Results matching “follows guardian in publish”

Two recent university graduates have decided to stop updating the fake Twitter account they created for UK foreign secretary David Miliband, the Guardian reported. The fake account attracted attention when several news outlets including the Guardian, AFP, the Times and the Telegraph picked up the Miliband impersonators' tribute to Michael Jackson, once again highlighting the need for verification when journalists deal with social media.

The quote "Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael" was published in several papers. Rory Crew and Knud Noelle claim that they were not aiming to trick the media, but think that journalists "learned something" about not taking such things at face value. They wrote in an email to the Guardian that "It does highlight the importance of the verification of sources, which is clearly becoming more difficult in the web 2.0 era." Crew expressed disappointment in the media and said he believes the mistakes were made as a result of newspapers cutting sub editors and hence falling behind on fact checking.

The media coverage of the shock death of Michael Jackson has served to highlight press dynamics, raising interesting questions concerning the nature of breaking news reporting, the cult of the celebrity and the relationship between newspapers and their online news rivals. Has the fact that most newspapers were delayed in the initial reporting of the death emphasised the widening gulf between print and digital channels of breaking news? Conversely, has the death been exploited by the printed press as a facile, reader guaranteeing hit?

The news of the performer's death, in terms of rumour, confirmation and reaction has been overwhelmingly 'digital' in expression. The scoop belonged to the Los Angeles based celebrity website, TMZ, which confirmed the death an hour after it aired whispers of a suspected heart attack. The reporting was rapid fire: time of death: 2.26pm, LA time, time of update: 2.44pm. 

Following the Iranian election on 12 June, which both sides claim to have won, Iranians and the rest of the world wants to know the truth about the results, as well as wanting to follow protests and other developments. But this has proved more difficult than anticipated given the restrictions on reporting, both by Iranians and foreigners, and the occasion proved to be an opportunity for citizen journalism to show its value.

Reporting restrictions

Mainstream media has been suffering from severe restrictions in Iran, even tougher than during last year's Zimbabwean elections, foreign editor for Channel 4 News Ben de Pear told the Guardian. Foreign journalists first had to get special press cards and were closely monitored, then on the Tuesday following the election, foreign journalists were banned from reporting on the streets. The BBC's correspondent has been asked to leave the country after the broadcaster was accused of supporting rioters. And it is not just foreign reporters who are suffering: now even reporters of Iranian nationality are being confined to their offices. According to Reporters without Borders (RSF), 26 Iranian journalists, editors and bloggers have been imprisoned since June 14.

Citizen video becomes a symbol

In the absence of an abundance of professional reporters, amateurs have stepped up. One of the most watched and discussed videos to come out of the tragedy, and one which is emblamatic of the role of citizen journalism in reporting from Iran, is that of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian woman who was walking near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators when she was shot. The video has prompted international outcry and the girl's death has since come to represent the tragedy of the conflict, a "symbol of the anti-government movement," according to the New York Times. It was taken, not by a reporter with a camera, but by a bystander on a mobile phone, and posted on Facebook and YouTube after the man sent the 40-second clip to a friend who then forwarded to friends and news sites in Europe and the US.

A Twitter revolution?

Talk of a Twitter revolution swiftly spread as Iranians and others in the country used the social network Twitter to get their news out to the world, and it has been used extensively by the media. Twitter is particularly effective as a method of spreading news as it is harder to censor, given that it can be accessed via various different applications on computers or mobile phones, as well as via the website. #IranElection has been the top trending topic on Twitter for days, with thousands of updates an hour using the hash tag to get included in the feed and direct interested observers to text, image or video content. Following a request from US President Obama, Twitter decided to delay maintenance to the site in light of the important role it was playing in keeping people informed, carrying it out during Tehran's night rather than daylight hours.

Twitter is clearly not immune to censorship, however. The following message has been passed around Facebook over the last few days amongst Anglo-Saxon users:

"FREEDOM OF SPEECH: If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on."

