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.

Wikipedia founder calls for the end of the opinion page

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 18, 2010 at 5:06 PM

A cacophony of voices from across the web have begun to take issue with that holdover from legacy media, the op-ed page.

Ezra Klein, Washington Post domestic policy blogger, posted an indictment of the Washington Post's op-ed page on Monday.

"I don't really understand why my op-ed page, or all the other op-ed pages, waste so much real-estate publishing talking points from politicians," he lamented. He went on to argue that op-ed pages should post pieces written by experts "for a different purpose...than those written by political experts."

International Press Association hosts meeting to discuss future of foreign press in Belgium

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 18, 2010 at 3:52 PM

The International Press Association, an organization representing all foreign reporters stationed in Belgium, is hosting a meeting today to discuss employment prospects for journalists reporting in Brussels.

The meeting, entitled "What does the future hold for Brussels-based journalists?" will attempt to address the exodus of much of the European Union press corps over the past five years and the diminishing presence of foreign press in Brussels. According to a press release, the API "considers an urgent taking stock and a broad debate are imperative." The group hopes to address three main concerns:

France-Soir set for revamp by billionaire's son Alexander Pugachyov

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 18, 2010 at 1:23 PM

France-Soir, once one of France's most widely read dailies but now an influential blip in the French media landscape, was recently purchased by the 25-year-old son of a Russian billionaire Alexander Pugachyov. Pugachyov has put a 50 million euro bet on the newpaper in hopes to return it to its former glory.

The paper, launched in 1944, once reigned as France's fourth most popular daily with a circulation of more than 1 million copies at its peak. It has since fallen into obscurity, and before Pugachyov's investment it employed only 40 reporters with a much-diminished daily circulation of 23,000 copies.

Pugachyov has since expanded the newsroom to 100 reporters and is beginning a 20 million euro advertising campaign in the hopes of improving France-Soir's circulation to a robust 150,000 to 200,000 copies. The paper will spare no expense to improve its standing, as Pugachyov plans to emphasize original photography, despite the costs that may incur.

The New York Times and Fwix partner to further hyperlocal efforts

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 18, 2010 at 11:41 AM

The New York Times' hyperlocal efforts will soon be supplemented by its new partnership with newswire Fwix.

Created 2 years ago by then-21-year-old Darian Shirazi, Fwix's CEO and founder, the newswire relies on a number of sophisticated search algorithms that pull together news articles and blog posts related to a certain area from across the web. Fwix programmers also select local news sources and blogs to watch for relevant items to aggregate.

This allows for articles on the web to offer readers a series of related links pertaining to news from around that area. A reader of an article about robberies in New York city's Chelsea neighborhood could theoretically be guided to further articles about Chelsea using Fwix's software.

The Independent a step closer to purchase by Lebedev

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 17, 2010 at 6:09 PM

After much delay, a deal is said to be on the horizon for the sale of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday to Alexander Lebedev. Although The Times claimed on March 5th that its sources said a sale would happen that day, a finalized contract has yet to be seen.

Today, the UK's Office of Fair Trading declared that it would not be necessary to investigate the deal for competition issues, offering another green light to a deal that has been in the works for months.

Though The Guardian claims talks between Independent News and Media (INM) and Russian billionaire Lebedev have been going on since March of last year, The Independent only admitted to these talks in December. Since then, the deal has hit many roadblocks, partly because, as Steve Busfield of The Guardian has said, "Lebedev drives a hard bargain."

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.

Analysis of Google finds only 11% of news content original

Posted by Robert Eisenhart on March 17, 2010 at 4:08 PM

Jonathan Stray from the Nieman Journalism Lab recently conducted an analysis of the amount of original news content found in news articles through Google. In conducting the analysis, Stray took a major headlining article in the news and then tracked how many articles pertaining to the subject contained original content.

