Just as death notices are being written for newspapers someone has a new use for them. A new design for a coat lined with newspapers “is being hailed as a major breakthrough for street-level aid,” reported the Calgary Sun. The Salvation Army is handing out the “15 Below Jacket” to street people and the working…
The Council of Europe recently adopted a Convention on Access to Official Documents. The convention’s language is rather inspiring: it refers to aims of greater unity; ideals and principles; the importance in a pluralistic, democratic society of transparency of public authorities. There is quite a lot about the right to access to official documents to…
The New York Times has a massive piece, One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex, about Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired American four-star Army general, military analyst for NBC News, paid lobbyist for American defence contractors, and early enthusiastic supporter for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. McCaffrey, said the Times, “reveals the myriad and often undisclosed connections between…
The Wall Street Journal will launch a social network for business people, starting Tuesday. If it’s successful, says a New York Times blogger, “it could provide lessons for other news organizations trying to build deeper connections with their readers: New community features will allow WSJ.com’s million or so paid online subscribers to comment on every…
In A Penny for My Thoughts? Maureen Dowd interviews James Macpherson, the self-styled, bow-tied “pioneer” of “glocal” news. Macpherson owns a Pasadena news outlet that fired all professional journalism staff and outsourced local coverage of things like town hall meetings to piecemeal contractors in India. … Where’s the liquor? Or something harder?
The English online version of German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and NRC.nl/international, the English-language Web site of Netherlands daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, announced a new partnership “to launch a Europe-wide network of publishers of high-quality journalism on national, European and international affairs.” A story in SPIEGEL ONLINE said the partners “plan to exchange content on a…
Arianna Huffington’s new book contends new and old media “are rapidly joining together to bring out the best in each other,” said a Reuters story, based on a pre-book-launch interview with Huffington. But Huffington, whose Huffington Post makes her the unrivaled queen of blogging in the America, couldn’t resist a swipe at mainstream media in…
Hours after BBC journalist Kate Peyton arrived in Mogadishu, she was shot in the back and died. That was in February, 2005, and now a coroner’s report concludes she didn’t want the dangerous assignment, but took it because “she felt that her job would be on the line if she didn’t take it,” according to…
A new, quirky movement, slow blogging, aims to “reject immediacy” and embrace “a willingness to remain silent amid the daily outrages and ecstasies that fill nothing more than single moments in time.”
“Newspapers and news magazines should seek to revitalize the provincial/regional press councils and ensure that identifiable groups are able to pursue complaints if they feel they have been unfairly represented in mainstream media,” declares an independent report about online hate speech, released by the Canadian Human Rights Commission…