Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Associated Press

Editor&Publisher: 50 US papers rescind AP cancellation

Judith Townend — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:51:38 +0000

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that had previously given notice of cancellation (two years warning is required) to the Associated Press have rescinded those notices, reports Editor&Publisher.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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Chicago Tribune: US Tribune papers to shun AP content for a week

Laura Oliver — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:11:43 +0000

The Chicago Tribune and Tribune Co.’s other US newspaper titles will run a week-long experiment starting from next Monday by using as little Associated Press (AP) content as possible.

The trial is part of review into costs and follows the Tribune’s warning to the agency last year that it might drop the service.

Full story at this link…

Last year a group of newspapers in Ohio forged an alliance (the Ohio News Organisation or OHNO) to share their top stories in a move against AP copy.

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RSF: Journalist sentenced to 60 lashes in Saudi Arabia – for link to TV programme about sex

Judith Townend — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:55:08 +0000

[Update from the AP: The Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, has now waived the flogging sentence, 'the second such pardoning of such a high profile case by the monarch in recent years'. Full article at this link...]

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released a statement condemning the sentence of 60 lashes passed by a judge in Jeddah, on journalist Rozanna al-Yami, ‘because she worked for the Lebanese Broadcast Corporation (LBC), a satellite TV station that shocked conservative Saudis last July by broadcasting an interview with a Saudi man talking openly about his sex life’.

It is understood that the judge dropped the charges that she had directly worked on the programme, but imposed a sentence nonetheless.

RSF release at this link…

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Martin Moore: AOL and TownNews adopt hNews microformat for news

Judith Townend — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:16:22 +0000

A new ‘microformat’ for metadata in news stories is fast nearing a stage of ‘widespread adoption’. The ‘hNews’ system will attach information about the author of the story, where it was published and where it was written, to every news story.

Media Standards Trust director Martin Moore updates on the latest hNews developments today: AOL and TownNews should be coming on board soon, to join the Associated Press which signed up in July.

“Thousands of news articles marked up with with hNews, a microformat for news content funded by the Knight Foundation, will soon start populating the internet. Last week, hNews became an official draft microformat. Having been proposed as a new data format and then discussed within the microformats community, it is now in draft 0.1 at Microformats.org. This means it has reached a stage where the microformat community believes it is stable enough for widespread adoption.”

Full post at this link…

More to follow from Journalism.co.uk next week.

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Nieman Journalism Lab: AP’s Tom Curley on the ‘oversupply’ of news – full text and audio

Judith Townend — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:26:16 +0000

Ah, Nieman Journalism Lab, how we love your full transcripts and audio.

Publishers must take back control of their content from search engines, aggregators and bloggers, which have become the ‘preferred customer destinations for breaking news’, the Associated Press (AP) president and chief executive Tom Curley told an industry summit in Beijing last week.

But as Nieman Journalism Lab reported on Friday, Curley was ‘far more revealing’ when he spoke without a prepared text on October 6 at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong.

NJL is kindly sharing the audio and transcript.

Full post at this link…

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AP: Search engines must pay up, say Murdoch and AP’s Curley

Laura Oliver — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:26:51 +0000

Publishers must take back control of their content from search engines, aggregators and bloggers, which have become the ‘preferred customer destinations for breaking news’, the Associated Press’ (AP) Tom Curley has said at an industry summit in Beijing.

“We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves – at great human and economic cost – to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it,” Curley said (though slightly strangely citing Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook as key examples of threats).

Speaking separately at the event, News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch said ‘the aggregators and plagiarists’ would soon have to pay the price for using publishers’ content for free.

If publishers and news organisations don’t regain control they will pay ‘the ultimate price’ and it will be ‘the kleptomaniacs who triumph’, he added.

Earlier this week the Associated Press (AP) said it is considering whether it could sell news items to online clients for a short, exclusive period.

The agency is also developing a new system for tracking its content online and monitoring copyright infringements.

Full story at this link…

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Editor&Publisher: AP mulling early sale of stories to news sites

Laura Oliver — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:03:58 +0000

The Associated Press (AP) is considering whether it could sell news items to online clients for a short, exclusive period.

Stories could be sold to web outlets half-an-hour ahead of other customers, Tom Curley, AP chief executive, suggested at an industry event.

‘Premium priced information on certain topics’ and associated metadata and multimedia could be sold ahead of more general release, he explained.

Curley’s comments came in reaction to publishers’ ongoing concerns about the use of the content by search engines and aggregators.

The agency is also developing a new system for tracking its content online and monitoring copyright infringements.

Full story at this link…

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AP Polanski memo published as news story: still live

Judith Townend — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:20:34 +0000

At the time of writing, this is still live – a published Associated Press story that looks rather more like an internal memo. ‘OK, can you do some more probing?’ is quite an unusual intro.