USC J-school, CIR along with other news outlets collaborate on a high-quality multimedia reporting projecy

Posted by Robert Eisenhart on March 17, 2010 at 2:02 PM

The end result of a collaborative six-month project between USC's Anneberg Journalism School and the Center for Investigative Journalism will premiere March 19th. Entitled "Hunger in the Golden State," the project is a three week-long multimedia series documenting California's growing social issues in light of the economic crisis. A press release from the Annenberg School noted that more than 20 multimedia stories will be released online, over the radio, and on television.

Association of Online Publishers' census shows optimistic forecast for 2010

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 17, 2010 at 1:34 PM

The results of the UK Association of Online Publishers' 2010 census, released today, show a surprisingly optimistic growth forecast for 10 percent growth in revenue over the next year coming from more than half of its 37 respondents. The census results come at a time when the industry is beginning to stabilize, with losses in ad revenue slowing and many publishers working to create new revenue streams.

With members such as Channel 4, Guardian Media Group, Telegraph Media Group, and Financial Times, the AOP's annual census, now in its seventh year, offers a clear depiction of trends across the publishing industry.

Tim Faircliff, AOP's Chairman and general manager of consumer media at member organization Thomson Reuters, sees the census as a good indicator of the reality in the market today.

Times Online blocks Meltwater

Posted by Trafton Kenney on March 17, 2010 at 11:57 AM

Times Online has blocked Meltwater, the Norwegian online media monitor, from indexing its news content in response to the company refusing to compensate the newspaper for crawling its website, PaidContent reported Tuesday.

The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, previously blocked news monitor NewsNow from linking to its stories in January using robots.txt protocol, software that prevents web crawlers from accessing a website.

Mecom releases plan to improve digital revenue

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 17, 2010 at 11:53 AM

Mecom, the European newspaper publisher most prolific in Denmark, Norway, Poland and the Netherlands, released its online paid content strategy today along with dismal fourth quarter results. Despite a total 28 percent fall in profits for 2009, David Montgomery, Mecom's chief executive, is optimistic about the company's future.

"This last year has been an advertising crisis, not a newspaper crisis," he was quoted as saying, going on to emphasize the need for more online advertising revenue.

Montgomery's outlook is reflected in their pay strategy, which aims to increase revenue from paid online content and online advertisements by 100 million euros over the next three years. In addition, Mecom hopes to increase unique users on its websites by about 20 percent by the end of 2012, vastly increasing its current unique usership of 32 million.

Journalismfund.eu funds stories investigative money-laundering and slave labour

Posted by Emma Heald on March 17, 2010 at 10:00 AM

The European Fund for Investigative Journalism, or Journalismfund.eu, launched in February 2009 with a plan to raise funding for investigative reporting that involved cross-border collaboration in Europe.

"In Europe we can see that politics, business, even organised crime all cross borders, while journalists and their coverage are often focussed purely on a national target group and are reluctant to cross borders," director Brigitte Alfter explained in an interview last year.

Just over a year on, two investigative stories have been published and eight more are currently being researched, with groups of two to six journalists working on each. The money raised by Alfter goes towards travel, advice, time and making freedom of information requests.

The Newspaper Club allows users to print their own newspapers

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 16, 2010 at 6:32 PM

Print media may not die if the printing press is put in the hands of the consumer. It's this idea that drives the Newspaper Club, a London-based startup that allows members to print small runs of their own newspapers at low cost.

The venture began when a group of friends decided to compile their friends' best blog posts and photos and print it as a newspaper titled Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet. Because printing presses sit idle for most of the day, a small run of newspapers turned out to be remarkably cheap--about 364 euros for 300 copies. The small price led the friends to form a company and start marketing the printing option to others.

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.

Facebook surpasses Google as most visited site in the US

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 16, 2010 at 5:12 PM

Remarkably, over this past week search giant Google was surpassed by social networking site Facebook as most visited website online in the US, with only 7.03 percent of all website visits to Facebook's 7.07 percent, according to an analysis done by Hitwise. The difference in visits, albeit small, is telling, as it reflects the growing tendency of internet users to look to their friends rather than search engines for online media.

