Results matching “la times editor fired”

In the wake of Tim Russert's death, we are reminded again that in the world of Wikipedia and Web 2.0, breaking news waits for no man.

Following the sudden death of Mr. Russert, the former moderator of "Meet the Press" and the chief of NBC's Washington bureau, NBC chose to withhold the news for over an hour, wanting to first inform Russert's family, who were vacationing in Italy.

"We were not prepared to say anything until all the family had heard," said Allison Gollust, an NBC News spokeswoman. "The last thing we wanted to do was to have the family discover this on the air." Gollust said NBC had asked the other networks to hold back and all agreed.

Russert collapsed from a heart attack in NBC's Washington newsroom around 1:40 p.m. and was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital at 2:23. The official announcement came from NBC's former anchor Tom Brokaw, on air at 3:39.

But almost 40 minutes earlier, the news broke on Wikipedia. Mr. Russert's page was updated at 3:01 p.m. -- adding the date of death and turning present-tense verbs into the past tense. "The entry was particularly influential since many journalists had heard of Mr. Russert's becoming stricken, but did not know the outcome," noted the New York Times. "If some turned to Wikipedia to refresh themselves about Mr. Russert, they found an article that seemed to confirm what many had been hearing."

The IP address of the editor traces to a "junior level" employee at Internet Broadcasting Services in St. Paul, Minn., which contracts Web services to local NBC TV stations. The employee, who posted thinking the information was public record, has since been fired.

Sources: The New York Times, The Daily Online Examiner

Sub-editors may be vanishing but Guardian writer Peter Wilby believes they are essential in the upkeep of newspapers, even though their roles probably will change and diminish.

Many newspapers do not see a need for sub-editors, for example, Archant Suffolk announced last week that they plan on getting advertising designers to lay out pages and reporters to sub each other's copy in place of 20 sub-editor positions. Other papers have centralized subbing into categories that serve several titles, while others have outsourced subbing. Times writers maximize search results with key words instead of a traditional introduction.

The argument for phasing out sub-editors is that if an article's gist is clear, then there is no need for perfect grammar. If an article has factual errors and spelling mistakes, then those reporters should be fired and replaced with those who write with higher standards.

Wilby argues that a brilliant reporter does not equate to a brilliant sub-editor since those two jobs require different skills. "There is something odd about the perpetual demand for multi-skilling in newspapers and other industries," Wilby writes. "The division of labour was once seen as the chief dynamic of economic progress, allowing each of us to perfect a particular set of talents and skills."

But, the primary question is whether or not readers will pay for an unpolished finished product. The popularity of blogs indicate that people read articles that do not go through a sub-editor, but if newspapers want to survive, Wilby states that they must "persuade
people they are premium, high quality products" by maintaining and further yet, improving "their reputations for reliability, clarity, consistency and coherence."

In the future, however, Wilby believes technology will probably perform the more routine subbing functions.

Source: The Guardian

Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Dwyre described the dangers of blogging before reporting, in a day and age in which buzz and hits increasingly tend to outpace accuracy or sound editorial judgment, in which drama outweighs news.

The departure of Los Angeles Times editor James O’Shea, resulting from a dispute with publisher David Hiller over cost cuts, throws light on increasing concerns for editors: how can they maintain editorial quality while the budget shrinks?

James O’Shea is the second top editor of the Los Angeles Times to leave within 15 months over cost-cutting disputes.

Armed men attempted to break into Muhammad Zahoor’s house at 2 am after Zahoor failed to open the door for them. The culprits then fired shots at the local watchman when he tried to stop their escape. Luckily, neither Zahoor or the watchman were injured in the attack. 

In the past week three big name editors have been fired. Dean Baquet, Los Angeles Times, Amanda Bennett, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Debra Adams, Akron Beacon Journal were each separately forced out of their editor positions by newspaper owners because of their unwillingness to cut more staffers.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, the metropolis’ largest newspaper, may have to layoff up to 150 of its 425 staffers. Philadelphia Media Holdings’, the Inquirer’s new owner, CEO Brian Tierney wrote a memo a few weeks ago commenting on revenue losses of the paper, which were even greater than expected, especially in national advertising.

Little more than a month after losing its publisher, the Los Angeles Times is saying goodbye to its editor-in-chief, Dan Baquet. Former publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson and Baquet publicly denounced the idea of cutting more newsroom staff at the Tribune Co. owned paper. After Johnson's firing, Baquet was pinned to stay for the long haul, but apparently differences with new publisher David Hiller could not be resolved.

Because he announced publicly his refusal to cut more jobs at his paper, Jefferey M. Johnson, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was asked to resign. The paper's parent company, Tribune, is under considerable pressure from shareholders to cut costs and improve its stock market value. With Johnson out, Tribune will take control of the paper it purchased in 2002 and which makes up 25% of its overall revenue.

 The Editors' Weblog has compiled a provisional list of the newspapers that have printed some or all of the cartoons since 30 September 2005, date of publication of 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. Even provisional, this list is the most exhaustive on the internet, thanks to members of the World Editors Forum and to bloggers close to the EW.

The main conclusions are:

- to our knowledge, more than 130 national or local newspapers (excluding the student newspapers and online publications) published some or all of the 12 cartoons (sometimes just a pohtography) in approximately 50 countries . It also means that around 1,7% of the dailies around the world - 8,300 paid-for dailies according to World Press Trends 2005 - made the difficult decision to publish the cartoons.