It can be seen on Google hosted news (published 19 hours ago) and Forbes.com. Twitter users have spotted but the AP hasn’t removed it yet – maybe it’s playing it cool. NB: Google’s SideWiki can be put to good use here, if you feel inclined to point out the error…

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The $10m lawsuit against the New Yorker – Papua New Guineans challenge Jared Diamond article

Judith Townend — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:35:50 +0000

A curious case is fast-escalating in the US: it involves a $10 million defamation lawsuit, two Papua New Guineans who feel they have been inaccurately portrayed, the New Yorker magazine, the research site StinkyJournalism.org… and Jared Diamond, the well-known UCLA professor and author.

A summary of major events, in brief:

In April 2008, Jared Diamond [linguist, molecular physiologist, bio-geographer] publishes an article in the New Yorker entitled ‘Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?’

The article, about blood feuds in Papua New Guinea, featured the story of Daniel Wemp and an account of how he spent three years pursuing revenge for his uncle’s death. Allegedly, the feud resulted in six battles and the deaths of 300 pigs.

Diamond reports that Henep Isum Mandingo, the man Daniel Wemp was alleged to hold responsible for his uncle’s murder, was shot by a hired hitman in the back with an arrow, leaving him paralysed and in a wheelchair.

In 2008, the media ethics and research site, StinkyJournalism.org, begin an investigation in Papua New Guinea into the facts of Diamond’s article.

On April 21, 2009, The research team report that The New Yorker fact checkers ‘never contacted any of the indigenous Papua New Guinea people named in Jared Diamond’s article as unrepentant killers, rapists and thieves, before publication’.

The team also reports that Henep Isum Mandingo is not paralysed in a wheelchair with spinal injury, as Diamond claimed.

“He [Henep Isum Mandingo] and Daniel Wemp, Diamond’s World Wildlife Fund driver in 2001-2002, and only source for The New Yorker’s revenge story in Papua New Guinea, as well as dozens of tribal members, police officials, deny Diamond’s entire tale about the bloody Ombal and Handa war, calling it ‘untrue’.”

On April 20 2009, Daniel Wemp and Henep Isum file a summons and sue for $10 million in the Supreme Court of The State of New York. They charge Jared Diamond and Advance Publications (publishers of The New Yorker magazine and Times-Picayune newspaper) with defamation.

Now, news of the law suit is gathering pace:

Reported by the Associated Press here at this link, it has also been picked up by the New York Post and other publications.

The New York Post reports that New Yorker magazine is standing by its story, as does the Associated Press.

StinkyJournalism.org co-founder, Rhonda Roland Shearer believes that while Wemp may have shared his experiences with Diamond, that does not mean Diamond’s report is accurate, she told Journalism.co.uk.

Shearer reports this quote made by Wemp in an interview: ‘The facts are totally wrong in The New Yorker story. I have given all those stories to Diamond and those stories are very true and those names are not fake.’

“In other words, Wemp says he told the true stories to Diamond with real names but Diamond retold them wrongly by jumbling up information,” Shearer reports in her article, co-written with Michael Kigl, Kritoe Keleba and Jeffrey Elapa.

“I wish the circumstance wasn’t true. It’s so ugly,” Shearer told Journalism.co.uk.

A 40,000-word report (’Real Tribes / Fake History: Errors, Failures of Method and the Consequences for Indigenous People in Papua New Guinea’) will be released by StinkyJournalism.org in coming weeks.

Shearer herself has received criticism in a comment from ‘Mi Tasol’ under the research for exaggerating the implications of the original article. “I don’t think I sensationalised the gravity of what Diamond has done. But you are entitled to your opinion,” Shearer responded. While applauding the report, and condemning Diamond’s piece, another commenter, ‘ples223,’ points out the difficulties of ‘getting stories straight’ in Papua New Guinea.

Journalism.co.uk will attempt to contact Jared Diamond and the New Yorker magazine for further comment.

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Editors’ Weblog: Details of Associated Press search landing pages

Judith Townend — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:53:46 +0000

An interview with Associated Press VP Jim Kennedy which looks at AP’s recent plans for better protection of its content.

This post from the Editors’ Weblog picks out VP Jim Kennedy’s outline of new search landing pages, influenced by Wikipedia’s design, but not its method.

“There are two main aspects to the AP’s current new strategy. One is to start creating pages of aggregated content based around news stories and topics, which would allow readers to find the most authoritative local sources for the news they are searching for. The pages will contain some content and links to other stories from both the AP and its member newspapers, and although it will not actually be a ‘wiki,’ (a source of information that can be updated by users), Kennedy explained that Wikipedia’s design is a ‘rough model for it’, with pages driven by topics or keywords. Such a page will be a ‘map for the user to access other links’, commented Kennedy.”

Full post at this link…

(via CyberJournalist.net).

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