Results matching “not to publish mo”

Reading newspapers on Amazon's e-book reader the Kindle is less appealing than reading the print version, a new study by the University of Georgia has found. But portable e-readers that feature colour, photographs and touch screens could win readers back, particularly among young adults.

Over the course of a six-month study, participants read The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Kindles, and then provided feedback through focus groups and interviews.

The readability of the Kindle screen impressed adults of all ages. Similarly, nearly all respondents, regardless of age, found the $489 price tag too high.

A new web-only daily newspaper has launched in Scotland, The Guardian reports, after being expected for some weeks.

Called the Caledonian Mercury, the paper takes its name from one of Scotland's first news journals. It is edited and largely written by former staff from The Scotsman who departed after deep budget cuts at the paper. They will work as freelancers, and will be paid partly according to the "value" of their copy to readers and advertisers. How this will work is not yet clear.

News and reviews from the Washington Post are now published in the Hindustan Times, under a content-sharing agreement reached by the two organisations.

The Hindustan Times, the second-most read English language newspaper in India, will publish a special section with the stories from the Post. It will include reports from the paper's global bureaux, opinion pieces, book reviews and columnists. The option is also available to share content from the Post's magazine, Newsweek.

Non-profit investigative news groups have been encountering many of the same financial difficulties as the newspapers they have been working with, according to the AP's Andrew Vanacore.

As newsrooms cut costs and staff, investigative non-profit groups like the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) have picked up where they left off, or more appropriately, what they left out. Charitable foundations and philanthropists have pumped tens of millions of dollars into these non-profit watchdogs to investigate issues like corruption and the environment, which some newsrooms lack the resources to cover.

We're in a society that has moved from scoop to buzz, says Aurèle Lambert, new media consultant, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'.

A scoop refers to new and exclusive information, while buzz refers to information that is easily reproduced through viral transmission. We've moved from an economy based on attention to one based on contagion, he says, where information attracts attention and is transmitted to other players. It's important to consider the relevance of new information and its singularity. He suggests finding ways to turn a scoop, which is both relevant and unique, into a buzz, which is relevant but highly visible, and thus can monetise information and create profit. To be different, it's important to show that you're not providing the same information as everyone else.

He distinguishes between two main kinds of bloggers. One is a community, such as Skyblogs, which can create a mass of information and increase a site's visibility. The other could be called star blogs, run by gurus, experts and opinion leaders. These are heavily involved in personal branding, and are used for visibility and loyalty, such as Pierrot Le Foot's blog on Yahoo France.

Editor & Publisher, "America's oldest journal covering newspapers", has risen from the dead, following its acquisition by a boating magazine chief.
  
Editor & Publisher, an independent news organization reporting on all aspects of the newspaper business, has resumed publication in print and online following its sale on Thursday to Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc, as Poynter Online reports.

The Associated Press and Yahoo Inc. are closing in on a deal that would impose tighter restrictions and potentially a higher price tag on AP stories distributed on Yahoo's news site, sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

The deal that could be reached in the next few weeks could set a precedent in the resolution of an increasingly urgent issue in he media industry: how news organizations deal with the major Internet portals, which some news publishers say unfairly profit from their work and cost them tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Two newspaper printing plants, one each in the US and the UK, are set to close, and substantial layoffs are expected to follow.

In the UK, Harmsworth Printing has begun a 30-day consultation over closing its Plymouth printing plant. If the plant is closed, 90 staff could be lost, although the company has said it would try to find jobs for them elsewhere in the organisation.

Newspaper readers in France have been disrupted this week, after distribution company Presstalis blocked the distribution of papers to different parts of the country two days in a row. In response to the action, one newspaper has refused to publish an edition today.

It was northern France and part of central France that went without their national daily newspapers on Wednesday. Papers were distributed normally in the east, west and south. Le Monde made a PDF version of that day's paper available for free on its website.

On Thursday, distribution was interrupted in the east and south of the country. By contrast, the north of France, including Paris, received its newspapers mostly as normal. Only Le Figaro and France Soir suffered a smaller distribution than normal in this area.

