Recently by Liam Berkowitz

The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News will consolidate some newsroom jobs in order to cut costs, sharing photographers and merging the copy desk. The two papers share the same owner (Philadelphia Media Holdings), press and website.

Managers overseeing the merger process are meeting with the union to discuss the changes. Henry Holcomb, president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, says the union wants to ensure both papers retain editorial independence.

"The reader wants two editorial voices," Holcomb said.

Source: ABC News through IFRA Executive News Services

The largest media center in Olympics history was formally opened yesterday in Beijing.

The Main Press Center (MPC), accessible to media with official accreditation, holds 971 workstations, a majority of which are "equipped with electrical and network interface features to provide media crews with optimal communication capabilities."

The MPC also boasts a bank, post office and pharmacy, among other amenities.




Click here to view a slideshow of images from the MPC.








A workstation in the newly established Main Press Center.


Source: Guardian - Greenslade

The Minneapolis Star Tribune (the Strib) published an editorial June 29 advocating for offshore drilling - an about-face for an editorial board that has traditionally taken a staunch environmentalist stance.

Editors are allowed to change their minds, says the Minnesota Post's David Brauer, but there was more to the reversal than caprice: Avista, the company that owns the Strib, is "heavily invested" in offshore drilling.

Brauer says the Strib blundered by failing to disclose the potential conflict of interest.

 "Writing a pro-drilling editorial isn't beyond the pale; however, not acknowledging the very specific core conflict of interest is," he writes.

The editorial attempted to ease public concern about the environmental effects of offshore drilling, while touting its potential economic benefits.

According to Brauer, Avista has seven energy holdings, including an "undeniable" offshore drilling concentration, and should have mentioned the connection in a disclaimer.

"Let's face it, if Strib reporters were writing about another company or powerful pol [politician], they'd eagerly note this level of entanglement," Brauer writes.

"The Strib editorial page should hold itself to at least that standard, which doesn't demand an actual conflict but merely its perception."

Source: The Minnesota Post through Poynter

Nokia is teaming with two South African universities to sponsor a project in which students will create mobile journalism ('mojo') packages. Students at the University of Witwatersrand (UW) and CityVarsity will use 'mojo' broadcasting kits, featuring the Nokia N95 handset, to capture video, audio, and images.

"This is one of the first projects in the world to use mobile phones as the tools for gathering stories and as the platforms that the audience will watch them on," says Indra de Lanerolle, a lecturer at UW's journalism program.



The project began in mid-June and will run until October. Students are expected to produce new material at least once daily.

"The challenge we are setting our students is to use these great storytelling devices to produce content that their peers will want to watch and download," says de Lanerolle.

Related: The cost-efficiency of mobile journalism

Source: Sangonet, 24.com

Posterous, a new blogging platform powered by email, could allow newspapers to attract more users to their blogging communities.

According to Poynter's Paul Bradshaw, Posterous is "fantastically intuitive, quick, and easy".

Bradshaw gives several examples to demonstrate Posterous' user-friendly platform: create a Posterous blog by sending an email to post@posterous.com; email photos, video, or audio to Posterous and the files will be uploaded in a posting; check blog comments through automatic email notifications.

"It's a very new service, but I think Posterous could become a hugely popular blogging tool, as well as a great tool for blogging on the move," he writes.

Source: Poynter Online

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published a guide for journalists on covering the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The guide emphasizes the need for journalists to protect their Chinese sources.

"You will leave, but they will stay," said Minky Worden, director of media at HRW.

The guide addresses the Chinese government's regulations imposed on foreign journalists, and offers tips to elude government censorship. It also teaches journalists to identify different levels of security forces by uniform.

The guide will be available in French, English, Spanish, and German.

Source: Agence France Presse

A second daily freesheet will launch in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires: La Mañana will be released August 1 with an initial circulation of 250,000.

Its publisher, Sergio Szpolski, is the owner of several other Spanish-language publications, including the Spanish version of Newsweek and Buenos Aires Economico. La Razon, published by the Clarin group, is the only other freesheet currently available in Buenos Aires.

La Mañana is the latest freesheet to debut in South America. The Brazilian freesheet Destak Rio was recently launched in Rio de Janeiro.

Source: NewspaperInnovation.net through IFRA Executive News Services

Newspapers are making several preparations in anticipation of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, trimming staff and putting increased focus on their online operations.

The Associated Press will provide newspapers with a service called Summer Games Plus, made possible by a deal with NBC that allows the AP to publish NBC-produced context.

According to New York Times Sports Editor Tom Jolly, the Times will utilize the AP's service "because we wanted the ability to fully cover things like lead-up events, lesser events we might not staff, and mostly agate events."
 
The Tribune Company's papers, which include the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun, will share reporters to provide the widest range of coverage.

The Boston Globe is among the papers sharpening its web coverage. According to sports editor Joe Sullivan, the paper is bringing "a full-time multimedia person...in charge solely of producing products for the Web."

The Globe will also bring a Chinese reporter "to help with the language and cultural stuff."

Check out some past coverage of the Beijing Olympics:

Human Rights Watch Guide for Reporting
BBC Coverage
Journalists Manage Expectations

Source: Editor and  Publisher

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, says his document-leaking site is helping journalists change the world.

"Imagine a world where companies and government must keep the public, or their employees, or both, happy with their plans, and behavior," Assange says. "That is the world we are striving to create."

