Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
Where journalists have greatness thrust upon them
Editors' weblog
Media links of the day
3 February 2012 - 3:07pmIn the UK, journalists at Thompson Reuters have voted to strike for the first time in over 25 years in response to a below-inflation pay offer. Journalists will strike for 48 hours next week, just as Thompson Reuters publishes its full year financial results, reports The Guardian.
Africa Times News reported that the first African tablet device, which was presented at the Africa Web Summit in September 2011, has been launched in Congo on January 30. Way-C, which means "starlight" ("lumière des étoiles") in a North Congolese dialect, is the first in the history of these new technologies on the continent, the article says.
Zimbabwe's media commission said on February 2 that it will ask authorities to
ban foreign newspapers that are not registered to operate in the
country, news24 reported. Commission chair Godfrey Majonga singled out South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper as having failed to
comply with the rules, which require all journalists working in the
country to obtain accreditation from the commission, the article said.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
New York Times and Wall Street Journal launch new daily video offerings
3 February 2012 - 11:26amWith video becoming increasingly important to consumers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have each announced they are launching new daily video programmes. The New York Times has launched a new daily business-related programme while The Wall Street Journal has started a new daily lifestyle show.
On 1 February, NetNewsCheck reported that the New York Times has launched a new program called "Business Day Live."
In a related press release, the New York Times stated that "the program is broadcast live from The Times newsroom, and offers the insights and analysis of reporters and columnists from The Times's business, media and technology desks."
It features five rotating hosts, including David Gillen and Winnie O'Kelley, deputy business editors, and reporters Peter Lattman, Catherine Rampell and Louise Story. The Times said the show will run about six minutes at launch, with plans to expand it in the future.
"We are committed to delivering the crucial business news stories to our readers as they happen, across all platforms," said Lawrence Ingrassia, business editor at The New York Times. "Business Day Live will provide NYTimes.com users immediate accounts of the day's essential business news in real time, with exclusive insights from top business reporters from The Times's newsroom."
Media links of the day
2 February 2012 - 4:56pmA School of Data Journalism will be held in Perugia, Italy, between 25-29 April, during the sixth edition of the International Journalism Festival. See the programme here.
Continuing on the path of transparency, the Guardian announced it will open its doors to readers "hosting a weekend at the end of March for a festival of ideas, innovation and entertainment."
Editor Alan Rusbridger explains what visitors can expect from the Open Weekend project.
As the Leveson inquiry continues, self-regulation of the press is under scrutiny. The Hold the Front Page reported what the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission told the inquiry about the possibility of having a "totally new body" to oversee the industry.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
How clean is your data?
2 February 2012 - 4:37pmWorking with numbers is becoming more important than ever for journalists.
Vast amounts of data are being collected online, investigative journalism outfits like ProPublica are doing more and more work with large sets of publicly available data,
and data visualisations are increasingly becoming a standard part of
reporting. At the end of last year, Amy Webb, CEO of Webbmedia, named 'Big Data' as her first prediction of a major tech trend for 2011.
Tools already exist for journalists to exploit this growth in data. Nieman Lab
reported earlier this week on Weave, an open-source internet platform
for creating visualizations of "any available data by anyone for any
purpose". Another example is Tableau Public, a data visualization tool that was billed by Journalism.co.uk
as requiring "no technical ability" and being "easier to use than the
wizard options that allow you to create graphs in Excel".
Media links of the day
1 February 2012 - 3:34pm"La Tribune bids you farewell" said the paper's frontpage on January 30, the day of the last printed edition of the French newspaper La Tribune, which will now be entirely digital. Benoît Raphaël on Le Social NewsRoom reflected on what this closure means.
According to Paid Content, the state-owned Chinese telecommunications company China Telecom will start selling the iPhone4S by the end of this month or the beginning of the next. This is the first time that the company will offer an Apple smartphone.
The Trinity Mirror has proposed 75 more editorial redundancies at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People. Press Gazette reports that the company is creating a "centralized reporting and production hub" for reporters across all three papers, but also promises to maintain "bespoke editorial teams" for each title.
The Washington Post is encouraging its own journalists to get more involved in the comment threads on its website. Comments from Post staffers are marked out by "WP staff" insignia, and their involvement may do something to soften the tone of discussion, writes Nieman Lab.
Britain's Royal Statistical Society has launched Getstats, a campaign to promote the proper teaching of numeracy and statistics in journalism schools. Journalism.co.uk writes that former journalist David Walker, who is heading the initiative, has proposed 12 points about statistics that all journalists should be taught.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
The Guardian continues to open up with Newsdesk live
1 February 2012 - 2:37pmby Hannah Vinter
"So... What are you working on?"
