Results matching “media dependent on pol”

Even though the Internet is becoming increasingly popular as a news source as Americans move away from print newspapers, television is still the most popular news media.

Younger people prefer to get their news online whereas older people consult traditional news sources such as TV and papers, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

There is "a sizable group of more engaged, sophisticated and well-off people that uses both traditional and online sources to get its news" and that accounts for 23% of respondents who spend the most time with news, reported the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

Nearly half of those surveyed rely heavily on TV, being the "oldest" with an average age of 52 and "least affluent", with 43% of the group being unemployed, reported the EJC.

The group that is most dependent on online news outlets is the youngest, with an average age of 35, and the least numerous, accounting for 13% of respondents.

Source: European Journalism Centre

Two magazines, published by 8020 Publishing and based on an experimental user-generated model, are drawing the attention of traditional newspaper editors.

Everywhere, a travel magazine, and JPG, a photo journal, rely on citizens to create their content, greatly reducing the price of production, while managing to maintain a standard of high quality.

The magazines receive thousands of submissions online, which are then voted on by readers for publication. A small editorial team makes the final decision.

"Even in this Twittering digital age in which tens of millions of self-publishers have created their own blogs, there is still enough of a thrill in being published in a bound print publication," reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

"After doing this for a bit, I'm still not seeing what professional travel writers do that our people aren't doing better," Everywhere Editor in Chief Todd Lappin says.

"Think about it. There's only one of them going to a place and there's potentially hundreds of our people already there."

Some editors have expressed reluctance to embrace a model dependent upon citizens - such a system would seem to cheapen the value of professional journalists. Sree Sreenivasan, in charge of new media program at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, recognizes the value of user-generated content, but also warns against community-based 'editorial' choices:

"'Create-your-own news sites' lose some of the serendipity of journalism. You're losing the stories that you might not see if there wasn't an editor looking out for them," Sreenivasan says.

The publishers of Everywhere and JPG are considering similar magazines for car fans and food connoisseurs.

It remains to be seen whether this user-generated model can be successfully and viably applied to news and newspapers. Initiatives at the Hartford Courant, or CNN's iReport platform, which now draws 10,000 user submissions per month, point in the right direction.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle through I Want Media

The Project for Excellence in Journalism report on newspapers in 2007 stated, "Newspapers are still far from dead, but the language of obituaries is creeping in." Although there is a problem with declining revenues, there is also a crisis of morale in newsrooms, according to Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation. He senses that reporters feel that no matter how good, thoroughly reported, and influential their work is, it isn't going protect the paper.

Osnos believes that reporters are unique in turning what they write about into news and determining how people are informed, a power that bloggers do not have.

According to PEJ, in 2007, the industry had its sharpest drop in advertising revenue since 195 -- 9.4%. On the other hand, on-line revenues are up: representing 7.5% of newspaper ad revenue.

If newspapers do not receive support from advertisers or circulation, they should find other ways. For example, the radio no longer is dependent on the federal government because of underwriting and individual contributors.

PEJ reports that there are a variety of locally based startups emphasizing community news, for example ProPublica and Global News Enterprises, a Boston based Web start-up.

Read more about PEJ's reports:
- Robert Niles' key lessons learned from State of the Media Report
- Journalists cite financial problems as top concern
- Internet is changing journalism

Source: The Century Foundation

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with  Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor-in-Chief of Gulf News, based in Dubai.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)

Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

Gulf News cannot be pigeonholed as either a newspaper company or a print company. It is a content provider. This means that it supplies news to print, online, radio or any other required medium. The organization will survive and sustain in this role that is its core functionality. We do have commercial printing facilities but our focus will always be news, irrespective of where it is published.

At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

I strongly disagree with this point of view. Firstly, more than two thirds of the world doesn't have internet access; it perhaps has some limited access to television, which leaves print or newspaper as the main medium for receiving news. While circulation may be plateauing and in some cases declining in the West, it continues to increase in Asia and Africa for the aforesaid reasons. If internet has to make an impact, there would need to be development in infrastructure, increased investment, better education and other facilities in place. So the decline in Europe and America is compensated by growth in Asia and Africa for newspapers. The year 2014 is very close; I definitely do not see newspapers losing its significance by then.

In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

Digital journalism is part of the continued journey of journalism. When television arrived, people heralded the doom of radio. Today, radio is doing very well and moving from strength to strength. One form of media helps another. Technology has helped journalism evolve and we need to adapt to the changes.

Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

Readers or users are the support system of the journalistic process. There wouldn't be any value to our work without them. Nobody can function in isolation. The increasingly active role of the reader/user in the news process is an opportunity not a threat for professional journalists. We should use the chance to educate readers so that the quality of interaction could be more professional. Ultimately there will always be amateurs and professionals in the world; people need to choose who they deal with.

Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

The Golden Age of investigative journalism is just beginning. As our world shrinks with increased connectivity and people's access to information increases, they are no longer satisfied with the superficial. They want more... they want to know in depth. They want to know what lies beneath the surface.

Can journalism survive newspapers?

Journalism is not dependent on newspapers for its survival. It existed from the time man learnt to communicate through images, words and sounds. Its root or seed lies in speech. When a tribesman climbed atop a rocky outcrop to call out to his people - that was journalism, he was giving them information. Among ancient Arab civilizations, poets functioned as journalists. They conveyed political messages, news, propaganda and other information through poetry. So journalism has existed for a while. Today it has found a home in print, online, television and radio. In the future it will find other means, but survive it will. Journalism will exist as long as man can talk.


Stay tuned for the next week's interviews, which will include The New York Times and the Financial Times.

As newsrooms worldwide, big and small alike, march towards integrating their print and online operations, newsroom design has become an increasingly significant consideration for editors. In three interviews for the Weblog, editors from the Daily Telegraph, RBS Group and De Volkskrant give their views on the importance of newsroom design, whether it’s more of a detail, a truly pragmatic facilitator of change, or a mirror of conceptual transformation.

A media survey conducted by LH2 for the daily Libération draws a grim view of public’s opinion towards French media: 62% of respondents thought news media were “dependent on political power” and only 7% thought they were “totally independent.” There’s at least some evidence to reinforce this perception.

When The Australian News reported that Fairfax would equip 400 or more journalists with all-purpose multimedia mobile Jasjam devices, at the cost of $1300 a piece, this sounded like a project equally revolutionary and costly. Here, Fairfax’s top editors describe the overarching vision behind the mobile tools, and how its newspapers are training reporters to adapt to an evolving breaking news culture.

        The print press has given lots of attention to Minnesota Star Tribune’s former editor (1983-92) and publisher (1992-98), Joel Kramer, since he announced the launch this fall of an online-only, non-profit news publication, MinnPost.com. Both print and online news organizations will be watching its first steps to answer their own existential concerns. How can editors adapt their ‘print journalism’ to make it work online? Is it streetwise to focus on quality coverage and less so on multimedia? Can the online-only, non-profit business model be sustainable?

According to the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper’s (SFN) latest report, World Digital Media Trends 2007, at a time of decline in the print advertising market, it is becoming increasingly important to generate revenues from its digital businesses. By now, that’s conventional wisdom. The sixty-four thousand dollar question really is, (how) can newspapers sustain their high profitability, and quality, through their digital businesses? Editors Weblog considers the latest trends in terms of newspapers’ use of mobile and video.

Paul Moreira is an investigative reporter who has worked extensively in the print press and was one of the founders of the defunct French, investigative, television show “90 minutes.” In his latest book, Les nouvelles censures, Moreira describes the widespread practices of overt and covert manipulations of the news media. “One of this era’s most powerful myths is that we live in the information age. In fact, we live in a media age, in which information is repetitive, “safe” and limited by invisible borders,” writes John Pilger, Hidden Agendas. Are these theories ‘Big Brother’ paranoia, or are information flows much more controlled than the public would like to think? Is this only the case for television’s spectacular requirements, or also for trusted newspapers? Moreira investigates, and answers.

The times of one newspaper and one deadline are over, said Birgit Donker, editor-in-chief of NRC Handelsblad and NRC Next of the Netherlands.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has published a manifesto for World Press Freedom Day, May 3. WAN has also launched a website dedicated to this day and press freedom, which includes the most recent and interactive infographics about journalists in the world, as well as cartoons, texts, photos and video. Many newspapers around the world have participated in the press freedom awareness operation by publishing some of the website’s content in their print edition.

Amid the problems affecting today’s newspapers, including falling circulation and competition from the Internet, many European editors remain optimistic about the fate of newspapers, viewing the web as a force to collaborate with, not run from.

The Newsroom Barometer also probed editors’ own predictions for the future of their newspapers and the newspaper industry. Again, unlike talks about news executives’ rigid conservatism, the study revealed editors were realistic in their assessment. Online will be the most common platform within 10 years, news will mostly be free, and opinion and in-depth commentary will increase in importance.

Daily children's newspapers seem to be popping up across the globe, most recently in Bolivia and soon in Mexico, Panama, and Ecuador. Now, Play Bac Presse, the French publisher of the most successful children's dailies to date, plan to launch a new kids paper directed at 8-10-year-olds in the United States.

As online newspapers become increasingly dependent on multimedia and 24/7 news updates, can traditional Sunday newspapers survive?  A Sunday journalist wrote to the Guardian’s Kim Fletcher with that very question.  “If websites are the future, then Sunday newspapers look like the past,” responded Fletcher.