Results matching “editors at the telegraph”

The Russian government continued its repressive oversight of the press Thursday, raiding the Moscow offices of the Exile, an English-language newspaper, accusing the paper of violating a media law prohibiting the publication of extremist articles.

The Exile was reputed for its strident criticism of the government, and infamous for its bold, occasionally lewd content, but it has lost several investors as a result of the investigation and now lacks sufficient publishing funds.

"It's like we've got polonium on us," said Mark Ames, the Exile's American editor. "Who will want to touch us now?"

The Exile has never been afraid to stir a little controversy; Ames' frequent articles about his late-night encounters bordered on misogynistic. And though the paper was well respected for its sharp, critical news coverage of the Kremlin, critics claimed its coarse style was out of place in Russia's maturing society.

"I find it really offensive," said Ames. "They resent the fact that we did something that wasn't supposed to be done. I'm sorry that a lot of people seem to want to dance on our grave."

Under new president Dmitry Medvedev, many Russians hoped for a more open news climate than had existed under Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's more conservative predecessor. This, however, has not been the case. During Medvedev's first month in office, the Kremlin has increased its raids on independent media organizations.

The Exile's future looks grim: the paper is struggling to keep its website alive and Ames says its print version is extinct.

"The paper's gone," he said. "It's dust and there's now way to get it going again."

Note: Russia is not alone in limiting press expression. Some of its neighbors - Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan - have introduced measures designed to restrict criticism of the government. Though the details of the measures vary in each country, all of them blur the line between the press and the government. Click here for specifics.

Also watch of video of Garry Kasparov, leader of the political party The Other Russia, speaking at the 15th World Editors Forum.

Source: Telegraph, Follow the Media

The BBC's mammoth reorganization has been the subject of recent press scrutiny. Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News' website, offered readers a peek into the mechanics of integrating one of the world's biggest media organizations.

"For us one [challenge] has been the practical difficulty of moving 100 or so journalists and all their equipment from one working newsroom to another whilst simultaneously maintaining a continuous 24-hour online news service," Herrmann writes on the editors' blog.

BBC's integrated newsroom includes several features that could become staples of the future newsroom, says Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com. Jarvis mentions the media wire - an operation that "ingests and assesses content from all over to feed any product and medium" - as one such technological advancement.

"This curatorial function, editing the world, is critical in a news ecology that pushes us to do what we do best and link to the rest," Jarvis writes.

The BBC's newsroom also includes a "new-media on-demand production unit" and a hub responsible for content from BBC News resources.

But while some news organizations, like the Telegraph,  are following the BBC's lead and condensing their operations, others are doing the opposite - thinning out their centers and scattering their reporters.

"Call it the 'rise of the mojos,'" writes the Guardian's Peter Preston, "Reporters with backpacks (including video camera, audio recorders and laptops) who roam continuously, working from cafes or the back of their cars."

Whichever way news organizations decide to approach the 21st century newsroom, a bumpy transition is inevitable. Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC newsroom, admitted to Jarvis that the switch has been difficult.

"We've had to blow up BBC News to totally remake it."

Source: Guardian (Peter Preston), Guardian (Jeff Jarvis), BBC

Telegraph Media Group has integrated the news desks of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph; reporters will also write for their website, Telegraph.co.uk.

"We have a huge pool of talented journalists at TMG," said Ian MacGregor, the Sunday Telegraph editor. "They now have the opportunity to play a part across all three publications, as we combine the force of our news desks to deliver first-rate stories, both for our leading website and distinguished newspaper titles."

Special reporters from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph will collaborate on breaking news and analysis; however, TMG said both papers would retain separate reporting teams and identities.

Several recent changes at TMG have foreshadowed the merger. Last month the science desks of both papers and the website were combined. In April, new positions were created which cover all titles: Adrian Michaels was appointed to the new post of foreign operations to run TMG's world news output and Iain Martin was also hired as head of comment and community. And just nine months ago, Patience Wheatcroft resigned as editor of the Sunday Telegraph, who according to the Guardian had reputedly "been under pressure to integrate the Sunday title and its reporters with sister paper the Daily Telegraph's seven-day multimedia news operation."

Reportr.net interviewed Chris Lloyd, assistant managing editor of Telegraph Media Group, about the integration process in April.

Integrating newsrooms has been a growing trend since 2005, when The New York Times merged print and web news desks.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

World Editors Forum SESSION THREE

Paul Cheesbrough, Chief Information Officer, Telegraph Media Group, UK Ilicco Elia, Product Manager - Mobile & Emerging Media, Reuters, UK Michael Cooper, Director of Advanced Reading Technologies, Microsoft, USA Oscar Westlund, Doctoral Student, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Chairman: Robert Andrews, Editor-in-Chief, paidContent.UK, United Kingdom

"The mobile news revolution and its impact on the newsroom". That was the topic for the speech of Paul Cheesbrough, Chief Information Officer at the Telegraph Media Group, United Kingdom, at the third session of the 15th World Editors Forum.