Wikileaks has been responsible for the leaking of several major news stories: the U.S. military's operating manuals for its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; lists of U.S. munitions in Iraq; reports of the looting of Kenya by former president Daniel Arap Moi.

For investigative journalists, this powerful new resource has the potential to provide an endless stream of stories. Assange is beginning to tweak Wikileaks to better accommodate journalists, pre-releasing selected documents to reporters. He is also considering making Wikileaks a subscription service for journalists.

Though Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy Project, is critical of Wikileaks' indiscriminate release policy, he admits Wikileaks could be a powerful tool for journalists.

"Working reporters can use all the help and sources they can get, and Wikileaks does have a track record of getting their hands on documents that other people haven't," Aftergood says. "It also has the potential to introduce another layer of editorial judgment and I believe in editorial judgment on matters of confidentiality."

Source: Wired

Stephen Glover of the Independent does not deny newspapers' bleak economic condition, but believes the industry is "not as troubled" as some think it to be.

Glover opens with a stream of negative information concerning newspapers: plummeting profits, battered circulation numbers, and increased layoffs. He says, however, these numbers are more fairly attributed to cyclical economic conditions rather than to the decline of the newspaper.

"No one could deny that there are problems ahead but my message is that the whole picture for newspapers is not as dire as fevered minds in the City appear to believe," Glover writes.

As proof Glover offers examples of several newspaper organizations experiencing financial success, such as News International and Pearson. These organizations, he says, "should not be tarred with the same brush."

And though Glover admits some papers "have structural problems", he insists investors are overreacting.
 
"The sudden level of panic is hardly justified," he writes.

Source: The Independent

Thanks to its precocious reporting, Taraf, a small, Turkish daily paper launched last November, has found itself at the center of a brewing political storm.

In its inaugural year, Taraf published a chain of stories divulging the army's efforts to overthrow the government's ruling party.

Taraf broke the news of a secret meeting between Osman Paksut, Turkey's second-ranking judge on the constitutional court, and General Ilker Basbug, its land-force commander. The paper also published a document outlining "plans by the general staff to mobilize public opinion against the government", according to the Economist.

"Taraf has become a standard-bearer for the rising number of young and increasingly vocal Turks who say the people, not the generals, should determine the country's future."

Despite the paper's success - circulation is at 24,000 copies-per-day and growing - some fear it could be shut down. Nokta, a Turkish weekly, was forced to close in 2004 after publishing sensitive military material.

But Deputy Managing Editor Yasemin Congar isn't worried about the paper's future. As public outrage over the revelations swells, Taraf is settling into its spot in the limelight.

"We are changing the rules the mainstream media work by in this country," he said.

Source: The Economist

UK journalists and photographers may be subject to police monitoring and restriction from covering public events, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports.

According to Home Secretary Jaqui Smith, the Home Office has no guidelines on photography in public places, but "decisions may be made locally to restrict or monitor photography in reasonable circumstances."

"It is for the local Chief Constable to decide how his or her officers and employees should best balance the rights to freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and the need for public protection," Smith said.

National Union of Journalists General Secretary Jeremy Dear says the Home Office is not doing enough to clearly define the limits of monitoring and restriction.

"Whilst the government can say these are operational issues for the police," Dear said, "It should be made clear that the routine surveillance of journalists is unacceptable and an infringement of media freedom."

Source: HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk

Though journalists and publishers' concerns over shrinking ad revenue are warranted, says the Guardian's Roy Greenslade, the future still belongs to journalists. Greenslade believes that economic hardship is not terminal - newspapers will adjust - but the mass media era, he says, "may well be over."

"We have to envisage a future with an entirely new business model based on smaller returns that will fund a small, high quality staff, probably serving niche markets," Greenslade writes.

Greenslade cites several studies confirming newspapers' difficult financial situations, but says journalists should approach the numbers with a dose of pragmatism.

"We have to admit to ourselves first that things will never be as they were in the last millennium," he writes.

Greenslade admits that any change in the newsroom will take time to adjust to. Journalists, however, shouldn't panic.

"The journalistic future does not belong to ailing publishing companies," he writes. "It belongs to us."

Source: The Guardian - Greenslade

Bloggers in China are taking creative measures, like shuffling words and posting screenshots of text, to circumvent government censorship.

According to CNet.com's Graham Webster, the word shuffling is particularly effective because of the Chinese language's ideographic writing system, which makes it "easier to read in odd inversions than most alphabetic languages."

"Because Chinese splits words into meaning-based units rendered in characters," Webster explains, "Reading reverse text is more akin to 'bass ackwards' than 'sdrawkcab ssa.'"

The screenshot method, Webster says, is also effective - "censors aren't very good at parsing text in a JPEG file."

Webster applauds the "determination of some people in China to exchange information" despite government censorship.

Source: CNet.com

Destak, a freesheet that debuted in Sao Paulo two years ago, will launch a similar version in Rio de Janeiro. Destak Rio will launch next Monday, and will be distributed at subways, schools, hospitals, and other public areas.

The Rio edition will have a print circulation of 80,000. Destak Sao Paulo has a circulation of 150,000. Destak is owned by Brazilian entrepreneur André Jordan and Portuguese media group Cofina.

The freesheet form is gaining prevalence in the newspaper world. Check out some stories related to the freesheet:

New Trinity Mirror freesheet
Canadian journalists protest by publishing freesheet
Thailand's first freesheet

Source: NewspaperInnovation.net through IFRA Executive News Service