The Kitanippon Shimbun has closed its evening edition and will now publish a morning edition only, NSK News Bulletin reports.

Plans are in place to redesign its morning edition, including moving some content from the defunct evening edition to the morning one. The website will also get a makeover, adding more content and featuring the latest news ahead of the print edition.

The Telegraaf Media Groep has the advantage of already having a significant presence in the news landscape of the Netherlands, and Brouwers hopes that his new network can collaborate with Telegraaf's more traditional properties. He realises, however, that his platform is going to be very different, and also that the Telegraaf newspapers will be careful about how much of their content they give away. 

Two thousand and nine was undoubtedly the year of the Social Network. In a world of loose economic foundations and falling advertising revenue, the social aspect of the Internet became even more important in the lives of many people.

Looks like it's not just newsagents that are paying for free newspaper the London Evening Standard. Some shops in suburban London are charging consumers to cover their costs, The Guardian reports.

In October, the paper dropped its 50 pence cover price and went free. Since then, it has more than doubled circulation, from 250,000 copies to just fewer than 600,000 copies. There are plans to increase this number even further, to 800,000 or even 1 million.

The trade-off is that it also cut back on the number of its distribution outlets, particularly in the outer suburbs of London. Demand from newsagents and consumers in suburbs outside its new distribution area has been strong enough, though, that the newspaper is trialling delivery to two new areas in north-east and north-west London.

An article on the Washington Post by Paul Farhi has looked at recent media coverage of the Tiger Woods' alleged extra-martial affairs, and pointed out some ethical issues that arise from what appears to be the simple repetition of celebrity gossip in established publications. Farhi writes that whilst: "There's little doubt that Woods cheated on his wife... two weeks after stories about the world's greatest golfer began detonating, much about this story has taken on the coloration of fact without the facts themselves."

The January edition of Editor & Publisher will be published as previously planned, Editor Greg Mitchell announced yesterday, citing overwhelming reader and advertiser demand.

After the surprise announcement last week of Editor & Publisher's closure, both the print and online versions were expected to fold at the end of the year.

But Managing Editor Shawn Moynihan expressed hope that they would still be able to publish the January edition, which staff had already started working on before the announcement. His wish has been granted with this announcement.

In a move that saw two daily newspapers absent from news stands in France, editorial staff at Le Parisien and Aujourd'hui en France have gone on strike.

Last week, staff were protesting against management's restructuring plans, which would include cuts to 35 staff. The newspapers did not publish a Wednesday edition, but were back on the stands on Thursday. 

At the Press Freedom Round Table in Hyderabad, Chris Elliot, managing editor of The Guardian, said that in order for a newspaper to be of value it must have a thorough commercial strategy.

Elliot said that The Guardian, like other media outlets, must reexamine its financial models to maintain journalistic standards. He stressed that newspaper success just is not possible without a sound financial base.

         IN A SMALL theatre space underneath basement level of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, surrounded by videos of surreal contemporary 'dance,' the contributors to 'Libé des philosophes,' the November 19th, 2009 edition of Libération in which philosophers wrote all of the newspaper's content, gathered to ostensibly discuss the theme of 'philosophy and journalism'. We all filed in solemnly, the few young people avoiding eye contact with each other, pretending to be serious; the attitude was similar to the whole 'I'm going to go read Proust in the corner café with my notebook and black coat and coffee at 23:30 on a Saturday' kind of thing.

            The French word that is often used for 'moderated' is animé, which to my mind always means someone who 'animates' the gathering, someone who breathes life into a room of socially awkward academics, old people who have nothing better to do and young idealistic Bac or first-year Fac students. Marianne Alphant, the Centre Pompidou's lady-in-charge of expositions, and Robert Maggiori, a philosophy teacher and a regular writer for Libération, did their best as animateurs, although Maggiori was clearly in command. Probably because he seemed to be the one who organized the whole thing.

