Editors Weblog: Search Results

Google's split from China: Taking a stand or harming journalists?

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 19, 2010 at 5:05 PM

No Google search: It's an unthinkable scenario for much of the world, but one that China is likely to face next month as the business shuts down its search engine in the notoriously conservative nation. Although Google has not confirmed the pullout, China Business News reported today that the company is likely to announce its decision to remove its search capacities from the nation on Monday.

The decision comes as a response to increasing conflict between the Chinese government and the Internet business. Google suffered an attack on their technological interface in December that has been attributed to hackers based in China, and the search site has been subject to mandatory censorship from the Chinese government.

George Brock on journalism, paywalls, and the future of news media

Posted by Maria Conde on March 19, 2010 at 3:03 PM

With much pessimism in journalism, from decreased advertising income and a lack of model for online publishing, the news media is in crisis.

But, does that mean news is over?

Not exactly, according to George Brock, former president of the World Editors Forum, current board member of WEF, and professor and head of Journalism at City University London, who recently gave an inaugural lecture on March 17 at City University on where journalism is right now and where it's heading.

His lecture not only explains what developments have led to the current state of media, but what to do to ensure news media survival "for they are in need of help."

Embracing technology: how CNN and the NYT are fighting back

Posted by Maria Conde on March 18, 2010 at 5:09 PM

With all the recent developments in media consumption on mobile devices, from state of the art e-readers and the sleek iPad to the advent of countless newspaper iPhone apps, it is no wonder technology has taken center stage among news companies.

Mercedes Bunz from Media Guardian spoke to executives from The New York Times and CNN, companies who have built remarkable online presences, about how to keep up with technology companies who usually figure among the biggest sources for news on the Internet.

BBC Global News and Channel M suffer restructuring, cutbacks

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 17, 2010 at 4:18 PM

Despite promising growth forecasts made by many in the industry, staffing cuts at news organizations big and small indicate that the news media industry is not yet out of the woods.

Today, Journalism.co.uk reported that BBC's Global News division is undergoing restructuring that will result in the elimination of a number of management positions. And smaller but still significant Channel M, the Manchester regional TV station owned by Guardian Media Group (GMG), will be losing 29 positions--a reduction of 88 percent.

The BBC will be losing a laundry list of high-level positions, including the directorial positions of BBC World News, BBC World Service and BBC World Service English.

What journalists should know about Ushahidi

Posted by Maria Conde on March 16, 2010 at 5:37 PM

A piece published on The New York Times posed a provocative question: could wiki technology help find Osama Bin Laden?

The answer is maybe. If any Pakistani or Afghan were armed with a mobile phone to send text messages to authorities with anonymous tips on where to look. If the information they sent could then be processed and scattered on a map, over time, a pattern of plots would hopefully show a number of reports in one area and lead to organized action and eventual capture of the terrorist leader.

This kind of Internet mapping tool based on anonymous tips and journalistic reports already exists. It is called, Ushahidi or testimony in Swahili, and its powerful software could help journalists cover news.

Twitter misinformation leads to false report of marital issues between Sarkozy and Bruni

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 15, 2010 at 6:29 PM

Although checking sources is a fundamental rule of journalism, with the increasing pervasiveness of social media sites like Twitter, the temptation to discard this old rule can become too strong for some journalists to resist.

As the Press Gazette's Dominick Ponsford posted on The Wire, reporters for various newpapers in the UK used Twitter as a source for an article covering rumors of marital difficulties between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni. The Independent's Steven Glover reprimanded the reporters for their failure to fact-check.

"A Twitter rumour alleging adultery on the part of a home-grown politician would not be taken up so eagerly by British newspapers," he said. "We apply more stringent standards to rumours about our own politicians."

News Corp exec: other revenue streams can coexist with paywall

Posted by Maria Conde on March 11, 2010 at 4:50 PM

The "Year of the Paywall" is upon us and in a time where most newspapers seem to be gearing up to build one around their websites - the New York Times and the News Corporation Wapping publications are just a couple of examples - some executives believe there is still room for other revenue models to coexist with paid content.

The head of digital media at News Corporation, Jonathan Miller, told delegates at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that "dual revenue streams" are likely to co-exist as media organizations try ways of making money online, according to Guardian.

Facebook: A place to share articles on the weekend

Posted by Robert Eisenhart on March 9, 2010 at 12:49 PM

A recent survey of Facebook user habits by DanZarrella found that users are more likely to share articles with friends over the weekend than the week, even though less news is typically published during this time.

Condé Nast's magazines get ready for the iPad

Posted by Maria Conde on March 2, 2010 at 6:20 PM

Magazine publisher, Condé Nast, is getting ready to create iPad versions for its Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Glamour magazines, according to The New York Times.