Amateur issues

Clearly, there are problems with relying on information generated by amateurs. Benoit Hervieu of RSF told Editor & Publisher that one of the main problems is that because many people want to remain anonymous, it is harder to verify information. And indeed, it seems that much false information has been circulating. After Twitter was hailed as the voice of the revolution, a backlash quickly emerged asserting its unreliability. There is always the possibility, after all, that interested parties might deliberately try to misinform, or might be so personally involved in the debate that they cannot maintain impartiality. And one of the disadvantages of a campaign such as that mentioned above, encouraging international Twitter users to set their locations to Iran, could end up misleading journalists searching for information on the network.

So how are citizen journalism agencies dealing with these risks and challenges?

Checking for reliability is a top priority for those trying to sell their content to traditional media companies. Citizen journalism agency Demotix has obtained many images from freelancers and amateurs portraying events in Iran, including two pictures which have appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Demotix COO Jonathan Tepper emphasised that Demotix understands the importance of reliability of sources and "believes that serious citizen journalism needs to take all the ethics of traditional reporting and build on them, such as verifiability and protection of sources." All submissions go through a vetting procedure which includes looking at the metadata in photos.

Citizenside, which specializes in citizen photo journalism, has managed to get hold of some good images which have been published by mainstream media outlets, but co-founder Matthieu Stefani said that it has been "really hard" both to establish contacts in Iran and to receive images from these contacts. "The big issue is that most of the contributions we've received were sent through proxies, with most of the time no way to contact our contributors as cellphone networks don't work really well," he explained, and therefore his team is extremely cautious about what they accept. He said that the photos that the agency has been pushing most to its clients were received from known and trusted members in the UK who were sent them by close relatives in Iran.

The Observers, a project run by TV news station France 24 combining citizen journalism with professional editing, has been active in its coverage of Iran. Founder of the initiative Julien Pain told the EW that what makes their coverage particularly useful is the fact that they already had trusted contacts in Iran before the election, and hence they have fewer problems with establishing the reliability of sources of information, particularly when using proxy servers. "We worked with these people before the situation was tense," he explained, "so we know them." He gave the example of a girl who has recorded a video describing how the censorship works, with whom he and his team had already worked. Prior to any major election, Pain added, the Observers tries to enlarge its network of contacts, which in this case proved particularly useful. Even using trusted contacts, Pain said that the Observers still cross-checks information as far as possible.

Amra Tareen, CEO of AllVoices, a project that aggregates professional and amateur news on one site, has a different approach: publish everything and let the reader decide. She said that the site has received more than 1,000 submissions, in English and Farsi, since the election, gathered via proxy servers as the AllVoices site is blocked. She stressed that submissions have tackled both sides of the issue and that this is one of the most crucial aspects of citizen journalism and of her site in particular: that anyone can be heard. "we're neutral and anyone can have their voices heard on our platform--that's key for the credibility of citizen journalism; bias will undermine the concept and keep citizen journalism and citizen journalists from ever being taken as seriously as they ought to be."

Generally it seems that such a situation where media access is severely reduced has provided citizen journalism with a significant opportunity to prove its importance. Tareen commented that "we really want to use this opportunity to show that Cit-J is not only about massive amount of non-qualified content, but also good "pro-am" work that we have been promoting for years now," said Stefani.

Getting pictures on the front page of a major daily is likely to be a huge boost to Demotix in terms of fame and credibility. Tepper was clear that Demotix is trying to supplement mainstream media rather than replace it, but said that "we think our reporting can sometimes be more accurate than the mainstream media" because "most of our users record what is known to them, in their city or country" and therefore "Demotix images provide a more accurate representation of the subject from a local perspective."

For the Observers, the situation has provided an opportunity for collaboration with the TV station on an unprecedented level. Usually, Pain said, he would publish a video on the Observers website and offer it to TV, now he has been working more with programming at France 24 to supply them with videos first before putting them online, to offer a period of exclusivity. "We've really moved a step forward here," he said. "We have learnt how to work together, and it's not going to be the same any more."

