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The founding director of a Political Management master's degree program at the George Washington University surveyed 371 print and web journalists from September to October of last year, with the aim of establishing to what extent social media tools are used in the research and distribution of articles.

The results of the online survey, reported on the university's newspaper website, found that 56 percent of those surveyed said that social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories, with the overwhelming majority citing the internet as the starting point for their research- despite the fact that 84 percent said news and information delivered via social media was slightly less or much less reliable than news delivered via traditional media.

It's a question that can get lost in all the talk of business models and content creation: how might journalism best serve the public?

In Australia, the latest group to ponder this is The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism, directed by a group of journalists, editors, academics and members of the community. Part of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University in Melbourne, it is setting up a project called YouCommNews, modeled on the American site Spot.Us, which will allow the audience to commission the stories they want to see.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Dr Margaret Simons, chair of the foundation, and to David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.

The British international business newspaper the Financial Times (FT) has announced several appointments to its US staff, Editor and Publisher has reported.

The new staff are in the coverage areas of business, finance and markets, and will report to the US finance and business editor Francesco Guerrera.

Tom Boswell's usually revered sports column fuelled a not insignificant number of outcries from WaPo's most fastidious readers back in November, when it graced the publication's website littered with errors and typos. At the time the Post's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, explained such occurrences as an undesirable side effect of tighter deadlines and fewer copy editors, after recent jobs cuts and a total of four buyouts since 2003.

But despite complaints from agitated readers, Boswell's typo strewn offering has been by no means an isolated case, and eagle eyed grammarians have been quick to point other errors as and when. Many ask pertinent questions, such as Phillip K. Cohen: "If they don't care about basics like grammar and spelling, how much do they care about factual accuracy?"

The Wall Street Journal has announced a replacement for Nik Deogun, who left the paper recently to take a post as managing editor at CNBC.  His replacement is Rebecca Blumstein, who will now enter the elusive Wall Street Journal troika as international editor of the WSJ and deputy managing editor. 

In a memo regarding the promotion, managing editor of the WSJ, Robert Thomson, gleefully stated, "Rebecca has done outstanding work at WSJ.com this year and her role overseeing our correspondents will allow her to continue the important phase of integration she has begun at dotcom. Before taking the role at online, she was International News Editor and China Editor, so she is well aware of the challenges of life as a correspondent and acutely conscious of our digital potential, which she will continue to realize with her customary vigor and creativity."

Tribune Co., which has spent the last year dealing with bankruptcy, has announced that Gerry Spector will be taking over at the new chief operating officer. He is replacing Randy Michaels who was promoted to CEO last week to replace Sam Zell, who became chairman.

Spector will be overseeing the publishing, broadcast, and Internet operations. He has been with the company since 2007, having previously been the chief administrative office.

The Associated Press has announced that some 50 newspapers who had previously given notice of cancellation to the service, have changed their minds and withdrawn those notices in the last few months.

In a statement to Editor and Publisher, AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford said:  "We are pleased and gratified by these members' decisions."

The Tribune's newspaper chain will go AP-free as of next week in an experiment to see if it can manage without the news feed and eventually cut back on the cost of subscribing to it altogether.

The trial period is expected to start next week (Nov 8), just over a year since Tribune Co. gave AP the required two year notice of cancellation.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of the recent "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," moderated the 'Free AND Paid Content: Business Models That Work' discussion on Tuesday night in the Condé Nast building in New York. The discussion, intended to focus on whether book and news consumers would pay for online content, quickly turned into a tense intellectual slugging match between John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishing, and Anderson.

Anderson championed the future of free content, or 'freemiums,' explaining that free content could bring books and print back into 'cultural conversation' while emphasizing that consumers could not be expected to being paying for something they can get and have gotten for free. Anderson's 'new economy' of the freemium is based in the digital world where 90% of content is free and 10% is sold, and is a radical departure from the control of the "beneficiaries of a 20th century oligopoly" (speaking of himself and the panelists) for whom "what the Internet did is ruin our party."

While he received support from panelist Gary Hoenig, ESPN Publishing's general manager and editorial director, who offered the evidence of his own site's doubling subscriptions simply by "improving the quality of the content," Anderson was strongly opposed by Sargent, who consistently cast a grim outlook for publishers and was tepidly backed by Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive online editor of the Wall Street Journal. Citing the Journal's robust business coverage and successful charging for online content, Murray called the panel's central question of whether people will pay "silly." The problem he brought up is that newspapers prematurely decided they would give away content over a decade ago; readers got used to reading their papers for free, thus "devaluing their own content."

For the Ann Arbor News, the expiration date has arrived - after 174 years the newspaper put out its final edition today. Editor Ed Petykiewicz's farewell letter reads like the obituary of an old friend suffering from a long illness, though one that hung on as best it could until the very end. It is clear readers and News staff alike feel a bit lost without the town's only daily newspaper.

