Six Iraqi women who work in the McClatchy Newspapers bureau in Baghdad were honoured in New York with a “courage in journalism award.” Kudos to the New York Times for running the acceptance speech by Baghdad journalist Sahar Issa, speaking for the six, as an editorial. Excerpts: “To be a journalist in violence-ridden Iraq today,…
Reuters and Nokia have developed a new “mobile journalism” toolkit aimed at helping reporters file and publish text, photo, audio and video news stories from handheld devices, rather than laptops. An excerpt from the press release: Helsinki, Finland – Nokia Research Center (NRC) and Reuters are working together on a mobile journalism project that could transform…
The growth of online advertising is being stunted, reports the New York Times, because nobody can get the basic visitor counts straight. An excerpt: Online advertising is expected to generate more than $20 billion in revenue this year, more than double the $9.6 billion it represented as recently as 2004. Nobody doubts that the figure…
William Dutton, an academic and British Internet expert, has some interesting ideas about how a ‘fifth estate’ could support greater accountability in politics and the media. He gave a lecture to the Reuters Institute; the summary is on the Reuters site: The media are often seen as central to democratic processes: a ‘fourth estate’ independent…
A U.S. think piece asks of the phenomenon of a publication full of fake news that rivals America’s ninth-largest newspaper in circulation, “Is The Onion our most intelligent newspaper?” An excerpt: While other newspapers desperately add gardening sections, ask readers to share their favorite bratwurst recipes, or throw their staffers to ravenous packs of bloggers…
A public affairs spokesperson says Saskatchewan’s health department has imposed a total ban on anyone giving media interviews, on any topic, to any journalist anywhere, for the duration of the provincial election. When I called about a story, I was told that to have a routine bureaucratic question answered, I would have to call the minister…
“A lot of journalists and former journalists and bloggers seem to hate their newspapers because of some vague psychic or moral sensibility, as if some great social contract has been breached. The newspaper was supposed to represent some Rockwellian expression of American idealism and democratic life along with a devotion to craft. Instead, it became…
American media conglomerates would be the big winners under a plan circulated this week by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The plan would, reported the New York Times, relax media ownership rules that have been in place since 1974, and would repeal a rule forbidding a company to own both a newspaper and a television…
From a Bloomberg story today: Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years….Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family’s control…
Anyone wondering why Time magazine is so skinny these days? Marvelling at the fat People on the newstands? Take a look at this graph compiled by the U.S. Project for Excellence in Journalism, showing changes in advertising. Says the blurb above the feature at journalism. org, “It’s been a rough year for the three major…