- Europe was the continent where the most newspapers published the cartoons: at least 70 papers. It is not surprising that the Netherlands was the country most involved in the controversy (after Denmark)... a few months after the assassination of the film maker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist activist. Same thing in France after the veil debate and the November 2005 riots.

- Within Europe, the first publications to reprint the cartoons in January-February 2006 were in general right-wing publications, for example ABC in Spain, Die Welt in Germany and Corriere della Sera in Italy. Then more leftist publications followed suit, for example Libération and Le Monde in France.

- Surprisingly, Arab and Muslim newspapers were also involved in the controversy from the very beginning, with the first reprint on 17 October 2005 (see below)! More than 12 Arab and/or Muslim newspapers published the cartoons. The decision to publish provoked terrible consequences for the editors-in-chief of these publications. Same consequences for some directors of television in Sudan and Algeria. 

- How to define the position adopted by American, British, Canadian and Australian newspapers? Media responsability, political correctness or self-censorship? The most surprising is not the position defined in many editorials (from The New York Times to The Guardian), but this strange impression of unanimity and consensus: only three regional newspapers on more than 1,400 newspapers in the States and zero newspaper, but a student daily in the UK for taking the risk...

- And what in the rest of the world? Nothing. Almost the desert for the publication of the cartoons in the Americas (apart Brazil), Africa (apart South Africa) and above all Asia (apart New Zealand). As if this controversy was only between Europe and the Arab world and if blasphemy was still relevant in regions as Asia and the Americas: not only about Mohammed, but about all religious issues.

My conclusion: the geography of the publication of the Danish cartoons tells us a lot about our democracies: what is allowed, what is forbidden... and what is taboo. In fact, it's more geopolitics than geography!

France Soir, the French daily that yesterday re-printed the infamous Mohammed cartoons originally published by Danish paper Jyllands Posten in September 2005 (see previous posting and here and here), has fired its managing director Jacques Lefranc and issued an apology for the re-printing of the cartoons.

Raymond Lakah, owner of France Soir, stated he had "decided to remove Jacques Lefranc as managing director of the publication as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual .. We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication" of the caricatures.

Last month in Moscow, the Russian Guild of Press Publishers held the First Russian Publishers Conference.  During the Press Freedom Seminar, President of the World Editors Forum and Saturday Editor of The Times (London), George Brock, gave a talk discussing the freedom of the press in Russia, whose text is posted below. 

From the Moscow Times: "Moskovskiye Novosti, a flagship of the liberal press from the time of perestroika that is now suffering a deep editorial crisis, has an unexpected new owner. Arkady Gaidamak, a Moscow-born businessman with four passports and a controversial past - especially the arms-for-oil scandal in Angola -, confirmed to Ekho Moskvy radio late Friday that he had bought the weekly newspaper." And Gaidamak is rather close to the Kremlin palace: it means that a new newspaper is controlled by Putin's friends.

According to Moscow Times, "Moskovskiye Novosti had been owned by Ukrainian media magnate Vadim Rabinovich, who acquired it in July from Leonid Nevzlin, a core Menatep shareholder, who lives in Israel and is wanted in Russia on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

In March 2005, Moskovskiye Novosti descended into crisis after editor Yevgeny Kiselyov, a former television anchor appointed by Nevzlin, fired several prominent veteran journalists. Kiselyov left when Nevzlin sold the paper.

According to UPI, "A liberal magazine editor in southern China has been fired for advocating political reforms, the latest victim of yet another media crackdown. Xiao Weibin, the editor of the government-run but liberal Tong Zhou Gong Jin, was not at liberty to discuss his dismissal, saying only that he was "in a very difficult position," the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday. In August, Xiao published an uncensored interview with former Guangdong Communist Party Secretary Ren Zhongyi, 91, who criticized China's political reforms for being too sluggish compared to economic reforms. He also criticized the government for banning books, shutting down newspapers and censoring the Internet. The article also ran in another periodical, Nanfeng Chuang, but the editor retained his post as he had edited out the most sensitive parts, the report said.

Source: UPI / Washington Times

through topix.net

According to UPI, "A liberal magazine editor in southern China has been fired for advocating political reforms, the latest victim of yet another media crackdown. Xiao Weibin, the editor of the government-run but liberal Tong Zhou Gong Jin, was not at liberty to discuss his dismissal, saying only that he was "in a very difficult position," the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday. In August, Xiao published an uncensored interview with former Guangdong Communist Party Secretary Ren Zhongyi, 91, who criticized China's political reforms for being too sluggish compared to economic reforms. He also criticized the government for banning books, shutting down newspapers and censoring the Internet. The article also ran in another periodical, Nanfeng Chuang, but the editor retained his post as he had edited out the most sensitive parts, the report said.

Source: UPI / Washington Times

through topix.net

Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher looks at the role of editors when it comes to ‘ethical breaches’. “While reporters involved in various ethical breaches have been punished in many cases for their crimes, few editors have been suspended or fired in the past year for transgressions that occurred on their watch. Of course, Karen Jurgensen recently quit her top newsroom post at USA Today amidst the Jack Kelley scandal. But some newsroom veterans say those in charge should be taking more of the responsibility, more of the heat.”