Results matching “to iraq war ques”

"Lie by Lie," is Mother Jones' "history of the Iraq War." The editors explain the project was created to be "a resource we hope will help resolve open questions of the Bush era. What did our leaders know and when did they know it? And, perhaps just as important, what red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them?"

In his Web 2.Oh... Really? blog, Craig Stoltz makes some key observations about the interactive graphic, what follows is an edited version of his original post:

Why I love this work of journalism:

It's nothing fancy, hardly a data visualization at all. It's essentially a timeline navigation of information on the Iraq War. The only visual grace note is the roulettey spin of the date slider as you move it around. But the tool is functional: It permits navigation of the same data by topic, tags or search. It engages and it works.

It is an aggregation of content reported by others... Smart people knowledgeable about public affairs paid close attention to a huge amount of information, made careful selections and used available digital technology to make it accessible and flexible in a way no print publication could.

By virtue of its form, it surfaces new understandings that a reader of the original reports would not achieve. For instance, noodle around with the "Dick Cheney" tag and you'll discover, right at the top, this entry dated . . . over 15 years ago:

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, speaking to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says the first President Bush was right not to invade Baghdad: "The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that...we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."-Aug. 14, 1992

Stoltz also makes the necessary point that the reporting used in this project came from traditional media - The New York Times, The LA Times, The New Yorker. "The rub," Stoltz points out, "Is this original reporting cost a fortune. It was produced under the old, dying model of journalism, wherein investigative reporting is funded by advertisements for cell phones, new subdivisions, mattress-chain mega-sales, designer clothing, and so on....As Mother Jones has shown, people who are passionate about telling a story have powerful new tools at their disposal to do so. But without high-quality content-difficult, time-consuming, intellectually demanding, butt-numbing, sometimes actually dangerous reporting-the tools are just toys."

Source: Web 2.Oh...Really?

What happens when the image is the story? When you pick a story to pull from the image - rather than sort through a photo file to find one fitting the story?

It sounds, "exactly upside down," which is exactly how Brian Storm, founder of 2005 start-up MediaStorm, describes their business model for the production and distribution of photojournalism.

"They take still images, motion-picture and video footage, and audio tape, seek out the best story within that material, and then create a narrative through cutting and editing, adding voices and music," reports the Wall Street Journal. "[It's] something like a documentary movie, a TV segment, a book that talks, or a magazine article that moves."

The multi-media production company, which gets images from individual photographers as well as archives and partners like the National Geographic Society and Reuters, has proved highly successful. Of the 22 stories available on their website, many are award-winning. Among others, "Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War" and "Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster" have received numerous accolades from the news community.

"MediaStorm's stories are not predictable; none of them preach. In this way, its aesthetic is very old fashioned, mainstream, almost apolitical," said Mary Panzer, of the Wall Street Journal.

In addition to production, MediaStorm also offers workshops to train journalists in multi-media techniques, equipment and software.

Source: Wall Street Journal

In this section, John Zogby, CEO of Zogby International, and George Brock, World Editors Forum President and editor of the Saturday Times in the UK, comment on the results of the 2008 Newsroom Barometer. Both agree that the results show editors have opened to the new necessities of the digital age, while remaining strongly conscious of the possible threats to their newspapers and journalism.

(View the main results to this year's survey here.)

According to Brock, this year's survey points to the fact that "editors remain confident about a mixed-media future and have quietly got on with the business of integrating their newsrooms," but this is "tempered by anxiety that newspapers are not investing enough in recruitment and training for the future."

The path is clear for many editors: integrate the newsroom, think multimedia, train or hire a team of multi-skilled journalists. So are the threats: lack of investment, lack of training, lack of cultural change.

In the face of these deep changes for the newspaper industry and its organization, editors may often face managerial resistance to undergo these investments. But media companies must be bold. Their editors, for the most part, are ready to be. Said Brock: "I read the message of this year's Newsroom Barometer as an appeal from editors to their companies to be bold in the face of change and as a sign that they themselves intend to make the most of new opportunities."

For Zogby, who goes into more detail about the numeric results (see below), this year's results show that editors have adapted or are adapting to the current redefinition of the 4th Estate, the press, in light of the changes brought in part by the Internet.

"Perhaps the most important finding to emerge from the 2008 survey is that editors remain optimistic about the futures of their papers," as was the case for the previous edition of the Newsroom Barometer, wrote Zogby.

Yet this optimism shouldn't hide the urgency for newspapers to rethink their model. "For these editors the future is self-evident and our survey shows that they see the writing on the newsroom wall.  The evolution of the 4th Estate is no longer questions of if, when or how.  Editors now know the solution:  Innovate.  Integrate.  Or perish."

Read Brock and Zogby's full comments below.