Although amateur 'citizen journalists' do not have the knowledge or expertise to analyse developments the way a professional journalist could, they can certainly witness and record events, and when traditional media coverage is limited, this is a valuable service. In terms of providing a true news service, amateur contributions must be verified so that readers can trust them, which is a priority for citizen journalism agencies. As opportunities continue to arise for citizen journalism to prove its value, the mainstream media is likely to incorporate it with increasing frequency and develop new ways of working closer with citizen journalism agencies.

The Daily Telegraph will publish uncensored details of each of the 646 MP's expenses in a free supplement along with its print edition on Sat., June 20.

The much-anticipated, 68-page magazine supplement, The Complete Expenses Files, arrives just two days after the House of Commons published its own heavily censored list of MPs' expenses on June 18. The list of the members of Parliament and their respective budget, allowances and expense can be seen at the UK Parliament website.

Following the Telegraph's publication of the expense claims of British MPs from the past five years, there has been much attention given to how the publication obtained their information, and if the process was indeed ethical. Whilst the Telegraph itself has so far remained silent on the matter and refused to confirm whether or not it paid for the data, there has been a stream of information about the origins of the data coming from other sources.

Two names have now been put forward as the intermediaries in the sale, ex-SAS man John Wick and Henry Gewanter, managing director of an American PR firm. Whilst Wick has so far been unavailable for comment, Gewanter has essentially confirmed his involvement. He is keen to clear up one of the greyer areas of the saga; "No criminal acts have occurred. No criminal charges can be brought. I don't deal in stolen goods... I can tell you it was not stolen"

According to what appears to be a Wall Street Journal article published on Post Bulletin earlier this week, America's local newspapers are faring better than the country's national titles.

The article, entitled "Smaller newspapers dodge the downturn" refers to a series of interventions on the part of some wealthy individuals who have offered to buy local newspapers in a bid to save them from apparent closure.

Press Gazette, after facing its near closure, has been bought by Mike Danson's Progressive Media group. They will continue to publish both their monthly magazine and online; meanwhile, the current owners, Wilmington group, will retain control of the British Press Awards (where most of the magazine's revenue comes from).

Citizen photojournalism comes into question once again with the aftermath of G20. As citizens are increasingly equipped with gadgets that photograph and video, surveillance of society also increases. Some argue that they should own the rights to their image and others say we should have the freedom to take and publish pictures of anything. One thing is sure; there are more photographers out their doing the work of watchdog.

During the G20 protests, a policeman knocked a man, Ian Tomlinson to the ground, who died a few minutes later. If the death was caused by the fall, nobody knows for sure, but there are several pictures of Ian Tomlinson that day that captured him hours before the push, during the push, and even after. In another epoch this would have been a highly difficult reality, but today with millions of citizens equipped with cameras, this is even commonplace at an event like G20.

The Guardian has revealed that subbing duties at the Independent will, from today, be given to desk editors in a move similar to one made by the Financial Times, which earlier this month asked its reporters to sub edit their own work.

The decision to cut down on subs follows a spate of redundancies overseen by publisher Independent News & Media earlier this year.

Guardian readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth addresses the issue of the differences between reader responses and feedback to news in printed media as opposed to online forums. Prompted by the libel action brought by Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman against the New York Times, which settled last week in a negotiated resolution that included space on the newspaper's website for her lawyers' commentary on the lawsuit, Butterworth examines the changes in the reader's "right of reply" in the digital age.

The Metro group, worldwide distributor of free newspapers has announced that they are shutting their Spanish edition, affecting 7 cities across the country.

Metro International has said that the decision has been made due to the "unsustainable losses" which its publications are encountering in Spain, although the Spanish Metro is not as loss-making as some of its other free competitors in the country.  However, the company said that "the worsening Spanish economic downturn, which during the beginning of 2009 has resulted in a collapsing advertising market" means that continuing to publish is not a viable option.

Another free daily hit by news of its imminent departure is the Baltimore Examiner, which according to vice President and CEO Ryan McKibben is unable to continue due to "the economic dynamics that have ravaged the print media industry".

Source: The Guardian, Baltimore Sun

The Jakarta Post has redesigned, explaining that "the time has come... we must adapt to the constantly changing environment." The new format is slimmer, but with more pages, more sections, a new font, and a new design.