Trying to coordinate and strengthen the use of mobile technology at The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and thetelegraph.com, Mr Cheesbrough talked about the experiences and the approach of the newsgroup to the mobile future. There are three different angles.

1. "Distribution opportunity" - For a long time, mobile technology has been costly and difficult. But lately there has been a positive change. To a large extent, producers of mobile devices have  started to embed a common browser in the device. This is a big leap forward making it much easier for media to publish and users to read and view. Since screen sizes on mobile devices still are quite small, most viewers use it to read headlines, follow sport results etc. This makes it quite simple and basic but promises much potential. With the development of new devices and mobile high speed broadband becoming more widespread and cheaper there's more use of and demand for video and audio news posts.

2. "Revenue prospect" Since the mobile technology still is fairly new to the public it hasn't yet become attractive for the ad-market. Neither does it have such a strong position among consumers of news, so there are big possibilities of having pay for-services. However, the current situation will surely change. The constant growth and development of mobile technology in many ways means more users in the consumer market.

3. "News gathering news channel" The use of different mobile devices, whether be it an iphone, a tablet pc, mobile internet genie etc. makes journalistic work easier and more effective. Journalists can report, publish and update a news story at any time, from anywhere. This can be published as text, video or a podcast. There's also the possibility for the public to contribute. Today, users are able to send pictures from the scene of a news story with their mobile phone. They can send text messages and comment on articles. They can blog as part of the website platform, etc. However, the growth of this phenomenon has issues that needs to be worked on. Most obvious is the issue of moderation. This applies mostly to controversial news, but publishers must not ignore more general news. Mr. Cheesbrough belives that moderation will a more important aspect of newsrooms over time.

Lastly, Cheesbrough encouraged the audience not to look at mobiles as simply mobile phones. In five to ten years, mobile technology will have evolved to something much more, giving both journalists and public more possibilities.

Guardian News and Media (GNM) officially announced today that it will integrate its print and online platforms for News, Business and Sport journalism once it moves into its new premises at Kings Place, London, at the end of the year.

Journalists from those sections will work for the company's three platforms (The Observer, daily Guardian and guardian.co.uk) and will produce text, audio and video.

As gathered during the World Editors Forum study tour in the UK and during our talks with head of editorial development Neil McIntosh, the Guardian's integration was planned collaboratively in the newsroom, as opposed to a top-down model.

Said Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Editor-in-Chief of GNM:

"Our model for integrated working has been designed through a long period of collaboration and consultation. More than two dozen editors from across the three platforms have worked together to design the ways in which they want to collaborate in the future.  It's very important that desk editors themselves have taken the lead: the last thing we wanted to do was impose a model from above.

As has often been the case for other cases of newsroom integration (Fairfax in Australia, the Daily Telegraph in the UK, The New York Times in the US and many more), the Guardian's move to a new building - and thus to rethink its newsroom design - coincides with the formal integration process.

"The move to a new building is the obvious moment to re-arrange the way we work in a way which more closely reflects the patterns of how people read and react to news," said Rusbridger.

Also discussed with McIntosh, the newsroom will redesign will include 'pods', which will group specialists around specific topics. For example, on the International News desk, pods will group reporters by time zones and regions.

The good news is that the Guardian's integration isn't synonymous with layoffs (the company had previously said this could happen) - at least for the time being.

"We've done this without any reduction in headcount.  It is important that news organisations retain quality and trust while being at the forefront of the digital revolution," he added.

Source: Guardian press release

The Guardian won the sports coverage of the year award at the Sports Industry Awards in the UK.

Other contenders included the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and The Times, but the Guardian was chosen for its 'synergy between multi-platforms.'

Among the Guardian's strengths was its multimedia coverage of former English football team manager Steve McClaren getting sacked after England failed to qualify for the upcoming Euro Cup.

For this event, apart from print and online articles, the Guardian featured rolling news, comments and audio footage online. Praises were also given to the Guardian's use of Hawk Eye technology - which is used for digital replays of sports games (see here) - for its cricket coverage last summer.

Source: journalism.co.uk

Because of the Internet, the "Letters to the Editor" page is no longer the only means of communication between the reader and the newspaper. However, the letters pages seem to be surprisingly flourishing on broadsheets.

"I expected the online comment facility to have had much more of an effect on the printed page than it did," says Times's Letters Editor Ian Brunskill.

Brunskill receives around 500 letters, faxes and emails a day, which is a large increase from pre-Internet times. The Telegraph receives around 700, the Guardian 300, and the Independent about 200.

Journalists appear to have a renewed respect for the "old-fashioned skill of careful editing," according to Guardian journalist Iain Hollingshead. The online comments can be interesting, but also abusive and fatuous.

"What's needed is an editor to filter out the nonsense and put the exchanges together with a bit of shape. I believe that's called a letters page," says the Times columnist Matthew Parris.

The letters pages has retains some abilities that may not yet be evident online:
- It sets a newspaper's identity since letters are hand picked to appear in print.  Some newspapers are urban, some are rural, and some begin each letter with "Sir."
- It sets the news agenda. For example, the Times opened its report on the embryo bill by offering an "open-minded discussion between Catholic church leaders and the research community" on its letters page.
- It provides a change of subject and tone from the hard news.