While GQ will have a tablet-friendly version ready by April, Wired's version will come in June, with the New Yorker and Glamour getting their iPad versions by summer, said an internal memorandum on Monday.

The New York-based magazine publisher is no stranger to mobile technology. GQ has an iPhone app (pictured on the left) that sold over 15,000 copies last January.

To charge or not to charge: what newspapers can learn from airlines

Posted by Maria Conde on March 2, 2010 at 4:30 PM

An advertising downturn has put newspapers between a rock and a hard place, forcing many of them to take difficult decisions to stay afloat.

While some have said newspapers could learn a thing or two from the bottled water industry in getting people to pay by selling convenience, others have speculated that gadgets such as, e-readers and tablets, could revitalize newspaper sales in the same way iTunes and the iPod revived the music industry.

But an article from Forbes magazine offers yet another interesting analogy. This article likens the challenges that the newspaper industry is facing today to the one the airline industry has faced and dealt with: "getting customers used to paying for content and getting the industry used to charging for it."

Spot.Us unveils new features and design

Posted by Trafton Kenney on February 25, 2010 at 12:24 PM

Community-funded news site Spot.Us introduced several new features and a streamlined design yesterday in response to user feedback. The updated format provides readers with a more interactive role in the journalism they help fund. Among the changes are story updates, the ability to create "assignments" for other users, and a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

The idea behind Spot.Us is simple: Stories begin when readers submit tips or journalist pitch stories. A price is set for the proposed article and Spot.Us lets the public donate to fund expenses for reporting.

MPs announce findings in NOTW phone-hacking report

Posted by Trafton Kenney on February 24, 2010 at 11:55 AM

A British parliamentary committee issued their much-anticipated report on The News of the World today, accusing top executives at the newspaper of covering up the scale of the phone-hacking scandal.

In the 167-page report, MPs claimed it was "inconceivable" that Clive Goodman, the journalist convicted of hacking into the voicemails of royal aides in 2007, acted alone as a "rogue reporter" as the newspaper has previously argued.

Non-profits and eyewitnesses: the changing face of journalism awards

Posted by Maria Conde on February 23, 2010 at 9:10 PM

T. Christian Miller of the independent, non-profit news organization ProPublica recently won the prestigious 2010 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. Editor & Publisher reports that it was a collaboration between The Los Angeles Times and the non-profit news outfit that produced Miller's winning report into abuses of insurance coverage for private contractors in war zones.

Just last week, the winners of the George Polk Awards in Journalism - usually given to courageous and skillful reporting - were announced, NPR's On the Media explains. Among the usual big media winners was a surprising win - the anonymous Iranians or Iranian who captured the death of the 26-year old protestor Neda Agha-Soltan on tape in the violent aftermath of the Islamic Republic's contested elections of June 2009.

AOL's 'newsroom of the future' tells journalists what readers want and what brings in ad revenue

Posted by Emma Heald on February 22, 2010 at 4:30 PM

AOL is building a "newsroom of the future," reported BusinessWeek. What this means in practice is that AOL is using software to determine which articles readers might be interested in and then giving journalists detailed data on how much traffic and advertising revenue these articles generate, BusinessWeek said.

More than 500 full-time journalists now work for AOL, which has traditionally been a distributor rather than a creator of content. 150 were hired last year, and according to BusinessWeek, "As demand dwindles for the dial-up Internet service that made AOL (AOL) a tech powerhouse in the 1990s, Chief Executive Tim Armstrong wants to jump-start growth by creating original online content and selling ads to appear with it."

BBC to launch free and official iPhone apps

Posted by Helena Humphrey on February 17, 2010 at 5:48 PM

The BBC has confirmed it is to launch three iPhone applications from April 2010, with versions for the Blackberry and phones running Google's Android software becoming available soon thereafter. The announcement was made today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The apps will be free of charge and provide news and sport coverage from the BBC website, including audio and video elements.

The Guardian reports that the News app will be available from April and the Sport app in May. There will be UK and international versions of each.

Iceland as a "journalism haven"?

Posted by Trafton Kenney on February 15, 2010 at 1:23 PM

Some Icelandic MPs, with the help of non-profit website WikiLeaks, are hoping to turn their small island in the North Atlantic Ocean into a destination for investigative journalists with a new proposal to be submitted to Iceland's parliament on February 16th.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange has been in Iceland for the past two months, consulting parliamentarians on the bipartisan Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) that hopes to turn Iceland into a "journalism haven," he told the BBC. The proposal would implement some of the strongest legal protection in the world for the press and its sources.