The paper also announced that it has changed the way it works in the newsroom "to make our work more effective and efficient," and to "integrate better with our ever-growing online edition." Newspapers around the world, such as the Guardian, are integrating their print and online editions and reorganizing their newsrooms accordingly.

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The second of the series studies newsroom integration at the Finnish business weekday paper, Kauppalehti, which, unable to move into a new building like the Guardian, is working with the limitations of its current office space.

In a country where newspaper penetration ranks third in the world, and where newspapers' share of mass media turnover remains high (31 per cent), Finland's leading weekday business paper Kauppalehti can have confidence in its print product's continued success. Its outlook became even more positive at the end of 2007 when its competitor Taloussanomat ceased print production and went online only. Kauppalehti, owned by the Alma Media Group also offers extensive online services at Kauppalehti.fi, including both free and paid content, and the company broadcasts economic television news on MTV3, the most popular single channel in Finland.

Integration at Kauppalehti is key to keeping a competitive edge in the fast-paced world of business news. Although the paper has integrated substantially, barriers remain, primarily because of the physical layout of the newsroom and limited space. The Editors Weblog spoke to editors-in-chief Hannu Leinonen and Eero Tuomisto and financial news editor Janne Poysti about how far integration has come and how successful it has been.

Kauppalehti first created a joint news desk when it moved offices in 2002. News editors from all platforms now sit together, on a long "super desk" in the newsroom, close to the TV studio. However, the architecture of the building has prevented the creation of one large multimedia centre: the main newsroom is L-shaped and there is not a lot of open space, with "mainly-print" journalists sitting on a different floor. Janne Poysti pointed out that there are greater communication problems between editors and reporters for print services than for online or television.  Eero Tuomisto remarked "I think this sort of integrated newsroom should be round, a big round building with the news desk in the middle, but unfortunately we don't have that." He hopes to move towards this ideal in the future, and explained that Alma Media is considering relocating all its operations into one building within the next few years.

The architecture of Kauppalehti's building has prevented the creation of one large multimedia centre

WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE

The space issue aside, operations have been integrated and streamlined to a significant degree.  A key element is the two joint meetings per day, attended by all news editors and editors-in-chief, to decide which news items will be on which channels and in what order. "In that sense the decision making is very centralised," commented Hannu Leinonen.  The fact that the editors all sit together, "within yelling distance", has been crucial for the success of integration, he explained. Janne Poysti remarked that "journalists work quite closely in Kauppalehti", with television reporters sending their reports to online and print, and vice versa.

Staff have been taught to be flexible, and many people can move between different medias. Leinonen explained that "by rotating people within the organisation we have been able to enhance people's skills so that more people can do multimedia now than five years ago." Tuomisto stressed the importance of good internal marketing, "how you sell the idea to your employees." There was some resistance to changes, but Poysti was confident that "nowadays, everything is going pretty smoothly." Some reporters will write a piece for television and follow it with a longer, more in depth article for the next day's paper.

A crucial part of the integration philosophy at Kauppalehti, however, is that not everybody has to be multi-channel. Tuomisto clarified that "our experience is that every single journalist has to have a home base and be attached to some channel." Editors are also still allocated to a specific platform as "you can't be responsible for everything," Tuomisto explained.

Leinonen explained that "by rotating people within the organisation we have been able to enhance people's skills so that more people can do multimedia now than five years ago."

The markets team, however, is one area of the newsroom that is fully integrated. The group sit by the main news desk and produce a breaking news feed that is sold, as the services of a news agency might be, and they then supplement this with print and television commentaries.

There is also considerable cooperation between teams in terms of content gathering. Tuomisto explained that it was a waste of resources for three or four Kauppalehti journalists to interview the same source, so now they try to coordinate who does what. Often it will be the television crew who carries out the interview, as is the case when Nokia releases its quarterly results, for example, and then the text reporters can use the resulting audio.

NEXT STEP: IMPROVING COMBINED IMPACT

Both editors-in-chief seemed keen to integrate further, but stressed that a fully integrated newsroom would have to wait for a move to new premises. For outlets which cannot afford to make the move to a state of the art multimedia newsroom like those of The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, or Fairfax, integration will always be a more difficult process.

