Posted byAlisa Zykova on August 20, 2008 at 12:37 PM
The Federal Mass Media Inspection Service accused the St. Petersburg edition of Russian daily newspaper Novaya Gazeta of advocating hatred towards Georgians, warning the paper that it risks being shut down if it defies the media and extremism laws again.
Posted bySarah Schewe on August 5, 2008 at 8:10 AM
When a session of Congress adjourns, so do C-Span broadcasts. C-Span cameras, which deliver live broadcasts of the proceedings of the US Senate and House of Representatives, are controlled by members of Congress, so when "Pelosi just turned out the lights," as John Culberson wrote on Twitter Friday, the cameras went off - but recording didn't stop.
Culberson used his cellphone to record video of discussions that continued after the adjournment, and later posed this video to his Qik site. One 12-minute video Culberson posted has received more than 22,000 views.
The House adjourned Friday for their five-week summer recess, but dozens of Republicans chose to stay on the House floor to discuss energy legislation. Culberson, a Texas Republican, who reqularly updates both Twitter and Qik, "acted as a citizen journalist covering the proceedings, albeit one with clear partisan intentions," reported The New York Times.
Culberson used his Nokia 95 cellphone to record the discussions - described by another congressman as a "pep rally" - from a hallway (since House rules prohibit private cameras on the House floor).
"Mr. Culberson's online communications showed how new media tools like Twitter can supplement professional reporting," reported NYT. "As the Republicans departed the House chambers, a C-Span host explained the camera restrictions and said, 'We don't have a lot to show you.' So, in the absence of professional video, the cable channel showed one of Mr. Culberson's videos."
According to Rick Edmonds, in an opinion piece on Poynter Online, for mobile website to become a success they need "to grow: the quality and affordability of the devices, the audience for an assortment of news and information products, appealing medium-specific formatting and, finally, monetization through ads or another revenue stream."
All this can be quite hard for a local newspaper to set up. The result can be quite good to disastrous (hard to navigate or to read). However, mobile is such an important business that local newspapers can't afford to stay out of it.
The reality is that people can easily access national and international headlines on big dailies such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today or The Wall Street Journal on their mobiles, so they may not read their local news sites.
It seems that mobile is another business that big dailies benefit from to the detriment of local newspapers.
"We've reached a point where we have to go beyond user comments as the sole means of interaction on news articles," writes Steve Outing. "It's time to integrate staff content and eyewitness reports supplied from your community."
User comments all too frequently don't add to a story. "Comment threads in many newspaper Web sites are filled with bad behavior, crude humor, and uncivil discourse, punctuated by the occasional worthwhile tidbit that adds to a story. We must do better," writes Outing. Gawker recently suggested cutting comment boxes all together; however, readers can add value - perhaps we just need to look outside the comment box.
In his latest Editor & Publisher column, Outing argues, "most newspaper Web sites remain largely stuck in the we-tell-you mode of news," and that it's time to "get past that outdated strategy (and) integrate staff content and information from your community."
In its current form, reader-created content "is shuffled off to the side in its own area, set apart from the professional journalism."
Outing suggests that for any - and every - story, along side the reporter's piece is an "info-box sidebar ask(ing) people who were eyewitnesses to the accident to share any photos (or video) they may have taken, and to describe what they saw. Any content shared by eyewitnesses would be posted on the same page as the reporter's story."
Further, this feature should be included for all stories, big or small. "I argue that it's actually more interesting when applied to the smaller headlines," wrote Outing. "Because it serves the people for whom a 'small' story is actually big to them. Small stories often are reported by a small number of news organizations at a shallow level, so expanding them provides a powerful public service for those who want or need to know more."
For example, recently a local paper reported about a bear spotted in a neighborhood. Six users left comments, but most fell into the "smartass category." Outing writes, "By asking for eyewitness accounts... we'd actually get a look at that bear. After all, if you live in that neighborhood, you will be interested in that story... A wildlife expert reading the story might be prompted to post advice on what to do if you spot a bear foraging in your garbage cans."
Outing also suggests adding an story-specific email alert feature, so that as content is added, interested readers can stay up-to-date.
Reader involvement can even allow "big" stories to simultaneously be local, "for example, for the essential hurricane preparation story, local residents can be asked what they are doing to prepare... Retailers can be asked to report if they have essential preparedness materials like plywood available, to spare residents the hassle when trying to find something that everyone in town wants... For a personal-interest story about a specific family's losses, a call can go out -- accompanying the story -- to neighbors or friends of the family who may have additional information to share."
