The Wall Street Journal has announced the appointment of Peter Wonacott to the newly-created role of Africa bureau chief. He is to be based in Johannesburg, and will work closely with the WSJ's parent company Dow Jones' newswire bureau in the city. He will report to Rebecca Blumenstein, international editor and deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

According to a press release, the creation of the role "reflects the region's increasing importance as a business and geopolitical story and signals the launch of an expanded Wall Street Journal reporting network on the continent."

Wonacott moves to Africa from New Delhi, India, where he served as The Wall Street Journal's senior correspondent, South Asia, for the past four years. "Peter brings a wealth of experience of covering emerging markets to this important new position," said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief, Dow Jones & Company, and managing editor, The Wall Street Journal. "This is the beginning of a broader network of reporting from a region that is growing in importance to our readers."

At a time when many newspapers have been forced to cut down on foreign correspondents due to financial constraints, it is interesting that the WSJ is putting more of a focus on the African continent. Wonacott will certainly be well-placed to cover events surrounding the World Cup this summer.

After a long year of looking into the state of the press, the UK Culture, Media, Sports Select Committee has finally released its report on libel, privacy, and press standards, according to journalism.co.uk

The 167-page report completed by a committee appointed by the House of Commons offers recommendations on journalism ethnics to guarantee "a constructive way forward for a free and healthy UK press in the years to come."

According to the report's summary, this inquiry is the "product of the longest, most complex, and wide-ranging inquiry" the Committee has ever undertaken.

The 167-page report opens by establishing that in exchange for freedom of the press, UK press are expected to "uphold certain standards" and to not only be as accurate as possible, but also "mindful of the rights of those who are written about."

The report criticizes the ineffective system of self-regulation of the press under the Press Complaints Commission that came into action in 1991. Since then, both the citizens and politicians have come to question the methods used by the press and the regulator capacities of the PCC.

Background

Newspapers are still the most used and valued local news destinations, and online is no exception, according to a new study from comScore and the Newspaper Association of America. Newspaper Web sites are the "most used and valued sites for consumers seeking credible and trustworthy local content and advertising online," the survey found.

About 57 percent of the more than 3,000 respondents said local newspaper sites are their top online sources for local information - more than the totals for all other media. The percentage is higher for those with a college education (60 percent) and households with higher incomes (63 percent).

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The Fund for Investigative Journalism and InvestigateWest both received grants of $100,000 this week from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, a nonprofit based in Oklahoma City.

The Fund of Investigative Journalism announced news of the grant Tuesday. It will provide funds to help reporters continue investigative work in their local areas and states. The grant will also support investigations by reporters outside the mainstream media.

"This grant will address a pressing need for watchdog reporting in regions where newsroom cutbacks have hollowed out investigative staffs and in communities covered by the ethnic media," said president of the Fund, Brant Houston. The grant is expected to fund 15 to 20 investigative projects.

InvestigateWest released a statement about their grant yesterday. Executive Director and Editor Rita Hibbard called it an "Olympic gold" and a "big accomplishment" for their investigative team.

"The watchdog role of legacy media is in jeopardy due to the economic crisis facing the journalism industry," said the Foundation's CEO, Bob Ross. "We're working to secure the future of watchdog journalism by funding investigative reporting models of innovation, sustainability and collaboration."

The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation provides support to nonprofits with an emphasis on investigative reporting, but also on professional development, youth education, and new media.

A recent survey conducted in the US produced promising results for newspapers focusing on their mobile activities. According to JiWire, fifty-five per cent of US mobile users access news and current events information from their phones, according to a report on mobile activity during December 2009.

News and current events was the top category among mobile users, followed by search engines (accessed by 50% of people) and social networking (accessed by 47%.)

Among the top ten websites accessed by mobile audiences in December 2009 was CNN in fourth position, and the New York Times at number seven (behind Google, Facebook and Yahoo which took the top three spots.) JiWire's reports are based on data from approximately 289,000 public Wi-Fi locations, as well as continuously surveying over 2,000 randomly-selected customers who used JiWire's Wi-Fi media channel, which is comprised of over 30,000 public Wi-Fi locations. The latest report also noted a 21.9% growth in worldwide public Wi-Fi locations, with the US, China, the UK, France and Germany boasting the most.

