:  PR.com through IFRA

With more newspapers moving online, it would seem appropriate—even essential—for today’s aspiring online journalists to learn a program such as Dreamweaver, a web design and development tool. Martin Stabe suggests otherwise on his website—arguing that forcing journalists to learn this program is a “waste of time”.

Dreamweaver either proves unnecessarily complicated for those journalists whose knowledge of HTML is limited to basic bolding and italicizing tags, or inefficient for those who wish to build more dynamic, CMS-driven websites. In other words, Stabe argues that Dreamweaver either provides too much or too little in the way of programming training—depending on who’s asking.

In an article examining the same question, the Poynter Institute affirms Stabe’s argument by suggesting that Dreamweaver’s static features fail to live up to the fast-moving, dynamic pace of online news.

“Requiring journalism students to use Dreamweaver is about as useful as requiring them to learn calligraphy. It makes your content looks really pretty -- and it generally won't be worth a damn on a real journo job or project,” the Poynter website explained.

If an online journalist wants to equip herself with the tools to work in an increasingly multimedia environment, the key is to learn real CMS technology, Poynter suggested.

While it is uncertain whether journalism students will continue to learn Dreamweaver, the question raises important questions about technology’s place in today’s journalism classroom.

Source: Poynter Institute and Martinstabe.com

The Baltimore Sun is set to publish a free daily titled ‘b’. The Tribune Co., which has launched other successful dailies such as Chicago’s RedEye, is behind the new venture. Readers can expect to see b distributed in Baltimore starting April 14.

It seems the success of RedEye has triggered a substantial rise in free daily publications all over the country. Much like the popular RedEye, b targets young adults and will in many ways model itself after the Chicago daily’s successful model. The Baltimore free daily even plans to use copy from RedEye.

Circulation will start at 50,000 copies per day and will later increase to 100,000 by the year’s end.

Like RedEye, b will launch an online version of the tabloid. b’s online counterpart: bthesite.com will be accessible the same day as the print launch. The website will feature a variety of multimedia tools to encourage readers to blog, share their stories, photos and even videos.

Source: free-daily.com through IFRA

The 29th annual SND awards announced its four winners for the World’s Best-Designed honor: Moscow’s bi-weekly Akzia’s, the UK’s Guardian, Lisbon’s weekly Expresso and Germany’s weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.


The judges’ panel placed the winners in categories their designs exemplified: Consistency, Surprise and Courage. The Guardian was noted for its “section-by-section consistency” and for achieving excellent daily reporting that “might take a week or more to accomplish” for other publications. The Frankfurter was praised as “consistently among the most elegant newspapers on the planet”.  

Expresso was lauded for its surprising and effective use of photojournalism, while Akzia won admiration for its courageous photographic depiction of a graveyard for airplane parts. The Moscow bi-weekly was also recognized for its “unconventional typography and layouts that exuded enthusiasm,” reported the SND website.

In all, 343 dailies and weeklies from all over the world were assessed. Please visit the SND website for an informative slideshow of the winners’ top designs, and for further information on this year's winners.

Source: snd.org through Journerdism  

Linking is the key to reinventing online news, reports Publishing 2.0. While newsrooms try to cover all the resource bases, online reporting shouldn't attempt to, the website suggests. Instead, online news should provide original reporting with the support of links to additonal original reporting on the same subject.

The article sets up an analogy to demonstrate the projected importance of linking to online reporting: the reported quote is to print journalism as the link will be to online news.



Robert Niles of the Online Journalism Review offers helpful tips for effective hyperlinking and suggests that online journalists owe it to readers to provide useful links that relate to the story.

"Ultimately, the addition of useful hyperlinking within an online news story reflects the strong reporting of its author. If a reporter does not know of online pages with extra information relating to the story, he or she cannot link to them. But if you have that information, why not share it with those readers who are eager for it?" he said.

Some critics fear linking will turn away readers. The logic proves faulty when one considers the huge success of Google, whose primary purpose is to provide links to other websites. Users aren't turned away, and in fact have been coming back in droves.

Linking, Publishing 2.0 argues, has the ability to not only enrich stories with additional sources but also tell stories themselves. The article displays linking's storytelling capacity as well as other innovative examples of hyperlinking.

Source: Publishing 2.0 (illustrations too)

Yesterday, Egypt suspended the sale of four western newspapers for featuring pictures it considers offensive to Islam. An order issued by Information Minister Anas al-Fiqi, forbade the distribution of Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt, Britain's Observer and the US Wall Street Journal, the official MENA news agency reported.

"Any newspaper or magazine which publishes anything offensive to the Prophet...and reprints the offensive caricatures of the prophet or anything offensive to the three heavenly religions will be banned," Fiqi said.