Meanwhile, Kauppalehti is working to improve its publications and their combined impact.  Integration provides ample opportunity to reduce duplication in the final product. "We are redesigning the newspaper so that we don't publish the news that is already on the website," Leinonen explained. The redesigned product is being released this month.  Additional aims are to stop providing newspaper content free on the Web site, and to develop paid online content.  Tuomisto described the way that the organisation is working to create subscription packages that consist of news and some "added value" in the form of specialist knowledge.

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The first in the series studies newsroom integration at the UK daily, The Guardian, which has recently moved into a new building with intentions to combine its print and online staff.  

Guardian News & Media recently integrated its print and online operations, The Guardian, The Observer and the website Guardian.co.uk, having moved to new premises last month.  The Editors Weblog spoke to Paul Johnson, Guardian Deputy Editor and overall head of news, business and sport, and Nick Watt, Chief Political Correspondent, to find out details.

Changing offices was essential to the integration process.  Paul Johnson emphasized how "we couldn't make the big leap until we moved to the new building." Previously, five different buildings housed the Guardian's 1400 staff, including around 850 journalists. Guardian News & Media has now taken three and a half floors of the new King's Place development: a brand new building also housing a concert hall, with notable green credentials and which is, as Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger described it, "a thing of beauty." Nearly all journalistic staff are now sitting together on one floor. 

The Guardian's new building is a "thing of beauty", according to Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger.

However despite the integration, staff will work hard to maintain the different voices of the two papers and the website. According to Johnson, "we recognise that a distinctiveness is necessary. We are not attempting to bulldoze this into a flat surface." The Observer will retain eight dedicated journalists who will write for the Web but who will focus on the Sunday paper, and under the platform-neutral "heads of" there will be separate section editors for each platform which each subject area.

A group of 111 journalists, plus management staff, were involved in developing ideas for integration as part of what Johnson described as "a bottom-up, consensual process," very different to that of The Daily Telegraph, for example. One of the methods used to spark ideas was inventing different story scenarios and making journalists tackle them; from this it emerged that "we didn't necessarily have the right resources in the right place at the right time and we built around that," Johnson explained. 

Centralised but devolved

'Platform-neutral' is one of the key terms of the new newsroom: heads of national news, international news, business and sport are all described as 'platform-neutral.' Key to integration is the new newsdesk, which deals with both print and online and centralises operations. "It's a real hub," Johnson commented, seating 19 people, including both web and paper heads for national news, international news, and business news. Nick Watt explained how the very fact that these people are sitting together makes a huge difference, as when he is working on a story with the home news editor and the business editor, he now only has to call one number and the decision making process happens much faster. "You get rid of the 'us and them' element.

"Being in one building means greatly improved communication, said Johnson, "compared to being on four or five different sites, you feel a lot closer." A major communication point for the day is an open door morning meeting. Following a small meeting for senior staff in Rusbridger's office, anybody who wishes to can come to a larger meeting, which is broadcast on screens around the office. Incidentally, a management consultancy firm hired to help with integration recommended against the word 'meeting', so these gatherings are now known as 'checkpoints'. 

The devolved aspect of the newsroom, equally crucial to the integration process, is the "pods" system. Print and online journalists have been grouped together by area of specialization such as health, education, politics or media and technology, into so-called pods, which can then publish autonomously straight onto the Web site. The pods range in size from five people to 28, and usually include reporters, sub editors for the paper, site editors for online, and a head who is platform neutral. Nick Watt explained that the political journalists now all work in one pod and report to Will Woodward, head of politics, who works for all three platforms and decides which stories to follow and where they will go. 

In the "pods" system, print and online journalists of the same specialization are grouped together and are able to publish straight to the web.

This is a significant change from the traditional "funnel" structure of the newsroom where all stories would go through a single editor. Nearly all of the pods are in the main newsroom, a couple are on the floor above and some members of the politics pod are still based at the House of Commons. All of the arts journalists sit together in an area known as the culture hub.  

