Tag Archives: Editor & Publisher

Editor & Publisher partners with MediaSpan to improve website

Newspaper industry journal Editor & Publisher is to partner with digital content management organisation MediaSpan to help improve navigation of its online content.

According to a report by E&P this week the agreement, which was finalised last week, will enable the site to focus more on new content production than daily site upkeep.

Soon, visitors will be able to easily browse E&P’s deep archive database of more than 51,000 articles dating back to 1993.

In addition, the Newspeople section, which details the comings and goings of news, advertising, and circulation professionals, will be expanded and will include obituaries.

Earlier this month E&P removed its website paywall to “build more traffic and make exclusive content available to visitors”, it claimed.

Editor & Publisher takes down its paywall

US industry news website Editor & Publisher has removed the paywall from its website. Says its publisher:

Paywalls in name alone connote a psychological negative, which is one reason we have never been big believers. [Former owner] Nielsen had been using one for a number of years, but nothing during the past year has changed our opinion about them. We have removed it to build more traffic and make more of our original content available to our visitors.

Full story at this link…

E&P: US military officials will now need permission for press interviews

According to a piece in Editor & Publisher, defence secretary Robert Gates has has demanded that military officials must now get clearance from the Pentagon for press interviews.

Gates allegedly sent a memo ordering military and civilian personnel across the globe to first gain permission before sharing stories with the media, which would prevent a repeat of the General Stanley McChrystal affair.

The order, issued by Gates on Friday in a brief memo to military and civilian personnel worldwide and effective immediately, tells officials to make sure they are not going out of bounds or unintentionally releasing information that the Pentagon wants to hold back.

The order has been in the works since long before Gen. Stanley McChrystal stunned his bosses with criticism and complaints in a Rolling Stone article that his superiors did not know was coming.

Read the full post here…

E&P: Media companies in three countries now using controversial Atex system

Editor & Publisher this morning reports that a total of six media organisations, across three countries, have transferred to Atex’s advertising, editorial and Web content management system in recent weeks.

The controversial editorial CMS is now being used by the Erdee Media Groep in The Netherlands and The Sun in Arizona.

Just this week Journalism.co.uk reported that the NUJ had raised strong concerns over Johnston Press’s move to Atex, which it claimed “undermines the editorial independence of editors”.

Full story at this link…

E&P: US media ‘unabashedly biased’ toward Barack Obama

Editor & Publisher have a comment piece from Congressman Lamar Smith in which he claims the US media have been exceptionally favourable toward President Obama and relatively disparaging of George Bush and the tea party movement.

The mainstream media’s treatment of President Obama provides an interesting case study. Journalists who gave to President Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign outnumbered those who contributed to Sen. McCain by 20-to-1.

And once the election was over, the slanted coverage continued. The nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs, comparing media coverage of Presidents Bush and Obama at the same point in their presidencies, found that 58 percent of all network news evaluations of Obama and his policies were favorable, while only 33 percent of assessments of Bush were favorable.

Full story at this link…

E&P: Ban on airport newspaper racks violates First Amendment

The U.S. Appeals Court has ruled that a ban on newspaper racks in Raleigh Durham International Airport, North Carolina violates the first amendment, following a challenge from a group of US newspapers including the Raleigh News & Observer, Durham Herald-Sun, New York Times, and USA today.

The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority removed the racks, claiming that they were a security threat, a traffic impediment, and that they reduced revenue for airport stores that sold newspapers. But the majority of the Appeals Court panel voted to uphold the November 2008 U.S. District Court ruling that the ban violated the First Amendment.

“The government interests asserted to justify the ban do not counterbalance its significant restriction on protected expression,” the panel said in a 35-page opinion.

Full story at this link

Huffington Post: How Editor & Publisher lost its editor

Greg Mitchell, former editor of industry title Editor & Publisher, explains how he was axed as part of a takeover deal by new owners of the magazine.

E&P was shuttered by former publisher Nielsen Company last month, but was resurrected last week by the Duncan McIntosh Company:

Mitchell is, understandably, highly critical of some of the changes that have already been made:

Now I was out, along with the great Joe Strupp, senior editor and staff writer. That meant that the magazine would lose the two staffers who had been responsible for roughly 80 per cent of the magazine’s news-making and traffic-driving ‘scoops’ over the past several years – at a time when web impact needs to be expanded.

(…) Much of the speculation about the ‘new’ E&P has been on the decision to focus on business and tech/press room issues. Many observers in recent days have warned that the ‘E’ will be largely taken out of E&P.

A microcosmic vision of wider industry struggles?

Full story at this link…

First web editors appointed to American Society of News Editors’ board

The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) has appointed not one, but two web editors to its board – the first time web editors have been represented on the group’s executive in its almost 100-year history (picked up via Editor & Publisher).

John Harris, editor-in-chief of Politico, and Anthony Moor, deputy managing editor/interactive of Dallas Morning News, will take up the positions.

The appointments were made ‘to reach out to news executives beyond the group’s print newspaper roots‘, an ASNE announcement said.

The addition of web editors to the association’s board is one of many recent changes by the ASNE towards a more digital outlook. In April this year the body changed ‘Newspaper’ for ‘News’ in its name.

Editor&Publisher: Bill Keller says future of NYTimes’ public editor still ‘much debated’

Bill Keller has responded to the New York Times’ public editor’s unflinching critique of errors made in a piece about Walter Cronkite by Alessandra Stanley, as part of a Q&A with James Rainey from the LA Times, published in full on Editor & Publisher.

Keller suggests that the public editor’s position is still ‘much debated’:

[James Rainey]

Q: Has the public editor helped build the Times’ reputation, or done more to knock the paper’s reputation down? It may help to address this question both as it pertains to this particular episode and, more generally, over the brief history of public editorship.

[Bill Keller]

A: On balance, I think the fact that we offer a paycheck and a platform to an independent critic to second-guess our journalistic judgments is good for, pardon the expression, the brand. I don’t always agree with our public editor, but I think he is fair-minded, his reporting is meticulous, and his targets – as in this case – are usually fair game. He doesn’t just blow raspberries. He tries to explain how bad things happen, and he reports what we are trying to do to avoid future mistakes. Whether a public editor should be a permanent, or at least continuing, fixture at The Times is a question much debated within our walls. I’ve kicked it down the road until we near the end of Clark’s term next year.

UK-related:

Journalism.co.uk is aware of full-time newspaper ombudsmen at the Guardian [Siobhain Butterworth] and the Observer [Stephen Pritchard] and yesterday learned that Sally Baker is feedback editor for the Times. Does anyone know of any other UK titles with full-time and independent readers’ editors? And do those without one need one?

Editor&Publisher: Time spent on top 30 American newspaper web sites down significantly

“The amount of time people spent at the top [US] 30 newspaper websites is stuck in neutral if not reverse: more than half saw significant falloff in May,” Editor & Publisher reported yesterday.

“The list is for May Nielsen Online data for the top 30 newspapers’ websites ranked by unique users. Nielsen (owned by E&P’s parent company) defines the average time spent per person at a site during the month.”

Full story and stats at this link…