            After finding a seat, scoping the sparse audience, deciding that I was out of place then turning on the recorder (download the recording), I realized I had no actual idea what the talk was to be about. I was told to come, presumably, because I have a modest philosophy degree and an intermediate command of French; neither of which were much help when one only knows the title of the talk and have never really read Libération. Luckily for you I will draw out the interesting bits from the discussion, but it's a bit like pulling gum out of your hair; you don't get much to show for your efforts and will have to cut it in the end anyway.

            Present at the table, complete with mini bottles of water and much hand wringing underneath it, was Barbara Cassin, a philologist and sophist expert (my favorite of the speakers, 'animated' and interesting); Denis Kambouchner, a Descartes and ethics expert with big white hair; Frédéric Worms (who looks a little like Clay Shirky and managed to creep me out by staring at me for half the time), a Bergson specialist with an uncomfortable laugh; and Ruwen Ogien, who was slightly bitter about not being able to write about chemical castration.

            At first they focused on the technical and administrative details of getting 60 philosophers together to write an entire newspaper, cover to cover, including the weather and sports sections. This is the third year Libération has put together an edition written by a certain academic class, this year's philosophers having been preceded by historians and writers. Since a good portion of every newspaper that is ever published is pre-prepared as opposed to the quickly written actual 'news' parts, this posed quite a challenge for the philosophers.

            Philosophy takes a long time. The most seemingly straightforward of questions can take days or weeks to answer to one's own satisfaction, and sometimes you find at the end that you didn't even answer it or that it ends up being irrelevant to what you're working on. This is pretty much diametrically opposite to journalistic writing, and the philosophy vs. journalism, prepared vs. news theme was definitely the most interesting subject discussed by the panel, however briefly touched upon. In a nutshell, the philosophers were all competing for the pre-prepared parts during their editorial meetings, but since a good percentage of the contributors were abroad they got first dibs.

            The journalists at Libé apparently love having the philosophers there, and it's a good mix; lively discussions take place in the hallways, the pleasantness and solicitude of the philosophers enliven the journalists and together they form a community neither philosophical nor journalistic. Maybe today's struggling newspapers could learn a lesson from this and take an injection of fresh insight from 'outsiders' helping the editorial process.

            Maggiori discussed in depth these kinds practical issues, particularly the issues of dividing duties and the massive editing cuts as all the proposed articles went over the allowed length. After this Maggiori did manage to get in some nuggets that piqued my attention; he mentioned that he once met a German journalist who was taken aback by the 'Libé des philosophes' idea, and the total editorial freedom the philosophers have.

            "In Germany, it would never be possible. No newspaper would give their editing over to philosophers to write the entire edition," the German reportedly said. Maggiori thinks Libé is the only newspaper in the world that has done so, and was able to, because of the status of philosophers in France.

            In France, he said, "we are used to public and televised debates featuring philosophers, among others." Philosophers are consulted and listened to; their opinions are sought out and valued. This, in my opinion, is one of the best things about French society and a real problem in North America where it is clearly lacking.

            According to Maggiori, having a philosopher's edition allows the newspaper to have an 'organic link' with intellectuals and to facilitate the valuable 'long, slow thinking' that philosophers do. He continued to say that newspapers need to have such a link with the 'production of thought' as a way to save themselves; Libération went in the opposite direction of 'green' reporting (with short, online articles) to promote and publish the long, reflective and analytical articles of the philosophers. This is exactly the kind of quality reporting and content that has been and must continue to be newspaper's strong points if they are to survive.

            Barbara Cassin went on to detail her experience with writing about national identity and the questionnaire that accompanied that task, which was loaded with assumptions (as most non-philosophical texts are) thus required a good deal of interpretation and analysis; not quite what the writers intended but it ended up being a good article by virtue of this. Here the opposition (a concept philosophers revel in) between philosophy and journalism was seriously treated. She said "the 'time/pace' (temps) of philosophy is completely contrary to the 'time/pace' of journalism," that "while philosophers are of the 're-taking', 're-thinking', the cogitation of national identity, here in this case we had to go 'on site', find things and make phone calls" which is not really philosophers are used to doing.