Outing cautions against creating "community content ghettos" and instead highlighting user-generated photos, videos, tips and opinion. "This stuff is important and can be important to the overall coverage of a story, so don't bury it."
Last, Outing addresses quality control. "How do we know that the eyewitness account is for real? Has the user-contributed photo been doctored in Photoshop? If the submission is written really badly or is riddled with factual errors, are we supposed to run it anyway?"
Outing recommends both user registration (so editors may contact contributors to verify information) and a vetting system, perhaps run by the story's reporter, who filters any community-created content and can moderate these reports. Outing also suggests ranking incoming submissions, so that the most valuable contributions get put at the top of the page.
An interesting point Outing makes is not to "cherry-pick." "If you gain a reputation of only picking the best stuff that community members contribute (the old "letters to the editor" model), you may see contributions dry up. My answer to that is to publish everything that looks to be legitimate and doesn't violate your terms of service, but for the lesser stuff hide it behind a 'more' link for those who want to dig a bit deeper. Present the best stuff at the top layer."
What newspapers need to both survive and thrive is "excellent journalism, strong investment to stay on the cutting edge of technology, and aggressive marketing of the product", according to a survey by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests "Mo Jo's" (note: mobile journalists) are usually deployed to cover geographical rather than themed beats and tend to act as carpet sweepers, reporting and filing a stream of short, quick stories for the paper's website on minor or routine developments during the course of the day," the survey reported.
The study showed that smaller newspapers focusing on their communities are experiencing more stability.
The general trend seems to be declining specialized beats. Some editors assume that letting beat reporters go will not make much of a difference since the same story may be gotten from somewhere else.
"Eventually, you wake up one day and find there is no somewhere else because everyone has done the same thing you've done," said one of the surveyed editors.
Because reporters find themselves focusing on more than one beat, the coverage is "thinner" and the quality of reporting has gone down, according to PJ Net
"The newspapers and their online editions seem to be leaning towards immediacy, local and short. That may be great for many readers, but not for me. I want that short stuff, but I want context, nuance, depth," wrote PJ Net's chief blogger Leonard Witt.
Gawker argues in a recent post that user comments should not be allowed on newspaper's websites.
"Comments are thought to be an added value to a newspaper's site--providing another reason to read. You come for the article, and stay for the interesting discussion," writes Sheila McClear. "The only problem is, there is no interesting discussion. Almost never. Not even from the mythical supersmart New York Times readers."
McClear argues that "opening a deeply personal article up to the peanut gallery does these writers a great disservice" given the quality of the comments and the tendency for them to turn personal.
She quips, "Thanks for writing; your check is in the mail, and oh--have fun getting senselessly torn apart in the comments. No, there's nothing we can do about it--it's 2.0!"
Rebutting the sometimes quoted: "comments are the modern-day equivalent of the letter to the editor" argument, McClear points out that the time and intention put into a letter is is mammoth when compared to the same time and intention it takes to click "post;" further, she rebukes guidelines or a vetting system, arguing that newspapers have better things to do, and instead advocates for cutting out the comment box altogether.
South African newspaper Die Burger is undergoing a makeover. It is launching its new design and reinvigorated content on the 14th of July. Die Burger held focus groups all over the country to find out what its reader wanted to see.
The paper will feature:
-More in-depth daily news analysis. -More focus on global news, in particular Africa. -More legible typography and accessible layout. -Shorter, more meaningful articles. -Bigger crossword puzzles. -Latest entertainment news in the TV schedule. -Popular comic strips. -Breaking news updates will be provided through mobile services, newsletters and online.
"The purpose of this redesign is to offer a product through which one can truly stay at the forefront of news - breaking and in-depth - analysis and entertainment," the paper said.
Source: Biz Community through IFRA Executive News Service
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published a guide for journalists on covering the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The guide emphasizes the need for journalists to protect their Chinese sources.
"You will leave, but they will stay," said Minky Worden, director of media at HRW.
The guide addresses the Chinese government's regulations imposed on foreign journalists, and offers tips to elude government censorship. It also teaches journalists to identify different levels of security forces by uniform.
The guide will be available in French, English, Spanish, and German.
At a time when any local or national news outlet can potentially become an international online brand, and as newsrooms adapt to a 24-hour news cycle, editors can learn from The New York Times' most recent attempt to 'kill' both birds with one stone.
