The recent attempted car bombing in New York City's Times Square by Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, has understandably caused anxiety in the Pakistani community in the United States. Moreover, the fears of Muslim-Pakistani communities concerning their vulnerable public image have not been assuaged by the media's handling of the attempted car bombing, says Joseph Berger of the New York Times. In a recent article, Berger criticized mainstream media for not handling the reporting of the incident properly and contributing to the poor public image of the Pakistani community. Indeed, Berger asserts that poor journalism causes mainstream media to report anti-Muslim bigotry that implies that the Muslim-Pakistani community does not condemn the acts of Shahzed. Au Contraire, mainstream media. Berger reports that Individuals in the Muslim-Pakistani community not only clearly condemn terrorist attacks, they also fear them as being destructive to their image in the United States.

El Mundo's paid news app, Orbyt, has received more than 10,000 subscribers since it was launched at the beginning of March, Agence France-Presse reported. Orbyt provides full access to the paper edition of the Spanish daily as well as a range of other services.

The application costs €14.99 a month, or €0.60 a day, and access is also available via the iPhone and the iPad, which was just launched in Spain last week. As well as full access to the print paper, Orbyt provides archives, pop-up video reports, access to regional editions and supplements, commenting, the opportunity to communicate with the newsroom and special offers. The paper's standard website, ElMundo.es remains free. Publishing shorter versions of articles that go in the paper, the website is the most visited Spanish-language news site in the world.

The fact that 10,000 people have been at least tempted to pay to try out Orbyt when there is a free website available is interesting - what are they paying for? Is it the extra information and archives, or is it the convenience of access and the premium presentation?

Newsweek has recently announced a reformatted version of its website. Stating in its introduction, Newsweek hopes that the site will be defined by two words: simple and clear. Rather than subscribing to a trend of news reporting that is "cluttered with headlines and knee-jerk reactions," Newsweek hopes to establish a site that cuts directly to the heart of the matter by focusing on one story that will lead the site and providing a stream of other, more minor, stories below. Overall, this redesign appears to be Newsweek's attempt to differentiate itself from other news sources by focusing on quality news and sacrificing some element of quantity.

The recently published spring issue of the Newspaper Research Journal includes a detailed study entitled "Citizen Journalism Web Sites Complement Newspapers".

Researchers at Michigan State University, the University of Missouri, and the University of North Carolina performed a content analysis of 86 citizen blogs, 53 citizen news websites and 63 daily newspaper sites in June and July 2009. They analyzed which sites publish content new content on a daily basis, and the similarities and differences between citizen vs professional content.

The study adopted a "media economics research" perspective in order to gauge how much of a threat citizen journalism currently poses. The research was guided by four questions:

• Do citizen blog sites publish content on a daily basis?
• Do citizen news sites publish content on a daily basis?
• How similar are citizen blog sites to daily newspaper Web sites?
• How similar are citizen news sites to daily newspaper Web sites?

As climate change and environmental issues take a continually higher place on the global agenda, many news organisations are reconsidering their reporting strategies. One useful source of news and resources on the topic is AlertNet's Climate Change section, from the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Editors Weblog spoke to Laurie Goering, editor of AlertNet's Climate section, about the project and the issues associated with climate change reporting.

AlertNet aims to provide information in humanitarian crisis situations. The Reuters Foundation, now the Thomson Reuters Foundation, created AlertNet in 1997, after reports of poor coordination between emergency relief charities on the ground during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 spurred the news agency into looking what could be done to remedy this. As Goering said, "Good, accurate, reliable information can be a form of aid, saving lives," and it is this aid in the form of information that the Foundation decided to provide.

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) will offer the fifth edition of its 'Summer University' from 5 to 7 July next in St. Paul de Vence on the French Riviera.

The three-day seminar, limited to 25 participants, offers a unique opportunity to consider and reaffirm the overall direction of publications, integrate new strategies, and redefine the organisation of newsrooms.

The three-day seminar will focus on how evolving news consumption behaviour, the multiplicity of reading devices, and new multimedia strategies are having a profound impact on newsroom operations, requiring new strategies, new workflows and new working methods.

Full details can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/summeruniversity2010
(select language from the list at the left of the page).

Source: WAN-IFRA press release

The OJR's Tom Grubisich on The Washington Post's launch of a new politics section online. [OJR]

In a speech at an annual Al Jazeera forum, foreign correspondent for The Independent Robert Fisk has warned journalists against thoughtlessly using the "words of power" in war reporting. [PressGazette]

Approximately 30 staff members, nine percent of the New York Daily News' editorial team, have accepted a buyout offer. [New York Observer's MediaMob]

In the aftermath of 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day', Pakistan lifts its ban on YouTube but keeps blocks 1,200 web pages [Yahoo! News]

Thailand has extended censorship against anti-govt protesters and journalists. [Reuters]

The Mail Online became the first UK newspaper website to top 40 million monthly unique visitors in April. [The Guardian]

"The press of Zimbabwe today lies in ruins."

That is the first sentence of Reporters without Borders' 2009 report on press freedom in Zimbabwe. Fortunately, it appears there may be hope on the horizon. It was announced today that licences have been awarded to four private daily newspapers in Zimbabwe by The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC). The commission was established by the unity government to bring about media reforms to a media system currently dominated by state-run newspapers.

"We are here to allow Zimbabweans access to media," ZMC Chairman Godfrey Majonga was quoted as saying in BBC's coverage of the announcement. The ZMC is a product of the shared government of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his political opponent, President Robert Mugabe.

In 2002, President Mugabe introduced harsh media laws, in a bundle known as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which banned foreign journalists from working permanently in the country and mandated that journalists and newspapers register with the government. The laws also imposed prison sentences for any journalists neglecting to do so. The Act also established a worrisome subjective offense titled "publishing false news", which served as a powerful tool for oppression.

According to a recent survey, there are now more Facebook users in the Arab world than newspaper readers. Spot On Public Relations found that there were more than 15 million Facebook account holders in the Middle East and North Africa region, while the total number of newspaper copies sold in the region in Arabic, English and French is just under 14 million.

Facebook's decision to add an Arabic interface in March 2009 has opened up access to many more people, said Spot On PR's managing director Carrington Malin in a summary of the report. 3.5 million Arabic users have joined over the past year, including 1.1 million in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 50% of users in the region still use English as their primary language, however. The top five Facebook markets in MENA - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia, account for 70% of all users in the region. The region has a greater proportion of male users than other areas of the world: 37% of MENA users are female, compared to 56% in the US, for example.

In 2008, U.S.-based publisher Hearst Corporation partnered with MediaEdge for a joint research initiative to learn more about how consumers felt about greener products, both in and out of the publishing world, SFN's Going Green reported.

Although the survey focused solely on magazines and not all print content, the results of the survey resonate for companies that publish quality content, especially newspapers. The environment is an important topic for readers, and content that explores that is valued.

For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

Condé Nast Publications announced today the release of the first issue of Wired magazine in iPad format. Other titles from the publisher, including Vanity Fair and GQ have already come out for the iPad but Wired is being promoted as its first magazine to undergo a comprehensive re-imagining tailored to the new format.