Recently by Valérie Gazzano

"Mainland authorities have reshuffled top editors at two outspoken national newspapers in what appears to be another sign of tightening media controls, " according to the South China Morning Post. "Li Xueqian , editor-in-chief and president of the China Youth Daily (controlled by the Communist Party Youth League, the power base of President Hu Jintao) stepped down earlier this month. He has been replaced by Li Erliang , former editor-in-chief of Market Newspaper, a staid publication controlled by the People's Daily. The China Youth Daily has been very aggressive in exposing official corruption. Last week, the authorities ordered the Xin Zhou Bao, a hard-hitting, seven-week-old news weekly off the newsstands for three weeks and replaced its president and editor-in-chief. President Feng Xiaoping and editor-in-chief Zhao Shilong resigned in succession, leaving the way for senior reporter Yang Haipeng to take over as editor-in-chief, sources close to the newspaper said yesterday. Sources said they did not know which specific report had offended the authorities and prompted the reshuffle, but the newspaper's outspoken style over several controversial issues had attracted nationwide attention."

Source: South China Morning Post through Asia Media

"Google plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web, " according to John Markoff and Edward Wyatt of the New York Times. It will collaborate with "research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections. Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the pacts are almost certain to touch off a race with other major Internet search providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. The agreements to be announced today will allow Google to publish the full text of only those library books old enough to no longer be under copyright. For copyrighted works, Google would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online."

Source: The New York Times through IWantMedia

OJR Executive Editor Larry Pryor writes an article denouncing publishers' lack of courage and risk-taking that could lead to the downfall of quality journalism. "Publishers, hard-pressed to keep profits up to the point that stockholders will stick around, have been shrinking the amount of money that goes to newsrooms. To compound the problem, when newspapers launch a Web site, the funds are likely to come out of the print side's editorial budget. Understandably, some print people see new media and their own newspaper Web sites as the enemy, cost centers that siphon off funds badly needed to produce the daily news report. But the blame has to go with near-sighted publishers who are incapable of launching new media startups. Instead of being bold and spinning off their editorial products into separate online ventures, instead of taking a risk, publishers are, as an industry, playing it safe.If they continue down this road, newspaper publishers will cede the communications business to Net-native publishers. They will miss the coming revolution in broadband and wireless digital technologies. They will not be part of exciting extensions of their core business, such as the creation of virtual communities, virtual malls and auction houses or partnerships in distance learning projects."

OJR Executive Editor Larry Pryor writes an article denouncing publishers' lack of courage and risk-taking that could lead to the downfall of quality journalism. "Publishers, hard-pressed to keep profits up to the point that stockholders will stick around, have been shrinking the amount of money that goes to newsrooms. To compound the problem, when newspapers launch a Web site, the funds are likely to come out of the print side's editorial budget. Understandably, some print people see new media and their own newspaper Web sites as the enemy, cost centers that siphon off funds badly needed to produce the daily news report. But the blame has to go with near-sighted publishers who are incapable of launching new media startups. Instead of being bold and spinning off their editorial products into separate online ventures, instead of taking a risk, publishers are, as an industry, playing it safe.If they continue down this road, newspaper publishers will cede the communications business to Net-native publishers. They will miss the coming revolution in broadband and wireless digital technologies. They will not be part of exciting extensions of their core business, such as the creation of virtual communities, virtual malls and auction houses or partnerships in distance learning projects."

OJR Executive Editor Larry Pryor writes an article denouncing publishers' lack of courage and risk-taking that could lead to the downfall of quality journalism. "Publishers, hard-pressed to keep profits up to the point that stockholders will stick around, have been shrinking the amount of money that goes to newsrooms. To compound the problem, when newspapers launch a Web site, the funds are likely to come out of the print side's editorial budget. Understandably, some print people see new media and their own newspaper Web sites as the enemy, cost centers that siphon off funds badly needed to produce the daily news report. But the blame has to go with near-sighted publishers who are incapable of launching new media startups. Instead of being bold and spinning off their editorial products into separate online ventures, instead of taking a risk, publishers are, as an industry, playing it safe.If they continue down this road, newspaper publishers will cede the communications business to Net-native publishers. They will miss the coming revolution in broadband and wireless digital technologies. They will not be part of exciting extensions of their core business, such as the creation of virtual communities, virtual malls and auction houses or partnerships in distance learning projects."

In his New York Times column, Daniel Okrent made an interesting suggestion, on how to allow better communication between newspapers staff and readers: "In an age when the press is so widely regarded as a predatory and uncontrolled beast, the failure to allow readers a view inside the cage can only aggravate their worst suspicions." The ombudsman's role could be completed with a column on the online edition of the New York times: "Times reporters and editors often respond to readers who make individual inquiries, frequently acknowledging that, yes, an article missed a nuance, or used phrasing that left an erroneous impression, or otherwise got something wrong - not a correctable fact, perhaps, but an implication or interpretation. The recipient of such a note ends up both grateful and edified, and that is swell for him or her, but doesn't provide any enlightenment for the several hundred thousands of others who may have read the initial story and been misled by it. Why not provide an arena on The Times's Web site where reporters could voluntarily provide this sort of corrective amplification? Maybe. But even without erecting this online confessional, The Times's editors could render an enormous service (and save themselves a world of grief) by finding ways to speak directly to the paper's entire readership."