Letters pages, however, haven't adapted to the Internet. Some are difficult to find online and are poorly laid out, while others are not consistently updated. Newspapers need to find a way to consolidate the best reader responses and commentary in a "single, readable forum, both online and in print," writes Hollingshead, though it is "expensively time-consuming."

Nigel Willmott, the Guardian's Letters Editor, says, "Online services, who thought they could do without editors, are now seeing their merits again. Our job on the letters pages is to do the work for our busy readers."

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Guardian News and Media said that it may continue making redundancies until June 2009 as part of its impending move to a 24/7 integrated newsroom.

Although journalists were supposedly meant to have a starring role in the integration process, this initial idea seems less likely given the latest information.  

19 journalists have agreed to leave so far, including veteran Manchester-based correspondent David Ward, who left after 35 years with the company. Editorial staff numbers will likely not change.

Some journalists are choosing to take redundancy as editors look for more staff with new media skills.

The editorial merging of the Observer and the Guardian, considered crucial by former Observer editor Roger Alton, is closer to becoming a reality. In nine months time, the Guardian, Observer and Guardian.co.uk's editorial are all moving to one site located near Kings Cross.

The Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, and Telegraph.co.uk have also begun a similar merger process.

Source: Press Gazette 

Including video into print journalism is a hot topic, and the attendees of the Digital News Affairs conference held on March 3 and 4 in Brussels believe that it is a revolution that will challenge traditional journalism techniques whether or not people accept it. Journalists from the European Journalism Center wrote an in-depth analysis of the different issues presented at the conference.

Michael Rosenblum, a video journalist pioneer, remarked in his keynote speech that technology is "irresistible and deadly" and "if you don't get the technology you will die."

"The moment Jacob Perkins invented the refrigerator, the ice business was over," he said. "And all the crying about the quality of 'real pond ice' wasn't going to change it. ... It was over in an instant."

One of the most pressing issues is finding the best means to integrate videos into existing news stories to serve both readers' and publishers' interests. But newspaper editors need to be sure that the videos don't imitate that of broadcasters.

In a presentation, Edward Roussel, a digital editor for the Telegraph Media Group, outlined strategies that make The Daily Telegraph one of the forerunners for implementing video onto its website:
- holding editors responsible for their section of the website
- financially compensating editors for a job well done
- assigning breaking news a "story owner" who plans, commissions, and monitors each story across all platforms
- a tight 4 hour schedule to handle breaking news

Though camera equipment and video-editing software are becoming cheaper and more available, print journalism will not die partly because of money-saving developments in the printing process, according to Reiner Mittelbach, CEO of IFRA.

He noted that "print-based companies do need to evolve into multi-pronged content providers" and that ""strategies must be interactive, converged, networked and personalized as consumption moves from push to pull."

Source: EJC through IFRA

For its relaunch, the Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Mike van Niekerk, Editor-in-Chief of online at Fairfax Media in Australia.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company?

We don't define ourselves as a newspaper company anymore. Fairfax renamed itself last year and is now called Fairfax Media: it's now a media business, not just online, but in all formats. We've diversified into radio recently as well. Whereas Fairfax was once defined by its two main newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, it is now much more. Not only because of its new assets, but also philosophically.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

I disagree with that. Newspapers will be around for a long time, although they may not continue to be in the in same format. The economics of newspapers will certainly change, but the significant components of the current print business (such as weekend editions) will be around for at least 20-25 years - though definitely not in same form. Don't underestimate the capacity for innovation that newspapers have. Print will continue to be an important technology for transmission of information for a long time. Newspapers will continue to be printed way past 2014 - don't forget they're still launching newspapers in some markets.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

It's part of the continuum. If you look at the introduction of the telegraph in the 1800s, it also changed the format of journalism, the way people wrote stories, the speed and accessibility of information, and its distribution methods. But I think digital journalism is based on the same skills, which are still useful and important to the way we work on the Internet: it's about telling stories and tracking down the people to tell those stories. Old school journalists who are learning to work for the Internet are delighted to learn that they are extending skills they already have.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

Both. It's a great opportunity to become closer to the community and serving it better. At the same time, we must remain skeptical at what information comes and how you treat it and not saying that it's all wonderful. It's like anything, it's a relationship and you treat it with respect. For individual journalists, it's great to have that immediate contact and feedback from readers. But we must be careful not to allow our better instincts drowned out by what one thinks the audience wants. For example, stories about Britney Spears are regularly highly rated on our websites. Those kinds of stories can be a temptation, but we must be careful about upholding our brand values

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I have to be very cautious with this answer. The economics of new media make it very difficult to fund investigative journalism in the same way it once was. If you're talking about the kind of journalism that keeps governments and corporations at check, I am concerned about its sustainability in the future.

Stay tuned for the next interview in our series with Financial Times managing editor Dan Bogler.

Source: Mike van Niekerk, editor Fairfax online