http://www.ejc.net/media_news/ EJC daily media news en European Journalism Centre Copyright 2009 2009-07-03T08:54:00+00:00 ejc/media_newshttp://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with Pageflakes http://www.ejc.net/media_news/washington_post_says_publishers_conference_wont_be_held/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/washington_post_says_publishers_conference_wont_be_held/#When:08:54:00Z The Washington Post asked lobbyists and business leaders to pay USD 25,000 to attend a dinner discussion with government officials and journalists at the home of its publisher, and then canceled the event after the invitations became public. The newspaper's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, said Thursday that no one in the newsroom had vetted the invitation and its journalists would not participate. Existence of the flier shows the pitfalls faced by news organizations trying to find ways to make money in tough business times. The Washington Post Co.'s newspaper division reported an operating loss of USD 54m during the first three months of the year. The flier advertised a 'Washington Post salon' on health care reform at the home of Publisher Katharine Weymouth on July 21, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press. The Web site Politico first reported its existence. The dinner party was to have 20 or fewer guests, including Obama administration officials, members of Congress, business leaders and lobbyists, according to the flier. Brauchli and other Post journalists, including those who cover health care, were promised as hosts and discussion leaders. Participants were offered a chance to 'build crucial relationships with Washington Post news executives in a neutral and informal setting,' the flier said. Each salon would have one or two sponsors who would pay USD 25,000 to underwrite the event and invite guests. The Post envisioned a series of 11 salons that could be sponsored for a total of USD 250,000. Weymouth on Thursday canceled the whole series. 2009-07-03T08:54:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/daily_mail_owner_launches_websites_aimed_at_hyperlocal_communities/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/daily_mail_owner_launches_websites_aimed_at_hyperlocal_communities/#When:08:52:00Z Daily Mail & General Trust is this week launching the first of 50 hyperlocal community websites in the south west of England as part of a pilot scheme to increase its grassroots online presence across the country. Associated Northcliffe Digital, the digital consumer division of DMGT, is rolling out the first 23 sites in its Local People network this week, with a further 20 expected to launch in the next four weeks. The sites, which include falmouthpeople.co.uk and bidefordpeople.co.uk, cover areas with between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants and are aimed at encouraging interaction by allowing users to create profiles, write and publish stories, upload images, form groups and rate and review other content and message each other. Each site will have a paid community publisher to oversee the site, contribute content and encourage engagement. The sites will be open to local businesses to market themselves to customers through display advertising and business directory listings, via Google Maps. Business owners will also able to enhance their listings for a fee. Associated Northcliffe Digital's pilot project, which has been four months in development, will also see the launch of 10 sites for communities across Bristol, including cliftonpeople.co.uk. The launch follows similar ventures by other regional publishing groups, including Trinity Mirror. However, most have a focus on news, rather than community interaction. 2009-07-03T08:52:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/newspapers_in_washington_get_key_40_percent_tax_break/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/newspapers_in_washington_get_key_40_percent_tax_break/#When:08:51:00Z As newspapers across the country struggle through a brutal economic climate, papers in Washington state are getting a tax break. A new law that gives newspaper printers and publishers a 40 percent cut in Washington's main business tax took effect this week, providing some much-needed relief to the business after a year in which The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its final edition and other papers suffered drastic cutbacks. 'It's not a bailout, because it's not enough money,' said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, the Democrat who sponsored the measure. 