Last week, top execs from The Times and the International Herald Tribuneannounced plans to mergeiht.com and nytimes.com into a co-branded international section, in order to increase both sites' reach and appeal to international advertisers.
In this two-part series, 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.
Through these moves, The Times intends to accomplish at least four ostensible goals:
Part 1: - Build an outpost for its Continuous News Desk in Paris, and eventually Hong Kong. - Integrate operations, streamline some resources by increasing efficiency and avoiding overlap.
Part 2: - Reinforce its international reach and further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. - Use the strength of NYT's online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name. IHT: an outpost for the Times' continuous news
Although the proposed changes are currently undergoing a consultation process with the IHT's works council, as required by French law, the process of integration of both papers began ever since the NYT acquired full control of the IHT in 2003, and has accelerated in past months.
In Feb., NYT executive editor Bill Keller had already announced plans to integrate operations and develop an "organic, global, 24-hour news operation," in order "to create a Continuous News outpost in Paris."
In May, the IHT dropped its 142-year-old logo from its nameplate to replace it with the phrase "The Global Edition of the New York Times."
"That says, we are one, and we are," although both arms are managed separately, said Jim Roberts, digital editor at The Times.
Video: Roberts talks about the 'integration' of both newspapers. Footage was collected during an interview at the 15th World Editors Forum in Sweden.
Thanks to this outpost and the six-hour time difference, the NYT is now able to upload content to its site nearly 24 hours a day (from about 6am to 1am, New York time). The paper eventually hopes to establish a similar outpost at the IHT's Asian headquarters in Hong Kong in the next six months.
The creation of these outposts does not mean that the IHT is becoming a full-blown Paris bureau for The Times. "We have a Paris bureau," said Roberts, "and the newsroom of the IHT still has a print edition and right now they still have a website." Integration, streamlining resources: evolution, no revolution
Since all proposed changes are undergoing a consultation process, editors couldn't give any firm preview of how workflows could be affected.
In the past, there has been "very regular contact between individual desks at the Times and corresponding desks at the IHT," said Martin Gottlieb, newly appointed editor of the Global edition. Many IHT editors come from The Times, regularly do edits on NYT pieces, and this past year IHT-written articles have appeared on nytimes.com with no distinctive byline.
However, there is no formal process of exchange between both newsrooms, and "There have been a couple of occasions when we've had IHT and NYT reporters covering the same thing," said Roberts.
The appointment of Gottlieb as editor of the Global Edition - note, no mention of the IHT in his title - is significant in that respect. In addition to fulfilling the role of editor of the paper, his mission will be to ensure that staff understands both papers are "two parts of one news-gathering operation, that should work in unison as much as possible in delivering the news 24 hours a day seven days a week," said Gottlieb.
A series of new editorial appointments at the IHT will be the symbols of this top-down integration. "There will be people coordinating the work of both staffs to, pretty much, make them as much as possible act as one staff," said Gottlieb.
For example, Alison Smale, who becomes European editor of the global newsroom, will be responsible for "coordinating the work of all NYT and IHT reporters in the region from the IHT newsroom in Paris," said the memo. To oversee the process, The Times also named Alan Flippen "Editor, Newsroom Organization."
It seems too early to say whether the planned reforms will lead to radical changes in workflows or content. Evolution, not revolution, said Roberts.
Currently, an IHT reporter based in Hong Kong might build upon a Times' story about the rise of airline fuel prices by interviewing Asian carriers, whose input might not have been as relevant to the core readership of the Times in the US. Likewise, an IHT story published in the Times might be fine-tuned to be more pertinent to the American audience (see the example of Der Spiegel in Part 2, looking at different newspaper approaches towards international editions).
Future workflows will likely build upon these current processes, rather than start from scratch. "It's continuing synergies that are taking place and maximizing them and regularizing them," said Gottlieb.
The planned changes can also be seen as an attempt to streamline resources - terminology often equivocated with cost cuts and layoffs. But according to Gottlieb, there are no planned newsroom layoffs at this point (this is subject to change during the next six months). It is possible that an online merger of iht.com and nytimes.com could lead to redundancies for some technical Web production positions.
Editors couldn't comment on any upcoming changes concerning the IHT's planned print redesign.
Stay tuned for Part 2, which will examine The Times' international branding strategy, and how newspapers can grow a previously inaccessible international readership.
Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition
Amazon's Kindle is a handheld device that displays magazines, books, and newspapers on electronic paper.
Innovative? Yes. Welcome? Getting there.
The Kindle has been met with instinctive distrust from some in the newspaper industry; to print traditionalists, the idea of compressing a newspaper into a 7.5" x 5.3" screen borders on irreverent. The Kindle is, however, making strides.
In a review for BusinessWeek, Arik Hesseldahl labeled the Kindle "a fair, if imperfect, replacement for the daily newspaper." Hesseldahl, a self-proclaimed newspaper junkie, liked the Kindle's sleek frame, and was pleasantly surprised by its readability. He was less thrilled with the tedious job of recharging the Kindle and its altered "visual conventions of the printed page."
"Headlines on the articles of Kindle-ized newspapers are all the same size, and so they lack the emotional punch conveyed by big, screaming 80-point type," he wrote.
Hesseldahl is cautiously optimistic about the Kindle. He believes it represents a potential opening for newspapers, a means of distribution, and could prove to be lucrative for Amazon. But first, he says, the Kindle - the old-fashioned newspaper's "imperfect substitute" - must be perfected.
He believes, paradoxically, the way to do this is by looking to the print newspaper: getting rid of the Kindle's uniform headlines and adjusting headlines according to their importance.
"Improvements to the digital ink display technology that the devices use will help," Hesseldahl writes. "But so will finding a way to stay true to the traditions of the newspapers."
Posted byAlisa Zykova on June 24, 2008 at 10:21 AM
Google News cannot be compared to other news sites like Yahoo News or CNN.com, according to PaidContent.org.
Google News gathers content with the help of computers who scan news on the Web and does not
contain any ads. Meanwhile, other news sites like CNN.com create licensed material that passes through editors.
Google News groups articles by subject and ranks article by importance based on factors like authority of publisher or placement of article in site. NYT writes that Google "packages the results as a set of links, sending readers to the sites where the articles appear."
According to the New York Times, Google executives
claim that traffic is not the primary aim but that Google News "helps
the company produce better search results and helps
users find news sources that they might not know about otherwise."
According to the NYT, the growth rate of Google News is only 10 %, compared to MSNBC.com's 42 %, which got the site 10.4 million in traffic.
Dan Gillmor, who is director of the Knight Center for
Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Arizona State University School of Journalism, said that he is surprised "how little" Google News "evolved, at least on the surface", NYT wrote.
Marissa Meyer, vice president for Google search and user experience, said that GoogleNews is one of "the most innovative" Google features and that its users actively employ the Google search engine and other services, NYT wrote.
She also mentioned that news results do emerge on the main Google search page, alongside adverts. According to Meyer, "it directly feeds the main business."
Google News is sometimes seen as a competitor to other news providers, even if it brings traffic to the news site. Industry executives, according to NYT, think that because Google News links to a remote article, the readers are not likely to stay on the news site.
According to Braig Moffett, a Sanford C; Bernstein & Copany analyst, the Internet "made it possible to aggregate news cheaply". Consequently, news providers stopped charging for content. "Google may be doing more to accelerate this trend than anyone,
but they are not doing it out of malice," Moffett said. Tribune Co. owner Samuel Zell accused Google of stealing news stories for their own gains. In Europe, Belgian prosecutors said that Google News had "violated copyright laws" without asking for permission to link to the articles, NYT reported.
Google said that the company wishes "to help, not hurt, journalism", NYT wrote. Its chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said that the company has "a huge moral imperative" to aid news outlets in becoming more "successful online", NYT wrote.
Last year, several features were added, such as different country and language versions of Google News. The number of "duplicate articles" is being reduced, as "authoritative" and "original" news stories are being displayed, according to NYT.
There is also the chance to personalize Google News, by focusing on local news and mapping the news event sites on Google Earth. Users can also post comments and search quotes.
Different sides to the same story are being provided by the news search engine, helping to make people "wake up and think," said Krishna Bharat, the research scientist behind GoogleNews. "That's what makes people news
junkies," she added.
NYT wrote that even if there have been some innovations, Google News "still lacks many of the
flashier features that have attracted users to more conventional news
sites, including interactive graphics and video."
Analysts have begun to question automated products and their limitations. Mark Glaser, PBS MediaShift editor said, "there is only so far you can go with an algorithm" because , "in the long run, people want a human touch."
