BBC journalist Zeinab Badawi speaks about the BBC itself and media freedom in Britain in a video posted by Journalism.co.uk.

The BBC's management has said there will be no new talks with striking journalists, as industrial action threatens to last until Christmas, reported Press Gazette.

MediaWeek offers a round-up of the most popular iPhone and iPad apps in the app store.

Propublica editors explain how they got hold of the government's secret dialysis data.

Clay Shirky on "The Shock of Inclusion and New Roles for News in the Fabric of Society," published on Poynter.org.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

AOL's hyperlocal news project, Patch, saw a huge boost in its traffic due to the November 2 midterm elections. According to Editor & Publisher, the network had a 300 percent traffic increase as visitors sought local results for the mid-term elections.

Warren Webster, president of Patch, said that Election Day accounted for the network's biggest traffic day yet, with the Santa Cruz Patch being the most popularly searched area.

The company, who said it is going to be the largest employer of journalists in the nation, has launched hyperlocal sites serving populations ranging from 15,000 to 75,000 across the United States, from Washington State to Rhode Island. However, the company is still expanding and according Nathalie Broizat, aims to cover 500 towns and regions by the end of the year.

In 2010 alone, Patch has hired 600 journalists and is still adding to that number. So where does this leave traditional local newspapers? Will the growth of Patch result in even further declines in local publications?

In June, the San Diego Union-Tribune let go its art critic Robert Pincus who had been at the paper for 20 years. Responsibility for coverage was given to James Chute, the paper's music critic. In an effort to provide more arts coverage, the Union-Tribune set up a series of art blogs, inviting local artists to contribute. There is no pay, and the artists post direct to the site with no editing.

As the Voice of San Diego explained, local artist and art professor Katherine Sweetman was to start writing one of these blogs, but instead she used the space to criticize the whole scheme.

"In an effort to step up the appearance of supporting the visual arts, The Union Tribune has graciously offered a handful of artists, scholars, and arts professionals the opportunity to write for them-- requiring only one blog post per week (52 per year). And the pay? Oh... no pay...

And then it hit us.

We hate the Union Tribune.

We hate the way they abruptly ended the tenure of the most important arts critic in San Diego's history. We hate James Chute's pathetic coverage of artists-- which just makes us look bad (seriously, read his stuff)...

It seems, to me, visual artists should be boycotting the Union Tribune not writing for them-- for free!"

The Washington Post has just launched an app for the iPad, which is free until mid-February 2011, according to a press release. The app requires registration.

"The Washington Post App for iPad is more than just an extension of our paper or website. It's an innovative, portable experience with our content that enables users to interact in a multi-dimensional way. Users can take full advantage of the experience that the iPad offers through our rich destination pages that provide everything a reader would want around a topic in one comprehensive place," said Raju Narisetti, managing editor, The Washington Post.

A "distinctive component" of the app, according to the paper, is Live Topics. This focuses on the top three to five issues of the day and aggregates news, commentary, social media, multimedia and user engagement around these. Washington Post stories, selected headline from around the web, Facebook comments and Twitter feeds are all included. The feature is designed "to draw users in to share their comments and opinions about key topics of the day that are relevant to them and the world at large," the paper said.

The app offers "comprehensive content" and the ability to comment and share stories via email, Facebook and Twitter. Stories can be saved for offline reading.

A new browser called RockMelt will offer users a way to stay connected to their friends and indeed, their "world," as they navigate web pages. "Why not build the world right into your browser?" a blog post on RockMelt.com asks.

RockMelt's fundamental goal seems to be making browsing the Web a personal experience. Users will have to log in to use RockMelt, and as all the information entered is stored in the cloud, a user's account can be accessed from anywhere with all its settings.

It connects with Facebook and other social sites and allows users to chat with friends directly through the browser, and keep track of what they are doing. A sharing function has been built directly into the browser so that users can share to Facebook or Twitter with one click. They can keep their favourite contacts always visible along the left-hand side and share links with them simply by dragging and dropping.

Maybe particularly interestingly for news organisations, the browser will also keep track of users' favourite sites and will alert them to new stories or posts. A column down the side of the browser allows quick access to these sites and displays the number of new updates.

Journalistic institutions in Italy have launched an initiative to push parliament and the ministry of work to create a law that would fix minimum standards for the payment and treatment of freelance journalists, reported LSDI. The effort follows the publication of an ebook on the condition of journalists in Italy, written and published by LSDI.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that independent work is paid with compensation so low that the vast majority of freelance journalists declare an average annual income that is lower than the poverty threshold indicated by ISTAT [the Italian statistics institute]," said the LSDI article. This is the feeling of those who met for the release of the ebook on journalists' conditions, who included Enzo Iacopino, president of the Italian Order of Journalists, Andrea Camporese, president of INPGI (social security for journalists), Andrea Cerrato, president of Casagit (health benefits for journalists) and Roberto Natale and Franco Siddi, president and secretary of FNSI, the Italian journalists' union.

Digital director of the Times of London, Gurtej Sandhu, is to leave after implementing the paper's paywall, according to Marketing Week. News International released the first paywall figures earlier this week.

The last female staff reporter has left the New York Observer, noted the Awl, leave nine men on staff at the paper.

A Demand Media journalist has described his experiences working for the so-called 'content farm' in the Columbia Journalism Review.

See Poynter.org for live blogging and a video stream of the institute's event "Finding the Future of Journalism: Poynter's Social Media Day."

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

The Syrian parliament is preparing to vote on an Internet law that journalists fear could curtail the freedom of the online media, which is greater than that of print media, Agence France-Presse reported. Many news websites have emerged in Syria in the last few years and, less scrutinized than traditional media, they have become an important source of information on subjects that print media cannot cover, said AFP.

The new law would allow police to enter editorial offices to arrest journalists and seize computers, AFP heard from Ayman Abdel Nour, director of the website all4syria.org. A pro-government news website director Nidal Maalouf said to the AFP that it would be harder to criticize the government under the new law as online media would be overseen by the information ministry.

Meanwhile Syria's less repressive neighbour Lebanon, although enjoying a higher level of online freedom than other Arab countries, has recently seen arrests, detentions and intimidation of Lebanese citizens for their online activities, reported the New York Times. "The most dangerous topics to speak out against online are the army and the president," the NYT said.

Forbes is planning to involve its readers more in both the print and digital versions of its magazine. Lewis DVorkin, chief product officer of Forbes Media, recently wrote about how "At Forbes, we're beginning to open up our print and digital platforms so many more knowledgeable and credible content creators can provide information and perspective and connect with one another," he said.

He noted that with the launch of this year's Forbes 400, reader content began to appear in the pages of the magazine. "What was yesterday's audience is today's cadre of potential experts who can report what they know or filter information for distribution to friends who trust their judgments," he wrote.

Changes are being made to Trinity Mirror's digital executive line-up as it creates a new digital business unit within the nationals division, reports paidContent. Matt Kelly, nationals digital content director who had announced he was leaving is now staying to become publisher within this new division.

Is ignoring the press an emerging political strategy, asks the Texas Watchdog.

The Associated Press is to start offering high definition video as part of its service early next year, the news organisation reported.

The Guardian's Roy Greeslade offers his thoughts on the Media Standard Trust's survey on international news reporting in the UK.

Facebook is launching a potential Foursquare killer, says CNET.

For more industry news, please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

OWNI has launched its first English-language site, OWNI.eu, reported Journalism.co.uk. OWNI, which describes itself as a group of French and European media, as well as a thinktank, experiments with digital journalism and, for example, recently created Wikileaks' Iraq War Logs website.

The new site OWNI.eu has articles on technology, politics and culture: a mixture of original content, translations from pieces on OWNI.fr, blog aggregation, infographics and data visualizations, explained Journalism.co.uk. Its editor is 25-year-old Federica Cocco.

OWNI also has verticals covering science, music and politics, and has launched campaigns for freedom of information online. It is committed to protecting digital rights in France, and its foundations was partly inspired by opposition to the Hadopi bill which was introduced in France in spring 2009 to regulate Internet access and protect copyright.