Facebook does come in as the fourth source for visits to specifically news and media websites, behind the main Google search site, Yahoo, and MSN. But when compared to smaller search sites Google News and Google Reader, which direct 1.39 and .01 percent respectively of all upstream visitors to news and media websites, Facebook has a clear lead in providing 3.52 percent of all visits.

ABC planning to initiate paywall for online content by June

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 16, 2010 at 3:41 PM

ABC recently announced plans to initiate a paywall for some of its online content starting this June, hoping to alleviate some of its financial troubles and increase revenue. The announcement comes in the wake of ABC's restructuring plans and its decision to eliminate 300 to 400 jobs through buyout propositions.

ABC's initiation of a paywall should come as no surprise to those watching media news over the past year. Beginning with the success of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal's moves to paid content, NewsCorporation, MediaNews and the New York Times followed in their path with plans to erect paywalls by 2011. Just this week, the Washington Post announced its launch of Capital Business, a business weekly for subscribers only.

These changes result from a steep decline in ad revenue for online newspapers over the past year, with American newspapers earning 17% less from advertising on the web than they had a year earlier, according to the Economist. The Washington Post alone lost four percent of its revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, and new paid content plans hope to alleviate some of the financial stress of the past year.

NPR creating new iPad-friendly website

Posted by Maria Conde on March 16, 2010 at 1:20 PM

National Public Radio is creating a new version of its website to accompany the launch of Apple's iPad early next month, according to Poynter.

In addition to the iPad-friendly website, similar to those digital editions designed solely for smartphone access, NPR is preparing an app for the Apple's tablet too.

Media Memo's Peter Kafka reports that when the iPad launches on April 3rd, users who want to access NPR's content through their brand new iPads will be able to either download a version of the broadcaster's iPhone app, optimized for the iPad, or to visit NPR.org, which will detect the user is accessing from an iPad and will show a tailored site with "no traces of Adobe's Flash," software that the device does not support.

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."

Moscow business daily, Kommersant, finally launches radio station Kommersant FM

Posted by Robert Eisenhart on March 15, 2010 at 4:51 PM

Nearly three years after it was first announced, Monday marks the first broadcast of Moscow's latest radio station, Kommersant FM, The Moscow Times reported. The radio station, which has been in development since the spring of 2007, is the audio equivalent of Kommersant, the city's largest daily business newspaper.

PEJ State of the News Media 2010: News readers use 5 sites or less

Posted by Trafton Kenney on March 15, 2010 at 2:25 PM

Despite the dizzying amount of news content available online today, it seems many readers are reluctant to venture too far from their circuit of favorite sites.

According to a new study released Monday by the Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, only 35 percent of people who use the internet to read news have a favorite website, and only 21 percent are "monogamous," or rely on only one site for news. Of the same audience, 57 percent rely on two to five sites for news.

Proposed tax on aggregators to help newspapers feeling the pinch

Posted by Helena Humphrey on March 15, 2010 at 12:13 PM

Heading up the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, an independent investigation looking at the future of public life, Geoff Mulgan has branded the majority of online news as little more that "recycled 'churnalism'", the Guardian reports. To combat this, the commission has proposed a tax on the likes of Google and websites using news that they themselves have not produced. It is estimated that the tax could generate £100m a year, which would be distributed amongst local newspapers feeling the pinch.

Chinese censor orders journalists to take communist exam

Posted by Trafton Kenney on March 12, 2010 at 1:39 PM

Journalists in China will have to brush up on their communist history if they hope to continue reporting the news. China's print media censor is planning to introduce a new qualification exam for journalists as the government tries to exert further control over news outlets, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

Li Dongdong, the deputy director at the General Administration of Press and Publication confirmed on Wednesday that that qualification exam would resemble the test taken by civil servants, and that all aspiring journalists would be required to take it before applying for a reporting job.

Under the new guidelines, the Communist Party's stance on journalism would be required reading for students studying journalism.

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