An innovation in the Russian media industry landscape:according to the Russian news and information agency Novosti, "the Union of Russian journalists came forward with an initiative to establish an independent Grand Jury on complaints against media resembling the British model. The participants of the Russia for Democracy, against Dictatorship congress held on Sunday in Moscow discussed the initiative of the Journalist Union. "Using the experience of our British colleagues, we plan to form two chambers in its structure, which will have equal authority: the chamber of media community and the chamber of media audience," the statement distributed among the participants of the congress indicated. The proponents of the new project envision that each chamber will have 25 members. The first chamber will consist of prominent media representatives, and the second chamber will consist of representatives of public organizations. Russia has never had an independent body of this kind before."

Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand from Paris asks us to specify that "The Grand Jury" has existed for several years in Moscow (see the presscouncils website.

Source: Novosti

An innovation in the Russian media industry landscape:according to the Russian news and information agency Novosti, "the Union of Russian journalists came forward with an initiative to establish an independent Grand Jury on complaints against media resembling the British model. The participants of the Russia for Democracy, against Dictatorship congress held on Sunday in Moscow discussed the initiative of the Journalist Union. "Using the experience of our British colleagues, we plan to form two chambers in its structure, which will have equal authority: the chamber of media community and the chamber of media audience," the statement distributed among the participants of the congress indicated. The proponents of the new project envision that each chamber will have 25 members. The first chamber will consist of prominent media representatives, and the second chamber will consist of representatives of public organizations. Russia has never had an independent body of this kind before."

Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand from Paris asks us to specify that "The Grand Jury" has existed for several years in Moscow (see the presscouncils website.

Source: Novosti

Two daily newspapers, Prothom Alo and Bhorer Kagoj, are facing contempt charges in Bangladesh for running reports on High Court judge's alleged result tampering. According to the Daily Star, "the two dailies carried the reports after an inquiry committee of Chittagong University (CU) unearthed the certificate tampering. "There was nothing in the report that was in contempt of the judiciary," said Dr Kamal Hossain, counsel for the daily Prothom Alo . "While carrying out its duty to inform people, the newspaper carried the report for the public good and all facts are there to support it," he argued on the second day of the hearing of the contempt charges against editors, publishers and reporters of the two dailies yesterday. The court yesterday exempted the respondents from personal appearance before it and adjourned the hearing until January 9."

Source: The Daily Star, through Asia Media

"Monaco's Prince Albert announced on Monday the first gathering of the "Monaco Media Forum" that will take place on June 30- July 2nd. The prince who will preside over the June 30-July 2 event hopes it will address both the professional code of ethics and strategies for developing the world's media. Members of the written media as well as radio and television and promoters of new information technology are expected to take part. Kicking off the forum, the first plenary session will focus on "Diversity and Prosperity of Media: the Key of a True Democracy?" Other subjects due to crop up at roundtables and working groups include impartiality in an increasingly partisan world, new challenges for traditional media and reality TV."

Source: AFP

"Since so much of their business depends on advertising spending, newspaper publishers and the people who invest in them have long been resigned to the fact that publishers' fortunes tend to rise and fall with the economic cycle," reports Seth Sutel of the Los Angeles Times. "But in presentations to investors this week, many publishers were highly cautious in their outlooks for next year, reflecting another hard fact: even though the economy may be recovering, it's not growing nearly fast enough to create a predictable, robust upward trend in advertising. Newspaper publishers from all over the country descended on New York this week to make presentations to the investment community at two conferences put on by competing investment banks, UBS and Credit Suisse First Boston."

"It's a boom-time for the press in India. And with six out of ten people now literate, it's only going to get bigger," said Chetan Chauhan and Jonathan Brown of The Independent. "The Hindustan Times began life as a family-owned newspaper in 1924, from a small office in Connaught Place. Now selling 900,000 copies a day, it is bucking the trend seen in Britain, where, with a few notable exceptions, circulation is firmly downward. The HT is on the rise: in the past five years circulation is up 30 per cent. Trends are similar for its rival paper, The Times of India. Professor Dinesh Sharma, of Delhi University's department of sociology, says that India has seen a massive surge in its media market in the past seven years. "Both newspapers and television are growing. With the population of the cities rising abnormally, the circulation of most English-language papers will increase," says Professor Sharma. That ties in with the growth of the Indian middle class, driven by technological expertise in rapidly developing urban areas such as Delhi and Mumbai. The average annual income in cities is now close to $12,000, as opposed to the $4,000 in rural areas."

Source: The Independent through IFRA

"Beijing Media Corp, the advertising sales unit of Beijing Youth Daily (the mainland's second largest newspaper in terms of advertising revenue) has attracted the backing of South African media group Naspers, which will subscribe to about 40 % of BMC's HK$905 million initial public offering (IPO)", reports The Standard's Mark Lee. BMC is selling 47.74 million shares, representing 25 per cent of its enlarged share capital, the maximum allowed under mainland regulations, at an indicative price range of between HK$14.95 and HK$18.95 per share to raise between HK$714 million to HK$905 million."

Source: The Standard via IFRA

"Beijing Media Corp, the advertising sales unit of Beijing Youth Daily (the mainland's second largest newspaper in terms of advertising revenue) has attracted the backing of South African media group Naspers, which will subscribe to about 40 % of BMC's HK$905 million initial public offering (IPO)", reports The Standard's Mark Lee. BMC is selling 47.74 million shares, representing 25 per cent of its enlarged share capital, the maximum allowed under mainland regulations, at an indicative price range of between HK$14.95 and HK$18.95 per share to raise between HK$714 million to HK$905 million."

Source: The Standard via IFRA