The ban comes in response to the recent Danish newspaper scandal in which 17 of the country’s papers published a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

Source: AFP

The San Francisco Chronicle trims it Monday and Tuesday editions of the paper as editor Ward Bushee continues his trend of shrinking big papers like the Arizona Republic, months before.

Several Chronicle reporters explained that Bushee stated that management had decided to combine several sections that run on Monday and Tuesday—among them, the business and sports sections as well as the classifieds and the Datebook. The new, slimmed down edition is set to debut on Mon. Feb. 25.

Bushee executed a similar plan during his tenure as editor at the Republic. The shrinkage of the paper’s Monday edition was presented to readers as an effort to cater to busy readers’ presumably busy Monday schedules, reported the Phoenix New Times website. Loyal readers saw through the rhetoric and recognized the underlying cost-cutting motives. Some were even offended Bushee and the paper’s management claimed to be acting on behalf of readers’ interests—saving them time by cutting out entire sections. The 168 letters received in the Republic mailroom on the subject illustrated that readers did not prefer the timesaving, shrunken Monday version.

It is unclear how Chronicle readers will react to the new editions.  While some critics dislike the shrinkage, others recognize the need to cut costs—and perhaps even save newsroom jobs—at the price of trimming down content.

Source: SF Weekly and Phoenix New Times

A recent survey on newsosaur.blogspot.com revealed that the overwhelming majority of those surveyed preferred at least two editors to ‘vet’ a story before it goes to print.

Of the more than 400 respondents to the online survey as of Mon. evening, 55.2% favored two editors per story, 21.9% advocated three or more editors per story, 20.4% said a single editor was sufficient and a mere 2.5% said reporters didn’t need anyone looking over their shoulders. Clearly, the majority of voters favored multiple editors per story, reported newsosaur.


The question, 'can newspapers afford editors?' again arises as survey results reveal that readers think otherwise. Alan Mutter, a Silicon Valley CEO and former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, questioned the viability of maintaining such a stringent, and costly, editorial process when newspapers are struggling to cut costs and mind the bottom line.

While some readers criticized Mutter’s suggestion that newspapers should reconsider the economic feasibility of sticking to “traditional” methods of producing quality newspaper content at a time when traditional methods are proving too costly, Mutter maintained that he is just the bearer of ‘bad’ news.

“Take aim at the messenger if you like, but please understand that the staggering level of economic inequity is a real and indisputable problem threatening the long-term survival of newspapers as we know (and love) them,” he said.

Source: newsosaur.blogspot.com through Poynter Romanesko

In an increasingly web-based culture of knowledge, it’s perhaps no surprise that websites like Wikipedia.org are now being consulted by credible news sources. Since it’s launch in 2001, Wikipedia has gained notoriety from its entirely user-contributed and edited online encyclopedia.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, has referenced Wikipedia on a piece it featured discussing “turducken” (a bizarre concoction in which a chicken is stuffed into a duck that is stuffed into a turkey). While some critics have judged this sort of Wikipedia usage as un-journalistic, others note, where else would you get information on a turducken? Certainly not from your standard encyclopedia.

However, as a result of its user-generated articles, many news and scholarly organizations immediately write the site off as “false” and “unverifiable.” For example, Mike Leary, managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, recently sent an e-mail to staffers forbidding the use of Wikipedia to “verify facts or augment a story.”

Even the French Agence France Presse banned its reporters from using Facebook and Wikipedia as sources, reported a previous Weblog posting.

Wikipedia’s leadership appears more than aware of the site’s strengths and potential shortcomings. The site features numerous disclaimers, one of which reminds users that "anyone with an Internet connection" can alter the content and cautions, "please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information."

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, suggested that despite these warnings, more journalists are daring to test out the site.

"I think that people are sort of slowly learning how to use Wikipedia, and learning its strengths and its weaknesses," he said. "Of course, any reasonable person has to be up front that there are weaknesses... On the other hand, there are lots of sources that have weaknesses."

Wales thinks the encyclopedia's best journalistic use is for background research rather than as a source to be quoted, the American Journalism Review reported.

The Los Angeles Times has adopted a relatively open stance on the usage of Wikipedia sources. Melissa McCoy, the Times’ deputy managing editor in charge of copy desks, explained that the paper occasionally allows Wikipedia references.

"We're certainly not going to use Wikipedia as a stand-alone news source, but we're not going to exclude it if it takes us somewhere," she said. "If a reporters spots something in there and it makes them do an extra phone call, it's silly not to use it,” McCoy suggested.

With opinions on Wikipedia usage in newsrooms remaining mixed—with most opting to steer clear of the site—papers like The Wall Street Journal and the
are demonstrating that some journalists are discovering the value of the site as a roadmap for further research.


Source: ajr.org through cyberjournalist.net