Multimedia focus

A multimedia training day was offered to all staff in advance of integration, and according to Johnson, the take up has been "extremely good in terms of numbers." Possibly surprisingly, it has not been just the younger staff who were enthusiastic; "some of the people who have been the best exponents of different styles of journalism have been some of the more experienced journalists and correspondents."

The new building houses what Johnson described as "a fantastic multimedia suite", with seven recording studios and 24 editing desks. And he says that so far staff have been showing a considerable "appetite for video, picture galleries and interactive graphics which are vitally important for us." The pictures desk is now fully integrated, and most of the photographers and a lot of the reporters are now trained in video. Video production is being taken seriously: in 2008 the Guardian was the first newspaper to win a Royal Television Society award.

No cost-cutting

An extremely positive side to the Guardian's integration process is that unlike, unfortunately, many other integrating newsrooms, the merger of print and Web teams has not resulted in layoffs. There have been some voluntary redundancies, but total staff numbers have not been reduced. "It's not a cost-cutting exercise," Johnson stressed. He explained that "we wanted to make this change within budget, without cutting our headcount."  The essential detail to grasp is that it is about reallocation rather than reduction: "what we have done is repositioned resources towards the web." Rather, the measures taking have been to maintain "journalistic excellence, and to free up some of the resources we have got to focus on getting our work out there." 

Success?

Johnson was very confident that integration is going well so far. The necessary changes in mindset were largely made over the year of preparation prior to the move, particularly during two integration "dry runs" which were implemented for the Olympics and the US elections. He claimed that "people seem to be embracing the changes and people have been very positive about it across the board."  One of the main reasons for this, he explained, is that journalists love to see their work published "in different forms and in different ways." After all, it is exciting to file a story and see it appear on the website almost immediately. Nick Watt was also enthusiastic about the changes: "it's much more collaborative and much more efficient."

It will be interesting to see whether the publications succeed in maintaining their distinct voices, and what sort of increase in multimedia content there is. As the Guardian is in the fortunate situation of being highly successful and run by a trust which reduces financial pressure, integration is a choice rather than a obligation, and the necessary time and effort has been spent to ensure a smooth transition.

Monaco-based hedge fund, SRM Global is suing the Wall Street Journal over the publication of allegedly confidential financial information, according to The Guardian.

The case is to be heard next week in London's high court and centers on two articles published on WSJ.com in August.  The Guardian reports that the two articles titled, "Woods Fund Takes a Beating" and "Hedge Fund Suffers Sharp Losses" mentioned that former UBS trader Jon Wood had lost roughly 85% of its value since it was founded in 2006.

The Guardian's Peter Wilby asks the question:  just how many journalists do you need to publish a newspaper?  In today's failing economy, circulation declines, dried up advertising revenue and the transition to new media, can a newspaper staff maintain its numbers?  Is "small," he asks, inevitable?

The Guardian has just moved from partial to full-text RSS feeds.  According to the Google Blog, they are they first major newspaper in the world to do so.  Publishing 2.0 believes that the Guardian is the "first media company to actually take RSS seriously" by making it something people want to use.

The feeds will include the full content from each article with embedded related links.  However, there will be no images or cartoons.  Advertising will be placed within each full-content feed.  

Other mainstream media companies publish their RSS feeds as a brief title or caption from the article, which forces readers to go to the site to read the rest.

Sources: Guardian, Publishing 2.0, Google Blog

Telegraph.co.uk now has an integrated finance channel rather than the previous separate business and personal finance sections.

The newspaper is also moving sections of its website onto Escenic, its new in-house digital publishing and content management system. This new publishing platform enables the newspaper to publish to the web and mobile services simultaneously.

In the latest stage of the newspaper's web development programme, the new finance site will allow telegraph.co.uk readers to create and manage their own portfolios.

A new finance blog called Economic Pulse will be introduced, written by Edmund Conway, and carry regular analysis from breakingviews.com, following the deal announced between the two companies last week.

This latest development follows a process that has been running for months at the news provider, which began with a revamp of the homepage back in July.