Comments on the 2008 Newsroom Barometer by George Brock

Editors remain confident about a mixed-media future and have quietly got on with the business of integrating their newsrooms. The optimism is not universal and it is tempered by anxiety that newspapers are not investing enough in recruitment and training for the future.

Newspaper managements might reply that investment remains risky when it isn't yet clear where the income from digital publishing is supposed to come from. But newspaper businesses are made by content which creates and sustains demand. The first newspapers did not come about when someone assembled advertising platforms, distribution networks and hardware and afterwards looked for content to put into that system.

The sequence of events was the reverse. Somebody wants to tell as many people as possible something of interest or importance, discovers a sustained curiosity in that information or opinion and eventually a publishing operation grows up to supply the demand. The chain reaction is sparked by interest in the story, view, picture, interview, column, cartoon that's on offer. Without that first moment of ignition, nothing else happens.

You think this sounds a little basic? It is. But you would be surprised how often this simple reality is forgotten as today's media businesses struggle to adapt to a world in which digital technology is rewriting the economics of news publishing.

Online news and opinion has now been with us for long enough to see that no prediction about the future of news which is based on technology alone can tell us the future. Newspapers are not just ink marks on squashed trees: they are what people trust, they amuse people, in short they are a collection of ideas and information with which a reader forms a relationship. Where journalism - whether professional, citizen or any mixture of the two - creates that relationship, something lasting is born and can be sustained. You can see examples of success and failure both online and in print. As the first flush of online innovation and enthusiasm wears off, we can see more clearly that some of the online successes will grow very big indeed, but that only the best will prosper. Making information available - and the web makes it available as never before - does not make it wanted. Newspapers which innovate and adapt will also survive because their qualities are more important than the medium. Some of the failures in both online and print will be terminal.

I read the message of this year's Newsroom Barometer as an appeal from editors to their companies to be bold in the face of change and as a sign that they themselves intend to make the most of new opportunities. Most editors are clear that the essential qualities of good journalism can adapt to a new medium. They accept as a fact needing no further debate that their papers will now reach their constituency by several channels and not by one.

Redefining the 4th Estate: Opinions of the Editors by John Zogby

In the 550 years since the first pages of print rolled off the presses in the Bavarian town of Mainz, printed news evolved relatively unimpeded.  Even the invention and proliferation of radio and television failed to stymie the growth of newspapers, largely due to the ability of newspapers to provide more in-depth coverage.
    
The centuries-long hegemony of the ink and paper news model today faces its greatest threat--the advent of an independent and free Internet-based media.  This threat was evidenced at the height of the 2005 British elections with the publication of the 'Downing Street Memo' by The Sunday Times.  That short but potent document presented potentially damning evidence surrounding the planning in the run-up to the Iraq War, and while British papers seized the story, the leaked memo made only slight ripples in the American print media.  It did create, however, a surge within the rapidly developing blog community who used the lack of traditional media coverage as a call to arms.

Now, as the Internet struggles to define itself in the shadow of the Fourth Estate, the question remains: will these two mediums continue to battle for supremacy or will they find stability in an integrated symbiotic relationship? To help bring clarity to this question, Zogby International was commissioned by the World Editors Forum and Reuters to survey 704 newspaper editors worldwide for the second in a series of annual 'Newsroom Barometer Surveys.'

    Perhaps the most important finding to emerge from the 2008 survey is that editors remain optimistic about the futures of their papers.  As in the 2006 Newsroom Barometer, nearly all editors (84%) are optimistic about the future of their paper.  The editors surveyed are as aware of what the future may hold for their industry as they are unified in their recognition of the underlying threats and potential solutions.

The Future

    The majority of editors (56%) now believe that most news (print and online) will be free in the future--up from 48% in 2006.  Nearly two-in-three editors (63%) believe that within a decade the most common form of  news consumption will be some form of electronic media--whether online (44%), mobile (12%) or through newer electronic media like e-papers and tablets (7%).  Less than a third (31%) believe print will remain the most common form of consumption.

    The perception of editors with respect to the future is not limited to the news product itself.  The overwhelming majority (83%) agree that within 5 years their nation's journalist workforce will be expected to know how to produce content for all platforms (e.g., print, video, audio and web).  Still, perception of the future is but one dimension of the story -- the remainder is defined by the threats to the industry and  how editors address those threats. 

The Threats

    By-and-large editors agree on the nature of the threats posed to their industry.  The decline in youth readership (58%), the rise in Internet and digital media (38%) and the lack of editorial innovation (36%) all speak to the consensus that change is imminent.  These editors tell us their chief sources of pressure are from advertisers (22%), shareholders (20%) and political forces (19%).  All pressure, no doubt,  to confront the changing reality through innovation and integration. 