'But it is our way of saying to the newspapers that we do believe you're incredibly important to our state and our democracy.' The Society of Professional Journalists and the National Conference of State Legislatures was not aware of any other state that has granted a similar tax break to the newspaper industry. In Michigan, a bill that was introduced in May would exempt newspapers from paying that state's main business tax, but the bill has not yet had a hearing. And several states, including Mississippi, Idaho and Colorado, have existing sales-tax exemptions for newspapers. The Washington tax cut, which will cost the state about USD 1.3m a year, was approved despite uneasiness in the industry about newspapers relying on the government they cover for help. 2009-07-03T08:51:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/s_africa_mps_propose_media_chiefs/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/s_africa_mps_propose_media_chiefs/#When:08:50:00Z A parliamentary committee has proposed a five-strong board to head the South African Broadcasting Corporation, a day after the previous board was sacked. Parliament voted to dissolve the board after months of infighting and alleged mismanagement - the public broadcaster is 740m rand ($94m; £58m) in debt. The communications committee has now chosen five people for an interim board which MPs will vote on next week. Critics have long said the broadcaster was a mouthpiece for the government. They accused former President Thabo Mbeki of filling the previous board with his own followers. Opposition parties said the new board would have to be politically impartial if the beleaguered broadcaster's reputation is to be restored. The BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says four of the members of the proposed interim board are seen as relatively neutral. But the committee could not agree on the fifth nominee - Phil Mtimkulu, a political science lecturer who was nominated by the governing Africa National Congress (ANC). They were eventually forced into a vote, and approved his nomination by eight votes to four. The SABC has been saddled with debt since the mid-1990s, with some board members and senior managers accused of abusing their position to enrich themselves. The board and managers have also openly rowed over major decisions and blamed each other for the corporation's difficulties. By the time the National Assembly decided to dissolve the board, most of them had already quit. 2009-07-03T08:50:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/twitter_followers_can_be_bought/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/twitter_followers_can_be_bought/#When:08:46:00Z Twitter users who lack an audience for their messages can now buy followers. Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service. Followers are available in blocks starting at AUD 87 (EUR 50) for 1,000. The biggest block uSocial is selling is 100,000 people. USocial said businesses and individuals were queuing up to use its follower finding service. Leon Hill, chief executive of uSocial, said the company finds potential followers by searching Twitter and working out what individual users are interested in. It also profiles where people are so it can more closely match users with those they might want to follow. USocial then sends messages to potential followers telling them about the new Twitter user they might want to follow. 'It's up to the user to follow them or not,' said Mr Hill. He added that uSocial continues to look for followers until the specified number had signed up. USocial has about 150 customers that had bought followers and had another 80-90 campaigns about to roll out. A broad range of clients had signed up to buy followers, said Mr Hill including educational organisations, companies and marketing firms. 2009-07-03T08:46:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/video_prison_visits_bring_inmates_home/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/video_prison_visits_bring_inmates_home/#When:08:45:00Z Families can visit incarcerated relatives from the comfort of their living rooms through a first-of-its-kind program in Indiana, the AP reports. Visitors on the approved list are allowed to schedule video conferences with inmates from anywhere they choose. Prisoners use ATM-like machines set up and paid for by a private company; a 30-minute chat costs the prisoner $12.50. More facilities will install the system this year. Prison officials say that besides allowing visits with relatives who live far away or are too ill to travel, the program makes life easier for guards. 'They actually behave better here at the facility,' one official says of prisoners permitted virtual family contact. And there's no chance of contraband slipping through. The system isn't without its kinks, however-several visitors and inmates have been banned from using it after officials monitoring the videos caught them exposing themselves. 2009-07-03T08:45:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/russia_ria_novosti_says_improving_training_key_to_surviving_crisis/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/russia_ria_novosti_says_improving_training_key_to_surviving_crisis/#When:08:38:00Z Russian news agency RIA Novosti believes that investing in training programs which improve staff skills is the most effective anti-crisis program for media outlets, the agency's editor-in-chief said. This January and June the news agency introduced a series of lectures and seminars to train staff in multimedia technology for video recording and photo imaging, infographics, Internet search engines, 'black PR' and legal risks in the media. The training culminated in two-week multimedia courses held at a summer school in the Moscow Region. The classes, which started on June 20, are being held in the form of business games. 