Now some Guardian journalists are prepared to give us the answer to that question, as yesterday the paper unrolled Newsdesk live,
a blog that promises to "bring you the news as we break it, explain how
we choose what we report and why - and ask you to get involved."
This new blog from The Guardian's
national news team puts the audience at the heart of the news-writing
process, asking them to get in touch via comments, emails or Tweets to
provide editors with ideas and information to help create stories.
The blog builds on The Guardian's Open Newslist, launched last October,
which published a selection of the stories that journalists were
working on, and allowed readers to Tweet at those journalists in real
time.
For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com
Media links of the day
31 January 2012 - 5:23pmJim Romenesko has published an interview with Tom Curley, the departing CEO of the Associated Press, on his blog. "The Internet has ushered in a world where there is more chaos, but that's good for us because our values are strong and we have earned a reputation for getting it right," says Curley.
The BBC's Community Reporters Scheme, which was launched in London last year, is set to be rolled out in Salford and Glasgow too, reports Journalism.co.uk. The scheme aims to give training to budding journalists at the same time as highlighting local stories in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.
Nieman Lab has published a write-up of Weave, a piece of data visualisation software that has "a lot of potential for journalists".
The African National Congress said on Tuesday that an independent media appeals tribunal is the most effective way to regulate print media, news24 reported.
"The ANC believes in independent regulation. This may differ with
the interpretation that is commonly assigned to our proposal, which has
been misinterpreted as having state regulation of the media" said ANC executive committee member Jessie Duarte.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
Media links of the day
31 January 2012 - 5:23pmJim Romenesko has published an interview with Tom Curley, the departing CEO of the Associated Press, on his blog. "The Internet has ushered in a world where there is more chaos, but that's good for us because our values are strong and we have earned a reputation for getting it right," says Curley.
The BBC's Community Reporters Scheme, which was launched in London last year, is set to be rolled out in Salford and Glasgow too, reports Journalism.co.uk. The scheme aims to give training to budding journalists at the same time as highlighting local stories in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.
Nieman Lab has published a write-up of Weave, a piece of data visualisation software that has "a lot of potential for journalists".
The African National Congress said on Tuesday that an independent media appeals tribunal is the most effective way to regulate print media, news24 reported.
"The ANC believes in independent regulation. This may differ with
the interpretation that is commonly assigned to our proposal, which has
been misinterpreted as having state regulation of the media" said ANC executive committee member Jessie Duarte.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
Twitter - cutting out the middleman?
31 January 2012 - 4:26pm"No comment".
Business executives had become more and more adept at hiding behind this phrase, argues David Carr of The New York Times
in an article published on Sunday. Not only that, but major figures in
business are often obscured by "communications" teams that are anything
but communicative. But now, suggests Carr, "Twitter has the potential to cut past all that clutter".
Carr writes that thanks to Twitter "there's a chance to get a glimpse
into the thinking of otherwise unapproachable executives, and sometimes
even have a real dialogue with them".
For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com
Media links of the day
30 January 2012 - 6:15pmThe New York Times' Nicholas Kristof reports on the two Swedish journalists serving and 11-year prison sentence in Ethiopia.
PBS Media Shift has published a guide to crowdfunding public media projects.
Gavin Aronsen describes being one of the six journalists arrested at the Occupy Oakland protests.
A former editor of Cosmopolitan, Helen Gurley Brown, has given $30 million on behalf of her late husband to establish an institute for media innovation at Standford and Columbia, reports Poynter.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
WashPo taps into growing Twitter trend in run-up to US elections
30 January 2012 - 6:05pmThe Washington Post announced last Friday that it was launching campaignreads.com, a new section of its site "completely powered by our readers" where it shares a curated selection of Tweets with links to coverage of the US presidential election.
Post Politics wrote that, for the past few weeks, it had been asking readers to share links to their favourite election coverage by tweeting @PostPolitics or with the hashtag #campaignreads. The Post's political team now curates these Tweets using Storify, and publishes them on its new page.
The initiative has potential benefits for Post journalists and their readers. Firstly it helps the Post "filter the deluge of campaign coverage" by asking its users for selection of the articles they enjoyed the most. Secondly it gives readers prominence by crediting them on the campaignreads.com if the Post uses articles that they've shared.
For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com
Twitter to start selectively blocking Tweets by country
30 January 2012 - 1:53pmby Hannah Vinter
Twitter has announced that it will begin selectively blocking Tweets in some countries.
"Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country -- while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why."
Twitter writes that it will withhold access to Tweets in certain countries "if we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity". As an example of illegal material it names pro-Nazi content, which is outlawed in France and Germany.
