Articles by Elena Perotti

‘The last issue of the New York Times’ was published by Italian daily La Stampa deputy editor Vittorio Sabadin on January 19. Two weeks later the book was sold out.

Sabadin retraces the history of the challenges that newspapers have faced in the last 30 years, and their responses. The author provides the reader with working solutions and with the reasons for their success. He comes to a conclusion that is rather surprising when worded by a journalist:  “It is not a tragedy if the printed newspaper dies; what needs to be saved and will last is good journalism”.

Editorsweblog brings you Sabadin’s most relevant insights.

Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport is a healthy newspaper. January 2007 official data show that Gazzetta is the leading newspaper in the Italian market in terms of readership figures, with 3,603,000 daily readers. The general interest daily La Repubblica ranks second with a public of 3,015,000. Surveys also show that Gazzetta is the most read newspaper among Italians younger than 34. Since 1st February director Carlo Verdelli has scored a new record: his newspaper is the first sports daily to provide its readers with a selection of non-sport news.

This year the Editors Weblog is rewarding the loyalty of its readers with an exceptional offer for the annual Editors Forum (see below). But the condition is: you need to register before March 31!

The World Editors Forum holds on 24 and 25 January its very first Master Class specially designed for Arab editors in chief. Twenty Editors-in-Chief and senior news executives from leading newspapers of the Middle East will discuss with outstanding speakers of “How to successfully reshape Arab newspapers”. Editorsweblog will regularly report from the Master Class, held in both Arabic and English. In the meantime, find the program below.

In Cairo, Egypt, on January 24 and 25 2007, the World Editors Forum will hold its very first Master Class specially designed for Arab editors in chief. The topic of the Master Class will be “How to successfully reshape Arab newspapers”.

After TV star comic actor Walid Hassan Djahaz was murdered earlier this month, media observers got interested in the reality of Iraqi cartoonists too. Today’s issue of French Le Monde interviews Yasser Abdulrahim and Khoudair Al-Hemyare, who have published cartoons in Iraqi newspapers since Saddam Hussein was in power.

Reporters Without Borders voiced “surprise and concern” at the decision by a court in The Hague to jail two De Telegraaf journalists. Bart Mos and Joost de Haas were convicted to 2 days in prison earlier this week for refusing to unveil the name of one of their sources in a criminal trial. After paying the 48 hours sentence, a new court will decide whether the two editors should stay in prison for another 12 days.

The first English-language paper to be published in Palestine was launched earlier this week. The monthly, entitled The Palestine Times, is the first non-arabic Palestinian newspaper since Al Fajr was shut down in the 1990s.

The Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, is about to release a free program supposedly capable of bypassing Web censorship. The project called Psiphon has been Beta tested since this summer, and will be launched on December 1st.

Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist who was imprisoned after the American search engine company Yahoo provided information to the Chinese authorities that led to his arrest,  has been awarded the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize of the World Association of Newspapers.

Editor of weekly newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam Kamal Al-Olufi will spend one year in jail for having printed an image of the website of Danish Jylland Posten, where some of the famous Mohammed cartoons were visible. The paper has been ordered to stop publication for six months.

Gazprom Media, a division of state-owned gas producer Gazprom, persists in its newspaper shopping activity. This months objective is Komsomolskaya Pravda, one the most widely read newspapers in Russia. “Gazprom Media is in the process of striking a deal”, said sspokeswoman Irina Zenkova. Komsomolskaya Pravda has a circulation of about 800,000 copies, and its readership is said to exceed 2,000,000.

The most important Italian economic daily, Il Sole 24 Ore, published yesterday the first issue of its free paper 24 Minuti (24 Minutes). The paper’s business plan predicts that profitability will be reached in three years, a result that no other Italian free paper (Leggo, Metro and City), has attained. 24 Minuti will supposedly collect about 20 million euros in advertisements next year. The paper is distributed in two editions, Milan and Rome, with an overall print run of 500,000 copies, 250,000 per city.

After holding a 6-hour party in the streets of Torino, the Italian daily La Stampa hit the newsstands this past weekend with a renewed design.  With an investment of 70 million euros, the fourth largest Italian newspaper has switched to a Berliner format and and has become full-colour in an effort to gain readership. After the paper's main shareholder FIAT considered selling the paper in 2004, new editor-in-chief Giulio Anselmi and young chairman of the car company’s editorial division Itedi John Elkann teamed-up aiming to challenge the success of Il Corriere della Sera and Repubblica.

Paris based organization Reporters Sans Frontières, or Reporters Without Borders, recently released its annual list of countries deemed “enemies of the Internet”. This years’ document counts 13 entries, including China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and North Korea. Compared to last year Reporters Without Borders removed Libya, Maldives and Nepal, but added Egypt due to the recent imprisonments of bloggers.