TMG has also developed a financial iPhone application, a widget for social media sites to display financial news from its website and TV services, and an online tool called Questor to offer share tips.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Even as technology becomes more and more available in India, the oldest handwritten Urdu-language newspaper Musalman preserves its "old-school look" and continues to employ an Islamic calligraphy style, reports WSJ.com. The paper's four-page issues include coverage of local and international news, editorials and a weekly Urdu poetry feature.  

Jack Schofield, of the Guardian, questions Google's choice to ignore its predecessors when creating Knol.

"While Knol is based on the same idea," writes Schofield, "inviting users to create pages on topics they know about - HubPages looks better, reads better, and is better organized."

While Knol debuted just this December, HubPages has already passed its second anniversary and Squidoo is even older.

The major difference between Knol and Wikipedia, the site it is so oft compared to, is that Knol encourages competition, not collaboration. Knol, which identifies authors, who take full responsibility for their pages, also offers these authors the chance to make money. "A thousand people can all create pages about the same topic and hope the best one wins," says Schofield.

Schofield's major complaints:

-Knol is painfully academic and "dull;" HubPages invites users to "Publish your passion"

-Hubs are easier to browse than Knols and separate pages with tags like Love, Finance, Business and Health. You can also search by author, vote for hubs you like, comment, become a fan of authors, and request hubs you can't find.

The question remains with HubPages fate, since, as Schofield points out, "it also makes more than 90% of its revenue from Google Adsense advertising, and Google features HubPages as a case study. For a small start-up, this is success. Can that success continue now that Google has invaded its turf?"

Source: Guardian.co.uk

The long-standing journalism magazine, Press Gazette, will no longer publish weekly. The 43 year-old magazine is going monthly from 28 August.

Press Gazette and Guardian.co.uk report that Wilmington Group, Press Gazette's owner, will be formally announcing the change later in the day.

Breaking news will appear on the website and the new magazine will contain interviews and features.

The option of going exclusively online has been rejected for the moment. Wilmington Group is keen to ensure the future of the British Press Awards, the main money spinner for the title, by maintaining a year round presence in print and online.

Management have entered a consultation period with Press Gazette staff.

Source: Press Gazette and Guardian.co.uk

Although the concept of e-readers isn't new, Mayo Nissen's roll-up version that uses flexible e-ink technology for the display is taking things further. To be unraveled around 2015, the electronic paper is predicted to offer a helping hand to national newspapers like The Guardian, amidst their diminishing readership.

The e-reader will allow you to scroll through the day's news and as the screen is further unfolded, detail on the headline stories will pop up. Nissen's version claims to offer more control over what news one reads, allowing the user to choose what news to look at, reported The Design Blog.

Publishers face the challenge of immediacy in reporting news stories, according to Electric Pig. However, e-readers may help bridge the gap and allow journalists to publish stories right after they happen.

Source: The Design Blog, Electric Pig

See also:
New folding screen e-reader, Readius, to be released
Are we headed for all-electronic papers?
A paperlss world?

The Financial Times (FT) website experienced a service disruption problem yesterday after equipment was stolen from the Watford technical contractor. FT was unable to update the site for hours and switched to using the company's New York servers, but the UK office could still not publish material.

The Guardian wrote that "the problem has slowed the speed of the site and impaired the search function and new subscriber tools." Meanwhile, the Alphaville blog remained running, publishing comments and news stories.

"We are in the process of investigating the incident and have deployed specialist engineers to work on restoring full services to affected customers as quickly as possible," said FT.

Source: The Guardian

Staff at leading German newspaper Berliner Zeitung have placed an advertisement in a rival publication seeking a new owner. Berliner Zeitung is owned by Mecom, a leading European newspaper and content company.

The advertisement appears to be a reaction to the announcement last week that a quarter (130) of the editorial staff at Berliner Zeitung will be made redundant.

In a recent interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel the Chief Executive of Mecom, David Montgomery, played down the problems that his company is having in Berlin.

Montgomery said that the issues have been caused by, "isolated rabble rousers who are trying to stop time". He went on to say that times have changed for newspapers.