Agence France-Presse chairman and CEO Pierre Louette announced today that he was to step down and take up the position of secretary general at France Telecom in April, AFP reported. His reasons for the move are not clear.

Louette will remain at AFP until the end of March. He will seek candidates for his replacement, and a successor will be chosen by the AFP's board of eight representatives of the press, three from government, two from state broadcasters and two from the agency's staff.

In March last year, Louette proposed changing the status of the AFP from an autonomous non-profit organisation to that of a state-owned company. Currently, it has no capital or shareholders, cannot run at a loss and is run by a board that includes its main French clients, AFP explained. Louette believed that the organisation's status did not give it a chance to innovate or develop, and wanted the agency to be able to invest and raise funds.

The Guardian iPhone app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its launch in December, the Guardian has proudly reported. The app is currently topping the paid-for app charts, and has also been nominated for a British Press Award for Digital Innovation.

For £2.39, users have access to news, comment, photo galleries and podcasts, all of which are available either on or offline.

Director of digital content at Guardian News & Media, Emily Bell, described the news as "an enormous achievement for the Guardian App," adding "the feedback we received at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week from both the industry and users was very complimentary, and we are thrilled that the app is being showcased in Apple's latest television campaign."

Indeed the app is available at the Apple store in most European countries.

Not only encouraging for the Guardian, the news also illustrates news consumers' thirst for mobile content - and what's more - their willingness to pay for it.

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists is arranging a 'speed dating' event for freelancers to meet editors, reported MinnPost. For $30 (or $20 for SPJ members), freelancers can attend 'Freelance Love' on March 11 and have five minutes of "guaranteed face time" with editors from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and several magazines, according to the MNSPJ website.

SPJ board member Amanda Theisen told MinnPost that "Many of our members have been asking us to do something along those lines. ... The freelancer can pitch a story idea, or simply introduce themselves to the editor and show them some of their work. Then, after five minutes, the freelancer moves onto the next editor, then the next, then the next...you get the idea!" When they register, freelancers are asked if they are interested in working for newspaper, online, magazines, or with photography or video.

Should journalists have to pay to meet potential employers? It seems an unusual move but one that definitely offers convenience. As news outlets suffer from lack of ad revenue, more journalists are left out of work and looking for freelance assignments, and more publications are looking for freelancers to fill the gaps that shrinking newsrooms have left.

The man behind the Google News page - criticized by some news publishers for offering their paid content for free - thinks Google is simply helping them monetize their news content.

"We certainly see the value, and we think most of the publishers do too," Josh Cohen said at a PaidContent 2010 event last week, according to Media Post News.

Cohen explained that the aggregator only provides links to news sites, allowing them to earn more dollars or charge visitors.
In the past, Google's First-Click Free strategy allowed users to access news content that was behind a paywall through Google's news portal, prompting criticism from some newspaper publishers that Google was making their paid-for content available for free. Clever users were able to Google search the names of articles behind the paywall and read them without subscribing.

Cohen says that publishers that want the Google-generated traffic may look for ways to have links to their sites appear more prominently. But Google News uses a sophisticated algorithm that ranks stories which looks for the most "original content," said Cohen. This detail, he claims, supplies a certain editorial integrity.

Paris-based French daily Le Parisien and its national arm Aujourd'hui have developed a user-generated section of their site, in conjunction with Citizenside, a citizen photo journalism agency that recently launched similar projects with the French branch of free daily Metro, and French radio station RTL.

The new site, You, invites readers to provide text, photo and video contributions, or to alert the community of a specific event. Items are immediately published on the site, but Le Parisien staff will check the authenticity of contributions (using Citizenside's technology) and then mark them as 'verified.'

A site that welcomes reader contributions could be useful to a news outlet firstly because it increases the volume of content available, at a low cost, and secondly because it encourages readers to become more engaged in the publication.

Matt Kelly, director of digital content for Trinity Mirror Group, has led a project to create standalone websites for niche groups of Mirror readers. Mirrorfootball.co.uk's success has been because of its unique offering, and its subsequent appeal to advertisers, Kelly stressed in an interview.

To hear more from Matt about mirrorfootball.co.uk, register here for the WEF Editors Webinar to be held tomorrow, Tuesday 23 February at 2pm GMT.