Recently by Bertrand Pecquerie

On Jan. 4 2007, Carlo Caracciolo acquired around 30% of Libération, the French daily newspaper. He is now the second shareholder behind Edouard de Rothschild (38%) after investing 5 million euros in the newspaper.

Since 8 December 2006, time is over for participating to this year Newsroom Barometer, the first international survey focused on newsroom strategies and the future of the newspaper industry.

The aim of the online international survey was to see the issues through the eyes of editors-in-chief, managing editors, deputy editors and online editors. Thanks to the 435 senior news executives who answered the questionnaire (among them 250 editors in chief or group editors).

Six French regional newspapers got an interview from Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of Interior for their Thursday 30 November edition. And it was an important interview because it was his official declaration of candidature for the next year presidential election as UMP candidate (the rightist / conservative party) against Ségolène Royal, the leftist / socialist candidate.

On Wednesday 29 November afternoon, Libération decided to break the embargo and to publish the whole interview. Everybody can read the interview on the Libération website (in French). A real scoop, but with many ethical issues behind: when a newspaper wants to publish an exclusive interview done by its own reporters or editors, is it possible to another newspaper to publish it?

According to BBC Monitoring, Pro-Putin oligarch Vladimir Potanin, owner of the Prof-Media holding who in the past focused on ownership of print media and avoided TV and the internet, is reversing strategy, selling off his main newspapers and buying TV channels and websites.

Since early 2006, he has bought three small TV channels and in late October bought the big Rambler Media company, which owns the prominent internet news site Lenta.ru and the popular search engine Rambler.ru.

The World Editors Forum, Reuters and the polling firm Zogby International are creating a new poll focused on editors-in-chief around the world and dedicated to editorial quality and the future of journalism.

The "Newsroom Barometer" will provide insight into the changes occurring in newsrooms throughout the world, as seen through the eyes of editors-in-chief and senior news executives. It will measure attitudes towards new media journalism, the role of newspapers in their communities, newsroom investment priorities, pressures on editorial independence, the future outlook for newspapers, and much more.

The results will be presented at the 14th World Editors Forum, to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 3 to 6 June next (http://www.wan-press.org/capetown2007 ). Participation in the survey is limited to newspaper editors and is by invitation only. To request an invitation, contact Bertrand Pecquerie, WEF Director, at:

bpecquerie@wan.asso.fr

This article about the future of the French press was recently published in Le Monde in its Nov. 16th 2006 edition. Since comments can’t be posted by non-members on Le Monde’s website, the following is an extract from the article:

"Everything had started off well: in 1900, France led the world in the distribution of daily newspapers.

Time went by and the rankings changed. The daily French press scores poorly in most European rankings. The Daily Telegraph alone sells more copies than all of the French national news dailies, and France has fewer dailies (81) than Sweden (93), a country with seven times less inhabitants."

Newsroom designers and editorial consultants have the great responsibility at this time of changing the traditional newsroom into an integrated / multimedia newsroom. One of the main risks in this change is that authoritarian trends in newsroom management could prevail over current needs for more freedom of expression and more interaction with readers. And all that, on behalf of "modernity" and "expertise"!.

In French, we say that "le diable se cache dans les détails"", which means that the implementation of a new organisation could have terrible consequences regarding the future of journalism. If we make the wrong choices today, it will be difficult to go back to the newsrooms we know today: a wrong newsroom design will give birth to low quality journalism...

Thanks to Zacki Jabar, Deputy News Editor, The Island Newspaper, (in Sri Lanka) for this posting: a personal view about what happens in Jaffna and the Tamil areas.

"The  North - South divide, a direct result of Sri Lanka's ethnic war between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils has had an impact  on the  attitudes of both its  southern  and northern journalists. Deep scars have been  caused  by a 23 year old war, that has  left  nearly 70,000  people dead  - Sinhalese ,Tamils and Muslims included. However,there are journalists on both sides of the  divide who look at issues objectively, with a view to recording the events that unfold."

Qatar based Arabic language satellite TV network Al-Jazeera is backing the launch of a new pan-Arab newspaper as it seeks to establish the Qatari captal, Doha, as an Arab media hub and end the current Saudi hegemony over regional newspaper industry, the UK's Financial Times newspaper reports.

On 19 October 2006, French broadcaster France 2 won a libel case over accusations it faked a report into the killing of Mohammed Al-Dura, a Palestinian boy whose death in 2000 became a symbol of the uprising known as the second intifada. The Court of First Instance in Paris ordered Philippe Karsenty, director of Media Ratings, a website that comments on the media, to pay France 2 and its Israel correspondent Charles Enderlin symbolic damages of one euro each. Immediately, Media Ratings made an appeal and there will be a new lawsuit.

French media - especially newspapers - supported a lot France Televisions (see former posting) and its journalist during the last six years. The Editors Weblog prefers to ask the other part about the consequences of this - first - judgment and what it reveals about fairness in French media.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised tough action after a newspaper - Bild Zeitung on Wednesday 25 October 2006 - printed pictures that appear to show German soldiers in Afghanistan posing with a skull. Government spokesman Thomas Steg said the chancellor has made it clear that she finds the pictures shocking and disgusting.

Bild's front page screamed: "Shock Photos of German Soldiers" and inside "German Soldiers Desecrate a Dead Person." As yet, Bild is the only confirmed source for the allegations.the paper wrote.

Another personnel reshuffle has taken place in Zhongguo Qingnian Bao, a daily directly under the Communist Youth League [CYL] Central Committee. Chief Editor Li Erliang has been transferred and the vacancy has been filled by Deputy Editor Chen Xiaochuan. Reportedly, the removal of Li Erliang from office is directly related to the Bingdian incident earlier this year.

The transfer is seen as an attempt by the authorities to "put an end" to the incident that evoked the "serious concern" of the media overseas. It has been reported that the authorities are disappointed by the "trouble" caused by Li Erliang and his failure to properly handle the incident.

According to Reuters, Oleg Orlov, a leading human rights campaigner and head of the rights group Memorial, yesterday resigned as a Kremlin adviser saying he disagreed with Vladimir Putin's opinions about the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The Russian president had called the contract-style killing of the outspoken journalist a "disgusting crime" but added that the murder had done more harm to Russia than her reporting ever had - a statement implying, said Politkovskaya's backers, that she had been harming the country by uncovering official corruption, especially in Chechnya.

 Source: Reuters through Media Guardian

The World Association of Newspapers today condemned the 'shocking murder' of , the Russian journalist. Ms Politkovskaya, a reporter for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, was found dead Saturday afternoon from a bullet wound in the elevator of the building where she lived in Moscow.

A new study by Universal McCann, "The New 'Digital Divide', How the New Generation of Digital Consumers are Transforming Mass Communication," concludes that consumers are increasingly relying on non-traditional platforms for entertainment, news, social interactions, shopping and other daily activities.

The executive summary reports that there was a time when music was the great divide between generations. Today, technology has become the source of the "generation gap". A younger, tech-savvy segment is adopting new media platforms, with the 16-34 age group leading the way in socializing.