Conservative leader David Cameron is to give the sixth annual Hugo Young memorial lecture on Tuesday 10 November, the Scott Trust has announced.

The lecture remembers the late Hugo Young, the Guardian’s senior political commentator and former chairman of the Scott Trust, who died in 2003. Last year Young’s papers were published in a book, extracts of which appeared on the Guardian. ‘His columns were like icebergs. Readers saw a sunlit tip of crystal argument. They may have guessed, but they never truly knew or saw, what lay beneath,’ wrote the Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, in its foreword.

Last year’s lecture was given by Peter Mandelson and previous speakers include Gordon Brown and Jose Manuel Barroso.

“Hugo was one of the most brilliant and cherished journalists of his generation. We are delighted that the memorial lecture continues to be successful and to remind us of his enduring legacy,” said Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, in a release.

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PaidContent (owned by Guardian News & Media) reports that Guardian America is laying off six ‘production/edit’ employees: “Most of them are in Guardian’s Washington DC office, and have been given three months notice. None of the U.S. correspondents are affected by this move.”

Last month paidContent reported GNM was to axe GuardianAmerica.com.

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Richard Wilson, author of Don’t Get Fooled and central blogger in the Trafigura/Guardian/Carter-Ruck episode, reports back from a meeting of the UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights which focused on ’super-injunctions’.

Wilson, along with journalists, editors, MPs, Lords and lawyers (including two senior partners from Carter-Ruck) took part:

“[N]o one knows how many secret super-injunctions are currently in force. While the UK state seems bent on meticulously recording every detail of its citizens phone, email and web-browsing habits, it is positively lackadaisical about tracking its own media gagging orders. While each individual super-injunction is (we have to hope) being kept on file somewhere by the judiciary, no-one, anywhere, is collating information about the overall picture.”

Full story at this link…

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Cast your minds back a few weeks: the Guardian UK jobs board, operated by Madgex, was targeted by hackers. The Guardian reported the incident in its print edition, and the comments beneath an initial blog post show some strong criticism and speculation over why the attack occurred.

But Birmingham City University researcher Jon Hickman reflects that it passed with ‘little comment’:

“Guardian Jobs must have many thousands of members, and this security breach could be affecting them all in a very real way, yet I haven’t seen much in the way of a backlash.

“Twitter should be out in force decrying this failure in the website’s duty of care. Questions should be asked of the Guardian’s response which puts the onus on individual consumers. Instead: nothing.

“How, in these times of consumer activism and online protest has this passed uncommented? Given the pressures of the marketplace, why do The Guardian not have to work hard to keep in favour with their audience?

“Perhaps even in this digital age the old myths of the mainstream news media still hold true today: we work for them, all the while thinking we are the customer when in fact we’re the product.”

Full post at this link…

(via @PaulBradshaw on Twitter)

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The Huffington Post claims that one of its first investigative projects shows evidence of a ‘new alliance between professional reporters and citizens who have a high interest or expertise in a particular topic’:

“Several weeks ago, as one of our first investigative projects, we set out to explore how insurance companies decide which claims to approve or deny. Regulators, lawmakers and policy makers seem to be in the dark about that important aspect of the health care system, since insurance companies generally are not required to disclose their rules, methods or records about claims. Investigative Fund reporter Danielle Ivory wrote about this lack of available data and invited citizen journalists to help us investigate. Hundreds of people volunteered. And they’ve already helped us extend and deepen our journalism. Many have volunteered personal tales about their dealings with insurers. Others are health professionals and insurance insiders with direct experience in the claims process.”

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Fifty US newspapers that had previously given notice of cancellation (two years warning is required) to the Associated Press have rescinded those notices, reports Editor&Publisher.

50 Papers Rescind Associated Press Cancellation Notices.

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Welt Kompakt, sister title of German national newspaper Die Welt, has created a ‘wave’ on Google’s new service in a move to attract younger readers.

I don’t have an invite so if you can access the wave at this link, tell us what Welt is doing and if it works for you.

Full post at this link…

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Chie Elliott looks into the relationship between journalists that use Twitter and the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) results for their respective titles in this post.

“Media people are using Twitter as an instrument for sharing and crowdsourcing, for networking and live-reporting. A journalist with a popular blog or social media presence can only be positive for the publication’s brand. If Twitter is a waste of work time, time has never been so well wasted. Furthermore, if a journalist is creating content while simultaneously publicising the content carrier, isn’t that doing two jobs for the price of one?”

via The Media Blog: Are journalists who tweet value for money?.

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Google has created a new way for its users to save customised news searches and publish/share these results with others in their own ’sections’.

“Custom sections directory, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability to create comprehensive sections to put on their Google News homepage or share with other users,” says the announcement on the Google News blog.

Users will therefore be able to create their own news sections outside of those already offered by Google News.

As ReadWriteWeb explains:

“Part dashboard, part feed reader, and all user-friendly, this service promises to be both popular and useful. Users can create sections based on keywords and then publish their sections to directories for sharing with others.

“Multiple sections can be added to a user’s Google News homepage, creating a customized, keyword-based digest. this feature is turning Google News into the infinitely segmented, infinitely remixable modern newspaper; and with all the sources Google indexes, it’s just what users need. Unfortunately, it also deals yet another blow to suffering old media publications, many of whom aren’t too happy about the distribution of their content in the first place.”

via Google Enters Customizable News Dashboard Market.

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Rupert Murdoch has said the schedule for introducing pay walls to newspaper website including the Sun, the Times and the New York Post is ’slipping’.

According to this MediaGuardian report, the News Corp owner said he couldn’t promise to meet the original date of before June next year (the end of News Corp’s financial year).

Murdoch has also been talking with rival publishers, including the Telegraph in the UK, it is reported.

Full story at this link…

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