Under the title, "Publish Wanted", the advertisement stated the journalists were looking for a "serious buyer who doesn't just produce a paper to make money".

The Berliner Zeitung's editor-in-chef Josef Depenbrock has been a controversial figure at the newspaper ever since Montgomery gave him the dual role of managing editor and editor-in-chief.

The paper's editorial department failed in an attempt to bring proceedings against Mecom and Josef Depenbrock on Wednesday. They argued that his dual role at the paper went against the paper's statutes. The case was thrown out of court.

Sources reported to MediaGuardian.co.uk that a strike by Berliner Zeitung is likely later in the month.

Mecom announced last week that it will cut up to 465 jobs at its Dutch regional business Wegener.

Source: Guardian

See also:

Netherlands: editors-in-chief complain to Mecom, concerned over editorial quality

Germany: Montgomery continues to incite anger at Berliner Zeitung

Part 1 discussed how the planned changes at The New York Times and International Herald Tribune will help the NYT's continuous news offerings, and how these changes could affect the organization and interaction between both newsrooms.

Part 2 examines how The New York Times intends to:
- Further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal internationally, and ways in which newspapers can reinforce their international reach.
- Use the strength of its online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

The Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.

How newspapers can become international brands, the NYT joins the race

Until now, the Times hasn't specifically catered to overseas advertisers and readers.

"We need to be agile," said IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, "to compete much more aggressively, nose to nose, with The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and anybody else who is competing for our readers and advertisers."

No doubt that the Times actually borrowed the continuous news outpost idea from the aforementioned competitors, which have been relying on their foreign bureaus to provide round the clock coverage.

The staff memo reaffirmed the NYT's "ambitious plans to expand in the region (Asia), particularly in India." In June, the IHT announced a partnership with the India-based Deccan Chronicle to print the Tribune's world business section in the Financial Chronicle.

With the rise of digital publishing, many news organizations are seeking to grow a previously inaccessible international readership by:

- launching a print edition abroad: several papers have rolled out editions away from home this past year, such as the FT's recently launched Middle East edition in Abu Dhabi, WSJ's partnership with business paper Mint in India, the Daily Mail's partnership with India Today to publish the Mail Today, or The Times of London's Polish edition.

- investing in an online international section: In Germany, referential weekly Der Spiegel launched an English-language International edition on its website in 2004. Five fulltime staffers are dedicated to translating Der Spiegel's content and rewriting it with an international perspective, as well as doing their own international-minded original reporting (the full case study is featured in Trends in Newsrooms 2008). The Guardian adopted a different approach, by launching a separate, foreign-based, US website, Guardian America. The Guardian is reportedly considering similar ventures in other regions.

- simply reinforcing their focus on international news in their regular coverage: the Daily Telegraph's website in the UK, which was neck to neck with the Guardian in terms of traffic in April, claims nearly two thirds of its visitors are from overseas. A well-indexed website helps to brings in a significant number of 'light' international users through search engines.

Merging "co-branded" websites but not print: a branding issue

The NYT's approach is a combination of the first two strategies: the print IHT now serves as The Times' 'global edition' (see picture), while maintaining its trademark brand name. With the proposed online merger, the NYT could also follow the second route, by hosting an international edition online, without having to extensively change its workflows (see Part 1).

The rationale to merge the websites is clearly explained in the memo: according to WebTrends, NYT's website boasts a strong international audience and 58 million global users, compared to iht.com's seven million.

"The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence," said the memo.

However, the memo doesn't explicitly say why this won't be the case in print:

"The IHT should become the international print edition of the NYT, whether it is formally branded that way or not."

The main issue at stake is one of branding. "In print, there have been at least a couple of studies that show that among Tribune newspaper readers there is a great identification with the brand, that the brand means something to readers," said Gottlieb.

"More than the name, what accompanies the name, an international perspective, a sense of calling the best stories from The Times and augmenting them with unique reporting," was a combination that many readers liked.

As news organizations seek to grow their international reach, this consideration probably holds true for many that have established a reputable brand name on a local or national scale. However strong the brand name, its association with a particular place or country can potentially play against that news outlet on the international scene.

Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition