Results matching “the new york times”

The New York Sun, printed since 2002 as a "conservative-leaning alternative" to The New York Times (NYT), announces that it may stop being published by the end of this month if it doesn't receive adequate funding, reports the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

The New York Times International Weekly supplement, offered in 31 newspapers from 28 countries, announces a re-launch that aims to boost readership for the "flagship" New York Times, reports Brand Republic.

Lowell Bergmann is a ground breaking investigative reporter, a producer/correspondent for the PBS documentary series "Frontline" in the US and spent 14 years as a producer with CBS's "60 Minutes".

Bergman shared a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with The New York Times in 2004 for "A Dangerous Business," (which detailed a record of egregious worker safety violations coupled with the systematic violation of environmental laws in the iron sewer and water pipe industry) and is a Professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Furthermore, he is a co-founder of the Centre for Investigative Journalism and a consultant at ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

The story of Bergman's investigation of the tobacco industry for 60 Minutes was chronicled in the 1999 Academy Award-nominated feature film "The Insider", in which Bergman was portrayed by Al Pacino (below left).

The Editors Weblog contacted Lowell Bergman - who was an early adopter and advocate of the multimedia model - to discover his views on the key issues facing investigative reporting and its future.

EW: What do you see in the future for investigative journalism? Do you still see it as having a home at newspapers?

LB: Investigative journalism in America has always been done by magazines and in books as well as in newspaper. For many years newspapers were not doing much of it. It was a 'freelance' occupation usually with writers like I.F. Stone and others who left newspapers because they were too restrictive. Personally, I have been using the web and been 'online' for more than a decade.

But it remains true that it is newspapers and traditional news organizations that produce almost all the new information everyday.

Pure web based operations with a few new exceptions recycle information they get from those organizations. We will see web based sites becoming the providers of more and more news and quality information in the future, but the transition will take time.

EB: What do you see as the key issue facing your profession?

LB: I am not sure it is a 'profession' in the traditional sense. In this country it is open to everyone. It is not licensed. Right now the transformation of the media endangers the collective experience of news people who chose to make gathering, investigating and presenting quality information their life work. That is why non-profits and educational institutions [Universities] will become more and more important. They do not have the same pressures. Its a time of transition, a kind of "Middle Age", that will not see a resurgence of real reporting until the economic questions are resolved.

EW: How has new media changed the way you work?

LB: Obviously, the availability of databases, newspaper archives and all sorts of information on the Web makes many things easier. But the old techniques and standards have not been replaced. To do investigative or in depth reporting you have take the time to meet people, and not meet them in a chat room.

Confidentiality on the internet is virtually impossible. It depends on trust. And trust is the weakest link in terms of the reliability of information offered up on the Web by so called 'new media'.

EW: Do you think there is more pressure from editors with the advent of the 24-hour news culture? Are investigative journalists getting the time and resources necessary?

LB: At a certain point you are a stenographer, if you don't have enough time to do the kind of reporting that advances what we know. This is not just true of 'investigative' reporters.

All good reporting involves asking some skeptical questions and not assuming what you are told is true. When I think of 'investigative reporting' I mean reporting in the public interest that looks deeply into a subject or story. Often it involves developing sources or hunting for documents or both and having the time to explore what they mean. At the same time in the best of all world's your editor is happy if you come back and say there is no story, or the story you originally went in pursuit of changed.

So, in answer to your question the pressure of a failing economic model by definition means there is less time. Prior to the decline of newspapers, broadcasters in the U.S. freed from the strictures around licensing that once forced them to present programming in the public interest along with operating with the threat of punishment created worldwide news gathering organizations. They had the incentive to do documentaries and present them even if the ratings were far below those of entertainment. That is no longer the case so you have less in depth reporting on the air as well.

EW: Is the law now having an impact on your profession? Is the law becoming more restrictive for journalists in general, and investigative journalists in particular?

LB: Not really. There has been a squeeze on the confidential source privilege, but it appears that Congress and a new President will sign a federal 'shield law'. The issues surrounding what is called national security reporting and/or criminal cases where a prosecutor or defendant has no where else to turn for information are unlikely to be resolved by the legislation. It is more of a question of the attitude/discretion of the prosecutors.

EW: Do you feel protected by the law?

LB: I never expect 'protection'. My sources do.

EW: How do you think an editor should best manage an investigative reporting team or reporter?

LB: Briefly, they should provide insight, encouragement and support, especially when the going gets tough.

EW: Who are the main competition to newspaper investigative reporters now? What are your thoughts on groups such as ProPublica?

This work is non profit. I have even called it 'anti-profit' by its very nature. So ProPublica, I am a consultant, or the Center for Investigative Reporting, I am one of the founders, are non profits working the public interest. Basically, that is what a very good newspaper newsroom does: report stories without fear or favor, and without considering the resources needed to do that. It is at its root a non-profit activity.

Rupert Murdoch's biographer, Michael Wolff, reveals in his forthcoming book on the News Corp chairman that the media magnate has some surprising viewpoints on new media.

Despite what News Corp report in press releases, Murdoch has little interest or time for the prevailing converged, multimedia theory.

Wolff reports, "He's really not interested in all this talk about newspapers as the basis of new information franchises...blah blah. That's maybe what they say at News Corp to gull Wall Street. But Rupert Murdoch wants the physical thing."

He goes on to say, "He pokes the paper, slashes at it - move this, reduce that, enlarge this. It may be the ultimate fantasy, his continuing, contrary belief in newspapers."

Furthermore, Murdoch would like to acquire the New York Times. According to Wolff its, "Irresistible to him. I've watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal's backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff's quitting en masse as soon as he entered the scared temple."

Murdoch also reportedly would like Barack Obama to win the forthcoming US Presidential election as, "he'll sell more papers".

Wolff has unparalled access to the media tycoon over a nine-month period. Wolff told the New York Observer that the book should be out in December.

Source: Press Gazette

The New York Times (NYT) Moscow bureau has created a Russian-language blog whose title reads "Tell the Americans and the entire world about Russia", reported Marketing Media Review.

The viewpoints featured on the blogs are translated into English and will be published on the newspaper's official site, even if the tone of the content is negative. The issues discussed in the blogs are suggested by NYT journalists and include translated NYT news stories about Russia.

 Russian bloggers had the chance to pose questions to one of Barack Obama's advisor, who answered the inquiries and studied the nearly 500 comments left on the blog.

Source: Marketing Media Review

Since 2004, the number of new, "citizen-generated" media and reporters at the US political conventions has significantly increased. It has become more difficult to differentiate between independent bloggers and traditional ones as traditional media is adopting a "multi-platform" method, according to Media Shift's Mark Glaser.

Portfolio.com's Jeff Bercovici questions whether or not Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (NYT) op-ed columnist, has crossed an ethical border after he pretended to be a Chinese national in order to test out the boundaries of Internet censorship in China.

User comments on websites has become standard fare for most media organizations. But according to the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele and Kelly McBride, who spoke at the Unity: Journalists of Colour Convention, news organizations must make it easy and inviting for users to comment, otherwise they may inhibit the discourse they purport to initiate.

Editor and Publisher looked into the matter in order to see the mechanisms that newspaper sites were employing when dealing with user-generated content and found a range of methods.

The research found:

-All of the top 10 US newspaper websites reviewed have mechanisms to monitor the content, be it screening comments or urging users to report offences
-Some sites require registration
-Some sites preview comments prior to their publication
-Some used both

According to Editor and Publisher, the most "liberal" policy about user's posts is from the Wall Street Journal, since neither registration or moderation are used and readers are pushed to self-police and report offences.

The Los Angeles Times had the "most stringent" and "severely worded" rules that referred to discrimination, false advertising and interrupted online access:

WARNING: A VIOLATION OF THESE POSTING RULES MAY BE REFERRED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

This is exactly the kind of unappealing, and threatening phrase that Poynter's Steel and McBride warned against, saying that they could be perceived as "hostile."

Less "threatening" in tone, the Denver Post's Neighbor forum includes the following guidelines:

Think of Neighbors as a neighborhood gathering, where conversation is lively and civil. What's important to you is probably of interest to others - if your neighbors don't know about something, they will appreciate if you share your knowledge. The community and its users will decide what the site becomes, but it is not intended to be a free-for-all.

Retaining more "civility", the New York Daily News writes:

Be nice. Think about others. People often say things on boards that they would be ashamed to say to someone face to face. Please treat other users with respect.

Source: Editor and Publisher

The average time spent per person on nearly half of top 30 US newspaper websites in July 2008 has decreased year-on-year, according to Nielsen Online data.

The figure for the Houston Chronicle increased from 14 minutes to 25 minutes and from 12 minutes to 16 minutes for the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com. Growth was also seen at NYTimes.com, USAToday.com and the Wall Street Journal website.

The average time spent per person at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution site dropped from 23 minutes to 10 minutes and from 18 minutes to 9 minutes at Boston.com.

From Editor and Publisher, here is a list of average time spent per person in July 2008 on newspaepr sites, ranked by the number of unique visitors per site:

Time per Person (mm:ss) July 2008 vs. July 2007

NYTimes.com -- 32:03 -- 27:21
USATODAY.com -- 16:17 -- 11:48
washingtonpost.com -- 14:31 -- 17:55
LA Times -- 07:39 -- 08:26
Wall Street Journal Online -- 18:28 -- 12:17

New York Post -- 08:13 -- 09:00
Boston.com -- 09:01 -- 18:37
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 16:04 -- 12:17
Daily News Online Edition -- 05:18 -- 05:04
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 09:55 -- 23:09

Ottaway Newspapers -- 03:34 -- 06:13
Chicago Tribune -- 08:11 -- 15:55
Newsday -- 03:29 -- 03:30
International Herald Tribune -- 02:39 -- 01:48
Chicago Sun-Times -- 07:04 -- 06:32

The Houston Chronicle -- 25:21 -- 14:20
Politico -- 06:56 -- 06:14
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 04:50 -- 03:29
NJ.com -- 06:09 -- 08:21
Village Voice Media -- 04:58 -- 04:45

Philly.com -- 05:27 -- 06:58
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 05:33 -- 04:44
MercuryNews.com -- 03:49 -- 04:32
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 14:48 -- 13:02
Baltimore Sun -- 09:43 -- 10:20

Star Tribune -- 36:39 -- 22:36
Kentucky.com -- 02:02 -- NA
Boston Herald -- 05:35 -- 05:15
The Detroit News -- 09:35 -- 14:09
OregonLive.com -- 04:27 -- 08:46

Source: Editor and Publisher through IFRA Executive News Service

Four out of the five online news sources that experienced the largest increase in unique users since July 2007 year-on-year were newspaper Web sites, according to a Nielsen Online study which tracked 30 current and global news outlets.

New York Daily News was the biggest increase in unique users, growing by 66% to 4.3 million, despite ranking No.29 on the list. Cox Newspapers' unique users rose by 57% to 5.8 million. Advance's papers grew by 42% to 8 million unique users whereas New York Times rose by 38% to 19.5 million.

MSNBC had the highest number of uniques, having increades by 44% to 37.5 million.

Gannett papers had a 4% decline to 13.2 million uniques. USA Today fell by 2% to 10.4 million and The Washington Post decreased by 2% to 8.9 million.

Editor and Publisher provide a list of the Top 30 Online Current Events & Global News Destinations for last month, compared to July 2007:

Media Oulet - July '08 Unique Audience (000) - July '07 Unique Audience (000)

MSNBC Digital Network -- 37,516 -- 26,015
Yahoo! News -- 35,225 -- 32,674
CNN Digital Network -- 32,977 -- 29,757
AOL News -- 22,010 -- 23,103
NYTimes.com -- 19,513 -- 14,149

Tribune Newspapers -- 16,177 -- 12,218
ABCNEWS Digital Network -- 13,534 -- 9,876
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division -- 13,254 -- 13,812
Fox News Digital Network -- 11,540 -- 9,343
Google News -- 10,776 -- 8,973

USATODAY.com -- 10,404 -- 10,611
McClatchy Newspaper Network -- 10,380 -- 8,338
CBS News Digital Network -- 9,197 -- 9,203
WorldNow -- 9,070 -- 7,604
washingtonpost.com -- 8,935 --- 9,157

Hearst Newspapers Digital -- 8,225 -- 7,596
Advance Internet -- 8,044 -- 5,648
MediaNews Group Newspapers -- 7,574 -- 6,843
Topix -- 6,229 -- 5,949
Cox Newspapers -- 5,842 -- 3,723

Slate -- 5,763 -- 4,875
IB Websites -- 5,633 -- 6,202
BBC News -- 5,253 -- 6,408
Gannett Broadcasting -- 5,010 -- 3,893
Fox Television Stations -- 4,940 -- 4,550

New York Post Holdings -- 4,937 -- 3,952
Boston.com -- 4,891 -- 4,029
MailOnline -- 4,645 -- 4,137
Daily News Online Edition -- 4,301 -- 2,586
NPR -- 4,282 -- 3,327

Source: Editor and Publisher

The mobile news market in the US will soon be ripe for mass consumption, according to Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times.

"It's been a runaway success," said Samuels, speaking of the growth of the Times' mobile site. "Numbers will continue to grow, there is a lot of industry dynamic supporting this."

The Times' mobile site, which drew 500,000 page views in January 2007, received over 10 million hits by December of the same year, and soared up to 19 million views in May 2008.

Although "most of the consumption on our site is through high end mobile devices so far" such as BlackBerry phones, Treo mobile devices and iPhones, the market is rapidly growing for the mass market, especially amongst commuters.

Generally speaking, the consumption patterns are similar for the online and mobile editions: business and politics are very popular, as well as blogs or most-emailed stories. "But amongst the mobile applications we've been rolling out, some of them are particularly tailored to the mobile user such as the mobile user real estate listings," said Samuels, which enable users on the go to receive listings based on specific criteria such as number of bedrooms, price...

"In America, I think the general web browsing for the mobile site has been at an advantage in terms of user behavior and pricing over SMS products," said Samuels.  All the Times' text message alerts link off to the mobile site to encourage users to browse it and read the whole story.

According to Samuels, text messaging will continue to grow for specific uses, such as stock listings or weather forecasts (see this study about text messaging and mobile usage), but "the predominant, long-term mass consumption, will be more than likely be browsing just because that's such a dominant behavior here in the US," he said. Still, "Text messaging for content adoption will grow in the US, we are simply well behind other markets like Europe and Asia."

As of now, the Times' hasn't created any position dedicated to editing or rewriting content for mobile consumption. "I don't think we'll hire specific people to tailor content for mobile per se," said Samuels.

However, most mobile articles are slightly edited upstream in the production process, to make headlines appropriate for mobile devices - for example, an E-hed for mobile can be made to stand alone without a picture, or pictures can be cropped to fit the device.

Is mobile news more adapted to local news outlets that can send out locally relevant alerts to users? "I think it is most definitely appropriate for them but by no means exclusive for them," said Samuels. National brands can also establish themselves on the local mobile news market. In the second half of the year, Samuels plans to roll out restaurant listings, in addition to its show time and weather services.

The Times is also developing news alerts for scheduled news events, such as the Olympics or the presidential elections in the US. For the Olympics, users can sign up to receive various updates including postings from the Rings blog, Top-10 medal count charts or the schedule of events.

While most of the Times' mobile news alert services are free, its mobile games and products will remain paid-for for the foreseeable future. "Through experience and industry research, still the model of paying for a mobile game is something that users are willing to engage in," said Samuels.

Source: Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times

Media outlets have taken the Games as an opportunity to compete for audiences as sites reveal an array of Olympics-focused features. Google announced a series of new tools that were launched for the Beijing Olympic Games this year, such as a virtual 3D tour of the stadiums that uses a combination of Google Maps and Google Earth.

Other features include an Olympics widget that can be downloaded and added to a personalized iGoogle site in order to receive features that provide Olympics coverage, sports headlines, YouTube videos, daily horoscopes, weather forecasts and a Google News feature. Users may also add applications such as a clock or games, similar to those used on social networks like Facebook.
 

The New York Times has a prominent section on the homepage that provides stories, results, schedules, multimedia and an interactive Olympics Tracker that allows you to personalize.

USA Today has a colourful section on the Games, offering everything from stories and results to blogs and Twitter feeds. There is also an "Olympics: Looking back and ahead" section that discusses former games and upcoming games as well as a section with input from fans.

The New Zealand Herald's Olympics coverage entails a section that is easy to navigate, with features like "As our Olympic team a question" and "Weird Olympics" with unusual stories about the events (e.g. stories like "Spanish team defends 'slanted-eye' photo", "China opts for lip-synching in quest for perfect Olympic image").

Numerous newspapers around the globe have launched sites dedicated entirely to the Games, such as Russian gazeta.ru, Irish Independent.ie and Ecuadorian eltelegrafo.com.

Send us examples of your Olympics coverage.

Source: The Telegraph