NUJ Release – New Statesman doesn’t recognise union

The National Union of Journalists reports that the New Statesman is refusing to enter negotiations with the union:

“The union wrote to the company in May last year asking for a voluntary recognition agreement to cover pay and working conditions.

“But journalists on the magazine – who are almost all NUJ members – have been told by their boss that the company won’t play ball.”

Full release…

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BBC crime journalism: Visual innovation from BBC News on teen murder mapping / Panorama faces allegations for paying teenager to brandish gun

BBC’s Panorama programme faced allegations last week that a fixer had paid a teenager to wield a gun for a documentary film.

The Liverpool Echo reported:

“A teenage gang member was paid £50 by a ‘fixer’ to flaunt guns for a BBC programme, a court heard.”

The BBC has denied the allegations, and Merseyside Police are to further investigate the claims made in court.

Meanwhile, in a more positive look at the BBC’s crime journalism, Tracy Boyer praises its package designed to map UK’s teen murder toll: ‘great use of data visualization in this latest project,’ she says.

“BBC’s package is divided into four sections: a text overview, the database of victims, victim-map mashup, and a slew of statistics.”

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AP: Seattle Post-Intelligencer faces closure if buyer cannot be found

Seattle’s oldest newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was put up for sale on Friday by owners Hearst Corp and – if a buyer is not forthcoming in the next 60 days – the paper will close or continue only online. Full story…

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NYTimes.com – Bono’s first column starts with ‘Gaelic revelry’ in a Dublin pub

The New York Times has announced that U2 lead singer Bono is now writing a column for The New York Times and NYTimes.com. A release said:

“Beginning this Sunday, his columns will appear occasionally on The New York Times Op-Ed page and online at nytimes.com/opinion and will cover a broad range of subjects.  He will also do a podcast of his first column.”

Bono’s first column here. It starts ‘in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s’. Not everyone is a fan – the Pheonix’s Adam Reilly is not too impressed by the ‘Frank Sinatra homage’:

“Lame topic, overly florid writing, a journalistic conflict of interest….” Reilly writes.

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MediaGuardian: Jeff Jarvis on LA Times covering entire payroll through online advertising

“Note well this moment in the history – and I do mean history – of newspapers: the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton, said the paper’s online advertising revenue is now sufficient to cover the Times’s entire editorial payroll, print and online,” begins Jarvis. Full story….

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – create specific feeds from news sites

Make the most of RSS-savvy news sites. For example, at Guardian.co.uk and NYTimes.com you can tailor RSS feeds to bring you stories from your favourite journalists and on specific themes or specialisations. Tipster: Judith Townend.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Mashable: How to track Gaza news using social media

A collection of sites and tools you can use to track news from the conflict in Gaza. Full story…

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Scripting News: How investigative research happens in the blogosphere

Dave Winer: “One of the common complaints from people in journalism about bloggers is that we just comment on reports in the news, we don’t do original reporting. It’s so often repeated it’s become a cliche, but it’s simply not true and I can prove it.” Full story…

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LA Times: New law to protect student press freedom

Journalism students and their teachers in the US are to get more protection under a new state law which prevents administrators from taking punitive action against staff who to try to protect student press freedom (hat tip to Adrian Monck), writes the LA Times.

The Journalism Teacher Protection Act will also coincide with another initiative that seeks to educate students about 1st Amendment feedoms, the News Literacy project. This scheme will send working journalists to teach students how to “distinguish verified information from raw messages, spin, gossip and opinion,” Alan Miller, project founder, tells the Times. Full story…

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The Sydney Morning Herald: Daily Telegraph outsources production to Australia

UK broadsheet the Daily Telegraph has outsourced some of its production work to Pagemasters, a company based in Rhodes, western Sydney.

The company, owned by news agency Australian Associated Press, will copy edit and layout raw copy for the Telegraph’s travel, motoring and money pages as well as parts of The Sunday Telegraph.

The move is intended to “save on night and overtime penalties for workers in Britain and get more expensive staff off its books”, writes the Herald. Full story…

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