Over at AnnArbor.com, the completely new venture set to replace the News with daily online coverage and a twice-weekly print edition, the official launch of the site has been pushed back to Friday, from last Monday, to take care of some technical issues. A preview of the site's design has elicited a fair amount of criticism from Ann Arbor residents.

The Guardian reported that its editor Alan Rusbridger has thrown his support behind a plan to give public funding to the Press Association, Britain's national press agency. The funding would allow the PA to carry out public service reporting, providing news from public authorities and courts to compensate for the reduction in coverage of such local institutions by local and regional papers.

Rusbridger was speaking at a seminar on the future of journalism at the Media Standards Trust in London. He expressed concern at the gradual disappearance of local journalism, according to the Guardian. "It makes me worry about all of those public authorities and courts which will in future operate without any kind of systematic public scrutiny. I don't think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting," he said.

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.

On 19 June, Paris' Sciences Po École de journalisme played host to a selection of the world's leading journalism educators (Chile, China, Denmark, Jordan, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, UK and the USA) who were invited to discuss the "Challenges and Evolution of Journalism Education."

Opening the conference, Bruno Patino, dean of the Sciences PO School of Journalism, said: "The only thing certain is uncertainty," in reference to the news industry, which has seen advertising revenue across developed countries plummet in the wake of the economic crisis and the growing influence of the Internet.

On Wednesday, to mark the launch of Hebrew Book Week, staff at Israel's daily Haaretz surrendered their desks, notebooks and pens to some of the country's most celebrated writers and poets.

With the exception of the sports and finance sections, established and up-and-coming authors were entrusted with researching stories and producing copy for the entire newspaper, from the front page headline to the back-page weather report.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Labour MP Tom Watson go head-to-head on Twitter, as Watson and the Daily Mail accuse the centre-left paper of going too far. Last week, the newspaper went ahead with a front-page editorial urging the British PM Gordon Brown to resign.

Daily Mail obsessed with idea of Guardian 'putsch' (in collusion with BBC?). A question of media ethics, apparently. http://tiny.cc/7Wp3M"

And so went the tweet that started it all, with Rusbridger linking to the Daily Mail article, in which Stephen Glover asks "Was it [the Guardian] trying to orchestrate events so as to secure the resignation which it had called for in its editorial?"

In an interview with the Telegraph, Tina Brown expresses her views on the future of newspapers and the professional journalist.   The once queen bee of the high-end glossy magazine industry has now completely embraced the digital medium as editor in chief of the New York Daily Beast. Brown is now advising fellow journalists to recognise the need for 'innovative approaches' to the delivery of news and the varying business models to maintain them financially. 

Emphasising the 'parlous condition' of the New York Times, and the worrying health of other significant US local papers such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, Brown maintained that resources should be placed on preserving the intent and purposes of journalism per se, rather than on saving printed newspapers, "It's more important to preserve journalism than it is to preserve newspapers, frankly."

The New York Times is expected to raise its cover prices again since they last raised it 11 months ago from $1.25 to $1.50. To try and make up for plummeting advertising revenue, they are expected to raise the newsstand price from $1.50 to $2.00 during the week and from $5 to $6 for the national Sunday edition, effective June 1. The New York edition will cost $5, still a one-dollar increase.

The 33% increase on the weekday newsstand price of the Times comes after the New York Times Company lost $74 million in Quarter 1 due to liquid losses of ad revenue. The Times revenue went down 27% since the same time last year. There is also talk about the New York Times starting to charge for some or all of its online content.

This June the Chicago Tribune will launch a new website, Chicago Now, which will combine social media, e-commerce, blogs, news content, and advertorials to "connect Chicagoans through a network of niche sites." According to its promotion video, the project will be "Huffington Post meets Facebook for Chicago" and aims to attract new local audiences who will engage with each other as well as advertisers.

Chicago Now does not intend to replace ChicagoTribune.com, which will continue, though it will replace the Tribune's web site for RedEye, its free daily targeted to a young urban audience. The new site's goal is to build an authentic and engaged local community quickly and to secure 35% of local web traffic.

The International Herald Tribune's website is no more, but is being rebranded as 'The Global Edition' of the New York Times (global.nytimes.com) in a move that is part of a wider attempt to further integrate the publications. The new joint site "combines the international voice of the IHT, the breadth and depth of The New York Times's international journalism and the digital expertise and reach of NYTimes.com," according to the a note from IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, to provide 24-hour coverage "from a truly global perspective." The global home page retains the IHT logo.

IHT.com users will be automatically redirected to the new Global Edition, and buttons on the home pages of both the US and global editions will allow readers to navigate easily between the two. There is also a mobile site: mobile.nytimes.com/global, and readers will be able to sign up for a 'Today's Headlines Global Edition' email service which is delivered twice a day, to coincide with both Asian and European mornings. Plans to combine the websites were announced last summer, along with a redesign of the IHT print edition.