For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com
Media links of the day
27 January 2012 - 5:51pm The Washington Post
has launched a new section on its website titled to publish links to
the best coverage of the US election. The Post gathers links shared by
Twitter users tweeting with its hashtag #campaignreads.
Facebook hires Bloomberg's Dan Fletcher as its new managing editor, reports Forbes.
The Guardian has published a map, based on the research project How Africa Tweets, showing Twitter usage across the African continent.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service
China and India gaining prominence in international newspapers
27 January 2012 - 3:24pmStarting from the current issue The Economist will have a weekly section devoted to China, the paper's leader announced.
This is the first time since 1942, when the a US section was introduced, that the news magazine is dedicating an entire section to a single country, the article explained. Thematic sections and blogs as well as specific columns are usually focused on a geographical area, as Banyan, the blog dedicated to Asia, which takes its name from the Banyan tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment and Gujarati merchants used to conduct business.
The name for China blog has not yet been decided and the paper invited readers to send suggestions. It will ideally need to agree with the style and 19th-century origins of the other sections and columns names, from Bagehot, the column dedicated to Britain, which takes its name from Walter Bagehot, British constitutional expert and early editor of The Economist, to Baobab, the section focused on Africa and Middle East which owes its name to the African tree.
Mail Online is the world's biggest newspaper site, according to comScore
27 January 2012 - 8:54amThe Daily Mail has overtaken The New York Times to become the world's biggest newspaper site, according to data from comScore.
Buzzfeed reports that in December 2011 Mail Online reached 45.3 million users, compared to 44.8 million reached by the The New York Times.
Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke told Buzzfeed in an interview that growing US audiences and the hiring of deputy editor Katherine Thompson, formerly of the Huffington Post,
have helped fuel the Mail's boom in readers. The site has a strong
presence in America, with permanent staff in New York and Los Angeles.
For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com
Media links of the day
26 January 2012 - 4:50pmWhat are the differences between Story Visualizations and Answer Visualizations?
Why human filters are the future of the web: the importance of role of real editors rather than algorithms online.
Latest numbers indicate New York Times traffic is flat since the paywall was implemented, says BuzzFeed (via Poynter).
Reporters Without Borders reported that blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad, who had been detained for 10 months on a charge of insulting the armed forces, was released on 24 January. His release was reported on Twitter by his brother Mark.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.
Europa: six European titles team up to investigate European identity
26 January 2012 - 3:59pmSix countries, six leading newspapers, a huge audience and one common theme: Europe, how to explain it better, how to understand it better, how to build it better. This is the aim of an editorial project which saw six papers joining forces to produce a joint special edition on the situation of the European Union.
"The state of the Union", echoing the State of the union speech US President Obama gave on 24 January, is the angle of the first issue of Europa (more will be expected in future) produced by El Pais, the Guardian, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Gazeta Wyborcza and La Stampa.
This joint special editorial supplement aims to give a "more nuanced picture of the EU and explore what Europe does well and what not so well", as the Guardian explained.
Have priorities changed for Arab media businesses?
26 January 2012 - 10:16am"It's impossible to have editorial freedom without financial independence," said Aboubakr Jamai, founder and editor of Moroccan weekly magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire, opening the business-focused session of the 5th Arab Free Press Forum, which also included Jacek Utko of Bonnier Business Press.
Many obstacles to successful news publication in the Arab World are receding, said Mohammed Alayyan, founder and publisher of Al-Ghad Daily, the first independent paper in Jordan, and the Alwasweet Weekly Newspaper.
Media links of the day
25 January 2012 - 5:25pmShould reporters be aiming for print bylines? The Columbia Journalism Review reflects on why journalists still care about seeing their name in print.
The Knight Center's Journalism in the Americas Blog shares a list of crowd-sourcing websites from across Latin America. One example is the Mapa Delictivo, created by El Universal, which tracks crimes in Mexico City.
Poynter has published a discussion with Knight News Challenge winner Christina Xu about how microgrants can help fuel innovative journalism.
Nieman Lab reports that the Public Insight Network, American Public Media's network of sources, is hiring its own reporting team to turn more of the information that its members produce into stories.
For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.
South African appointed director of World Editors Forum
25 January 2012 - 2:13pmby Larry Kilman
First Woman to Head Global Organisation of World's Editors
Cherilyn Ireton, a South African editor and successful senior manager at some of the country's top newspapers, has been appointed Executive Director of the World Editors Forum, the global organisation for editors within the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
Ms Ireton is the first woman to head the organisation, which was created in 1994 as a unique global network for exchanging ideas on newsroom management, editorial quality, online strategies and press freedom issues. More on the World Editors Forum can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/world-editors-forum.