'Without the knowledge and skills of our journalists and editors, we could not provide our clients with a full-fledged multimedia news line, which delivers complicated information in an accessible format,' RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk said. Such multimedia products are the future for journalism Mironyuk said, adding that the agency also plans to provide training courses for its staff in the future. RIA Novosti deputy editor-in-chief Maxim Filimonov, who heads the Integrated News Department, said that around 400 people had already attended training sessions: 'We want our people to think in stories which are told first of all visually.' 2009-07-02T08:38:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/google_drops_news_comment_feature/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/google_drops_news_comment_feature/#When:08:32:00Z Google has eliminated an experimental feature that allowed people quoted in articles in Google News to post comments on those articles. People in the news media were intrigued by the idea of giving article subjects the power to comment, and the idea drew considerable coverage. But the feature never got a lot of use -- the company declined to provide numbers -- and it was dropped without an announcement in May. 'We're always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful,' the company said in a statement released on Wednesday, confirming the change. 'Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users.' 2009-07-02T08:32:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/fledgling_website_hopes_to_open_journalism_to_all/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/fledgling_website_hopes_to_open_journalism_to_all/#When:08:32:00Z A year-old website, inspired by the use of Twitter and Internet media reporting out of Iran, hopes to become the go-to forum for citizen journalists everywhere as traditional media pulls back. Allvoices.com, a fledgling social networking-cum-news aggregator site launched in 2008, uses algorithms to help it sort news from around the world in a manner akin to what Google Inc does. Its twist is that it encourages and enables anyone to be a reporter and uses an in-house system to rate would-be journalists on popularity and credibility. The company says they have 33,000 separate "landing" pages for countries, cities and other special categories -- each with its own following. People can file to the sites from computers, or even by sending text messages from mobile phones. Allvoices, which is operating on USD 4.5m in funding from Vantage Point Venture Partners, has started paying its most popular reporters. They can earn anywhere from USD 0,25 to USD 2 per thousand page views. Contributors are free to post almost anything. Credibility is rated by people who read postings and by the in-house algorithm, which is designed to help measure postings against traditional media and other sources. But throwing the site open to the public has its pitfalls. One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled. Other stories cite no sources, anathema in traditional journalism. 2009-07-02T08:32:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/gannett_to_cut_about_1400_newspaper_jobs_by_july_9/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/gannett_to_cut_about_1400_newspaper_jobs_by_july_9/#When:08:31:00Z Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper owner, will eliminate about 1,400 publishing jobs by July 9 as it copes with declining advertising and circulation. 'We must take these steps because the advertising environment remains challenged,' Bob Dickey, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing unit, said today in a memo to employees. The division has more than 80 dailies and doesn't include USA Today, the largest U.S. newspaper by circulation. The cuts account for about 3.4 percent of Gannett's workforce. The McLean, Virginia-based company has enforced two weeks of unpaid leave for most employees, slashed its dividend and shuttered the Tucson Citizen newspaper to save costs. Publishing ad revenue dwindled 34 percent in the first quarter. Dickey said the company doesn't plan additional unpaid leave this year. Gannett, which publishes the Detroit Free Press, has about 41,500 employees, according to a regulatory filing. 2009-07-02T08:31:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/netherlands_newspaper_group_pcm_told_to_sell_the_nrc/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/netherlands_newspaper_group_pcm_told_to_sell_the_nrc/#When:08:30:00Z Newspaper publishing group PCM has been told to sell the NRC Handelsblad and NRC.next newspapers by the competition authority NMa. PCM, which owns four of the country's five main daily papers, is about to be taken over by Belgium's Persgroep, which owns Amsterdam paper Het Parool. But if Persgroep takes over PCM as a whole, it will have too-big a share of the Amsterdam regional newspaper market, the NMa said. 'Research shows if Parool readers decide to take another newspaper, they mainly opt for the Volkskrant or NRC,' the organisation said. The biggest circulation newspaper in the country is the Telegraaf. Persgroep director Christian van Thillo has already said he wants to sell the NRC. The money will go to reduce PCM's debts. Investment company HAL, which owns the Financieele Dagblad, and the Telegraaf have been named as potential buyers. 