FT Chinese journalists threatened with redundancy

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 15, 2010 at 12:52 PM

Four Chinese journalists at the Financial Times are faced with redundancy if they do not return to China on half their current salaries, according to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Two of the four journalists, who produce a specialist Chinese language website for the paper called FT Chinese, are British citizens. Their terms and conditions are already "inferior" to other journalists at the newspaper, the NUJ said. The union branch has voted to demand the threat of redundancies be lifted and to ballot for industrial action if necessary.

Jump in web audience for The New York Times

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 15, 2010 at 11:21 AM

The New York Times' website has moved back up to fifth spot on the Nielsen Online rankings of top current events websites, Editor and Publisher reports.

In the January rankings, the NYTimes.com had the fifth-highest number of unique users at 20.5 million, two spots up from seventh place in December when it had 14.8 million.

The top spot was taken by CNN Digital Network with 40.6 million users, overtaking Yahoo! News, which managed just under 40 million.

What journalists should know about Google's Buzz

Posted by Maria Conde on February 12, 2010 at 5:10 PM

In a move to step up its social feature repertoire, Google Inc., released its new social media product, Buzz, this week. This new networking tool that mixes some of the programs Google has created over the years and could prove very useful for journalists, according to Poynter Online.

However, these enhanced capabilities could come at a price for news outlets.

Iran: reporting restrictions for anniversary celebrations

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 12, 2010 at 11:16 AM

Many journalists have been denied visas for Iran in the lead-up to the Islamic Revolution anniversary celebrations, and those in Iran have been told not to report on opposition protests, The Guardian reports.

The internet and phones have been interfered with and the few foreign correspondents in Iran operate under tight restrictions. Although the Iranian government says that over 200 foreign journalists have been approved to cover the event, this consisted of government minders escorting them to the official rally at Tehran's Azadi square. Exiled Iranian journalists warned their colleagues not to go.

Glacier Media and National Post president line up bids for CanWest

Posted by Trafton Kenney on February 11, 2010 at 12:10 PM

Consortiums led by community publisher Glacier Media and National Post President Paul Godfrey are both preparing bids to buy the newspapers of bankrupt media giant CanWest Global Communications, the Globe and Mail reported Wednesday.

CanWest Limited Partners newspaper division owns 35 small community papers and eleven metropolitan dailies, including the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and Edmonton Journal. They also control Canada's second most circulated national newspaper, the National Post. The pending sale was described as the "largest auction of media assets ever undertaken in Canada" by Grant Robertson and Susan Krashinsky of the Globe and Mail.

Obama and the White House press corps

Posted by Emma Heald on February 11, 2010 at 11:27 AM

Is Obama trying to avoid the White House press corps? Articles published last week and this in the New York Times and Washington Post suggest that the president's team has been less than willing of late to organize meetings with those news outlets who have traditionally covered the

"President Obama hasn't held a full-scale news conference since July," said WP's Howard Kurtz. Rather, said NYT's Peter Baker, he has "taken questions from unemployed workers in Ohio, students in Florida and a cancer survivor in New Hampshire. He took questions from YouTube users, Senate Democrats and even House Republicans." But not from the White House press Corps, and this decision "is no accident," according to Kurtz.

Citizenside and Metro International team up for citizen journalism

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 10, 2010 at 4:07 PM

The Paris-based citizen photojournalism agency Citizenside has partnered with Metro International to launch a new website for citizen reporting.

The site, MetroReporter, allows readers to upload and share their news photos and video. All contributions are vetted by editors before being posted. If they are published in print or on Metro's primary site, the member is paid between €10 and €70. Membership of MetroReporter is free and Metro has agreed to purchase and publish user contributions on a regular basis. This means that an international publication has plans to regularly pay its audience to contribute content, rather than expecting user-generated content to be free.

New AP stories hosted on Google

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 10, 2010 at 11:08 AM

New stories from the Associated Press (AP) have started showing up on Google again, after a seven-week hiatus, The Wall Street Journal reports.

New AP stories have not been hosted on Google since just before Christmas. The two companies have been in negotiations to continue the publication of AP articles on Google News, an arrangement that has been in place since 2007. It is understood that AP's efforts to more closely monitor the flow of articles to and through Google and other portals have impeded progress.

Study looks into what news articles you share and why

Posted by Maria Conde on February 9, 2010 at 5:14 PM

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have extensively studied The New York Times list of most e-mailed articles, checking every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles, and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page, The New York Times reports.

Results from the study show that NYTimes readers have exalted tastes - seeking to inspire awe in their friends, colleagues, and family by choosing to e-mail positive articles over negative ones, and long, intellectually challenging articles over short and shocking ones.

Results matching “for place in t”

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