            The talk continued, mostly with everyone else described what they wrote about and the process of finding a topic and writing on it. Interestingly enough, Denis Kambouchner said he knows Placebo, the alt rock/metal group, and would have liked to do a piece on them. He went on to describe the process or 'exercise' of writing journalistically as one of writing in a language of effectuation and 'in the last degree,' an 'extremely simple process for ourselves' that regardless is interesting for both the reader and writer, and valuable for society in bringing philosophical dialogue to the mainstream.

            Throughout, Maggiori controlled the talk, saving us from awkward pauses and topic drop-offs. He personally stayed the most on topic and had some good opinions.

            He thinks that rigorous philosophical critique must be defended in order to both save newspapers, which can be its home and promoter, and philosophical discussion itself. On TV, the radio, and in many newspapers journalists and writers are told to write things quickly and simply, even just mentioning a keyword. Critiques and comments are just mindless summaries, only saying whether something is good or bad with little reflection, like looking up ratings for a hair drier on the internet.

            Maggiori was clearly upset at this kind of journalism (as he outlined it), saying it has a serious negative impact on quality, and called it a 'real menace', something that as a 'stupefied avoidance of the difficult' would be 'death for us' if it appeared in Libé.  

            The speakers finished up by affirming the importance of the union of philosophy and journalism, both critiques and reflections on news and culture. Unfortunately I could not understand everything at this point because the speakers were talking quite fast, and, getting rather excited, began using a level of vocabulary and grammar I could not easily follow. Nevertheless, they all seemed in agreement that such a marriage of philosophy and journalism was important to society, and even a part of the intellectual's responsibility to reflect upon the events that shape our world, rather than just transmit 'what happened'.

            It was too bad that the questions asked seemed to rather miss the point and focused things that could have answered themselves if the inquirers had read the articles on the subjects they were asking about.  The panel seemed rather miffed by this point and eager to leave, as was I since I didn't get to ask my question.

            Actually, if had I gotten hold - from the cold, wrinkly hands of the old lady who Bogarted it - of the microphone, I'm now not sure what I was going to ask. It was surely something along the lines of the 'opposition' in the kind of work philosophers do and what journalists do that was mentioned, and the entente that they all seemed to have when thrown together to make a newspaper. I would have imagined them getting into various kinds of (potentially amusing) disagreements making publication quite difficult, but then I remembered that this is France and philosophers are respected and respectful here. This is not to pose any kind of elitist or Francophile argument about the relations and status of intellectuals in society, but it is indeed difficult, as the German reporter said to Maggiori, to imagine such a thing happening in many other countries.

            Even so, this kind of initiative of the 'special edition' type is certainly a great way for newspapers to help save themselves. Rather than focusing on online content and its instant-access, tiny summaries and gross glossing over of issues, maybe it would be a good idea for papers to play their strengths; quality reporting, respectability and accountability, high intellectual standards and intelligent critique and reflection. However those who stick to the paper format are still running a business after all, and unfortunately quality and intellect doesn't always sell.

WMA recording of the panel

UK publisher Haymarket will close two of its media-focused titles this week. Twenty-five year old Mediaweek will cease to publish immediately with today being its final day in print and Revolution, a monthly publication will now become a give away quarterly publication within marketing.

The decision is part of a wider restructure of Haymarket's marketing and advertising trade titles and is expected to see 18 out of 58 editorial jobs slashed.

The Miami Herald is to launch a set of online hyper-local websites before the end of 2009, reports Editor & Publisher.

The metro daily will initially link five community websites: South Miami and Pinecrest; Miami Springs, Virginia Gardens and Medley; West Kendall; Key Biscayne and Coral Gables.

Rick Hirsch, senior editor/multimedia, said the websites will be run by local residents or organizations: "We've created a platform through which we can give a partner control over a neighborhood section," he said.