2009-07-02T08:30:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/ap_resurrects_lost_london_video_news_archive/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/ap_resurrects_lost_london_video_news_archive/#When:08:25:00Z Associated Press has resurrected 3,500 hours of international news footage from thge early 1960s to the mid 1980s which had been buried in a World War Two-era bunker in central London. The project has unveiled new colour footage of key political figures including a young Yasser Arafat, Libya's Colonel Gadhafi immediately after taking power, Richard Nixon with Nicolae Ceausescu, Fidel Castro meeting Latin American and Eastern European leaders and a young Saddam Hussein in Paris. Some 20,000 film cans have been lying untouched for decades in the central London bunker from which general Eisenhower directed the D-Day landings. The film was rendered inaccessible because the text catalogue was scattered in various locations across the UK and US. AP's footage business, AP Archive, assembled a team of researchers to piece together the scattered paper records to create a new database for the footage. The films themselves are being cleaned and restored by Laboratoires Éclair of Paris and then transferred on to high definition videotape for use by professional producers. AP Archive is also digitising the films so that they can be viewed online via its website www.aparchive.com. This 'lost archive' is the legacy of United Press International Television News (UPITN), which whose archive was bought by AP in 1998 when it acquired World Television News. 2009-07-02T08:25:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/china_delays_rollout_of_filtering_tool/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/china_delays_rollout_of_filtering_tool/#When:09:15:00Z China has delayed the rollout date for its controversial Green Dam internet filtering tool. The Chinese Government said the day for the mandated inclusion of the filter would be put off to allow PC vendors extra time to prepare for the law which requires all systems sold in the country to be bundled with the software, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The country's Ministry of Industry and Information technology had previously set 1 July as the deadline for compliance with the law. No new deadline was given. The controversial law first garnered attention earlier this month when word surfaced that PC vendors were being forced to include the software either as a pre-installation or bundled offering with all new systems sold in China. News of the law garnered heated debate and drew criticism from many groups opposed to the measure, including the US Secretary of Commerce. The Chinese government maintained that the software could be disabled by users and would only block pornographic content. Opponents of the measure argued that the software could be used to further tighten the country's grip on internet access and censorship in China. A group of Chinese citizens opposed to the law were planning to conduct a one day boycott of the internet in protest of the measure. Some companies have also expressed concern that possible intellectual property violations in the Green Dam tool could prevent US software vendors from exporting systems with the software installed. 2009-07-01T09:15:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/the_netherlands_newspaper_circulation_continues_to_slide/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/the_netherlands_newspaper_circulation_continues_to_slide/#When:09:14:01Z Almost every Dutch national newspaper had fewer readers in the first three months of this year, according to the latest figures from the Hoi circulation figure institute. Only specialist newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad managed to increase its circulation figures with a 3 percent rise to 67,000 copies a day. All four national papers owned by the PCM publishing group had fewer readers for their paper editions. The evening paper NRC Handelsblad booked the sharpest decline, at 6.2 percent. However, the NRC and Volkskrant both increased the number of internet subscribers, Hoi said. 2009-07-01T09:14:01+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/pirate_bay_sold_to_swedish_software_firm/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/pirate_bay_sold_to_swedish_software_firm/#When:09:12:00Z Infamous BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay has been bought by Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), which has promised a new business model in which copyright owners and content providers will be compensated for the use of their intellectual property. The news comes just a day after the four men involved in running the site lost their appeal to have the recent verdict quashed. Tomas Norström, the trial judge, had been accused of bias in delivering a guilty verdict, but the Swedish Court of Appeals ruled that this was not the case, meaning that the Pirate Bay owners still face jail and a fine of SEK 30m (EUR 2,7m). The Pirate Bay confirmed the news in a blog posting, but said that users should not be worried about the new owners when they take control of the site in August. According to the blog, the profits from the estimated SEK 60m GGF will pay for the site will "go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the net". GGF also announced the purchase of peer-to-peer data distribution software firm Peerialism for USD 13m, with the intention of using Peerialism's technology on The Pirate Bay. 2009-07-01T09:12:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/coup_supporters_in_honduras_suspend_telesur_tv_service/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/coup_supporters_in_honduras_suspend_telesur_tv_service/#When:09:11:00Z The supporters of the military coup staged on Sunday against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya have forced the Latin American news channel Telesur to stop broadcasting in the country. Telesur’s signal is no longer on the air, reported Venezuelan journalist Freddy Fernadez, General Director of the Bolivarian News Agency (ABN), who is currently in Tegulcigalpa where he was to cover the opinion poll scheduled for last Sunday. Telesur is a regional TV network broadcasting news about Latin America and the Caribbean. The TV news service has spread news on the situation facing Honduras over the past hours, since President Zelaya was kidnapped from his home and taken to Costa Rica. In an effort to keep offering information on developments taking place in Honduras, Venezuela’s TVes station is broadcasting live transmissions from the satellite-based cell phone of a Telesur journalist who is covering the ongoing demonstrations staged by the Honduran people in areas near the Presidential Palace in the capital Tegucigalpa. The cutting of Telesur and Honduras state TV broadcasts is the result of strong censorship by the de facto junta led by Roberto Micheletti hours after they staged the coup, which has been condemned by international opinion, regional and world organizations. 2009-07-01T09:11:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/pubs_bulk_up_with_super_blogs/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/pubs_bulk_up_with_super_blogs/#When:09:10:00Z ChicagoNow is casting a new light on an old question: How can newspapers lure more readers online? The site, which notched more than 140,000 page views within six days of its beta launch last month, features commentary and reviews from more than 30 local personalities, ranging from favorite restaurants to the Chicago Cubs. By the end of the year Tribune hopes to increase that number to more than 80, said Bill Adee, the Chicago Tribune's editor of digital media. ChicagoNow, and a similar initiative also unveiled last month by The Miami Herald, reflects newspapers'continuing quest to redefine themselves as essential information providers, regardless of the medium. But the sites are also engineered to go beyond traditional commenting and blogging that many newspapers already offer. To that end, they're being constructed as virtual community centers, with tools that permit easy access to popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Bloggers will earn payments based on how much Web traffic their comments generate, Adee said. The site itself will also offer advertisers a slate of options, including sponsorships. 2009-07-01T09:10:00+00:00 http://www.ejc.net/media_news/mainstream_media_failing_to_make_news_understandable_to_public_says_new_rep/ http://www.ejc.net/media_news/mainstream_media_failing_to_make_news_understandable_to_public_says_new_rep/#When:09:09:00Z The mainstream media is leaving the public in the dark by failing to explain basic information about the news, a new report has suggested. Audiences are being made to feel confused and excluded by reports they do not understand, according to the paper 'Public Trust In The News' by academics from Manchester and Leeds Universities, published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. In one example, none of the participants in several focus groups organised by researchers knew that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were from the same political party, despite extensive coverage of the US primary elections last year. The study also suggested that while mass media leaves many people feeling powerless and uncertain of what to believe, the internet helps them understand the news. Online media also makes them feel they can make a difference by giving them access to unofficial accounts from people unaffected by professional interests or political correctness and by allowing feedback to authorities, it suggested. However, the report also mentioned that the internet is leaving some people more confused than ever, because of its size and abundance of sources. Journalists interviewed as part of the study were underwhelmed by amateur news reporting on the internet, contending that blogs usually provide nothing more than second-hand information taken from elsewhere on the internet. The journalist respondents were also more likely than the public to say that news stories were liable to be untrue. 2009-07-01T09:09:00+00:00