    On one issue editors paint a mixed picture--the current state of their newsroom.  For some (39%) circulation in the past year is up; for others (29%) it is down.  One-third of editors (33%) have added journalists, a quarter have lost journalists (24%) and for the rest (42%) the number of journalists on their staff remains unchanged from a year ago. 


The Solutions

    When a majority of editors (54%) report that they have an integrated newsroom, they may make such statements not necessarily based on the reality, but also out of necessity.  Regardless of whether integration has or has not occurred, nearly all (86%) agree that it will be the norm in the near future.  Editors also agree on the steps needed to address other threats.  Asked what investments they would make in their newsroom given the opportunity, the top two investments cited--training journalists in new media (36%) and recruitment of new journalists (31%)--demonstrate that editors are looking to make a commitment to the future.  And with the recognition that editorial innovation is needed, 69% of editors agree that opinion and analysis pages will play an increasingly larger role in the future. 


Yes, editors are optimistic about the future of their papers, but they are also aware of the potential danger on the horizon.  Less than half (45%) believe the quality of journalism will improve over the next year.  More than a quarter (28%) believe the quality will worsen; a finding reflected in the high level of importance editors place on the need for investment in training and recruitment. 

For these editors the future is self-evident and our survey shows that they see the writing on the newsroom wall.  The evolution of the 4th Estate is no longer questions of if, when or how.  Editors now know the solution:  Innovate.  Integrate.  Or perish.


Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

The CNN/YouTube Debates raised a few eyebrows for their mix of irreverence, humor, and policy, but Matthew Yglesias of The Guardian wonders if they were as markedly different from traditional face-offs and as historic as CNN originally billed them.

The Poynter Institute interviewed former Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet, while Editor & Publisher published an interview of the executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller. Here both interviews are criss-crossed, to get the insights from two industry experts on newspaper business models, priorities within newsrooms, new media strategies, and more.

Visual forms organize information and explain complex concepts, whether via maps, charts, diagrams or illustrations.  They simplify the message.  They clarify the news.  Can a comic book timeline do the same?  Can an automated database or three-dimensional illustration?  Innovators in media think so. 

An interesting article by Michael Massing debating whether US journalists are failing in their responsibility to produce hard nosed reporting and uncover the truth for their readers.

Emmy award wining journalist Kristina Borjesson has edited a book entitled: 'Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11' that questions US press coverage of the pre-Iraq war period. The book poses three major questions. Was the US media misled by the government? Was the media negligent in reporting the truth concerning the rationale for war, and thus complicit in the push for war? Were senior news reporters too close to government sources?

According to Peter Feuilherade' analysis (BBC Monitoring Media Services), "The number of journalists and support staff killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003 now exceeds the toll among the media during two decades of fighting in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975, according to separate reports from two international journalists' organizations.

The Brussels-based International News Safety Institute (INSI) said in a press release on 29 August: "Eighty-one members of the news media have died since the war began in March 2003, according to figures compiled by the Institute. More than half - 50 - were murdered by insurgents and other unidentified gunmen and bombers. American firepower is the next most significant cause of death. There is no firm evidence that US forces have deliberately targeted the news media. But there is widespread suspicion that American troops do not take adequate precautions to try to ensure the safety of journalists. None of the other Coalition forces has killed any journalists."

The Paris-based organization Reporters Sans Frontieres on 28 August reported that Khalid was the 66th journalist or media assistant to be killed in Iraq since the conflict started in March 2003. "A total of 63 journalists were killed in the Vietnam war, which lasted from 1955 to 1975," RSF added.

The International Federation of Journalists, meanwhile, has sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan calling on UN leaders to establish an independent inquiry into the killings of media staff at the hands of US and Coalition forces.

"The number of unexplained media killings by US military personnel is intolerable," said Aidan White, IFJ general secretary. "Media organizations and journalists' families face a wall of silence and an unfeeling bureaucracy that refuses to give clear and credible answers to questions."

"The toll is appalling, but the fact that 18 of these deaths are at the hands of US soldiers and that there are still questions to be answered more than two years after some of the incidents is particularly shocking," said White.

... Another media watchdog, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), puts the media death toll in Iraq at 74, comprising 53 journalists and 21 media workers.

A CPJ press release on 29 August said in part: "The circumstances surrounding several of these deaths suggest indifference on the part of US forces to the presence of civilians, including members of the press, according to CPJ's analysis of the killings."

Source: BBC Monitoring

"With the insurgency in Iraq, attacks resulting in American and coalition fatalities have become disturbingly routine... Even for journalists, it can be surprisingly difficult to pin down reliable figures for the cumulative number of casualties." says Hugh Eakin of the New York Review of Books. One of the best sources of Iraq casualties comes from a private citizen who has set up lunaville.org.