Afaqs.com: Delhi newspaper going national and launching weekly in nine state capitals

sans serif: Blogger makes top 50 on ‘India’s Most Powerful’ list

April 20th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted by Laura Oliver in Editors' pick, Social media and blogging

Blogger Amit Varma has been named by Businessweek as one of India’s 50 most powerful people.

Tags: Amit Varma, Blogger Amit Varma, BusinessWeek, India

Times of India: Bloggers outraged at Supreme Court verdict

February 25th, 2009 | 1 Comment | Posted by Judith Townend in Editors' pick, Press freedom and ethics

Outraged bloggers vented their ire in cyberworld against the [Indian] Supreme Court’s take that they may face libel, even prosecution, for airing their views online,” the Times of India reports. “Believing their freedom of expression is in danger, bloggers railed at the SC’s refusal to quash a criminal complaint against a fellow blogger,” the report continues.

Full story at this link…

Tags: bloggers, India, Supreme Court, The Times, the Times of India, times of india

Independent: Reprint of Independent article leads to Indian newspaper editor’s arrest

February 13th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted by Judith Townend in Editors' pick, Newspapers, Press freedom and ethics

The Independent reports that an editor and publisher have been arrested in India after they reprinted an article by the Independent’s Johann Hari.

“Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha, the editor and publisher of the Kolkata-based English daily The Statesman, appeared in court yesterday charged under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code which forbids ‘deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings,’” the Independent reports.

Full story at this link…

Tags: Anand Sinha, editor, India, johann hari, Kolkata, newspaper editor, Ravindra Kumar, the Independent, the statesman

Telegraph’s Ed Roussel on outsourcing: Newspapers need to focus on what they do best

January 13th, 2009 | 4 Comments | Posted by Laura Oliver in Journalism, Newspapers

Confirming the Telegraph’s plans to outsource some of its sub-editing operation to Australia in comments on Jeff Jarvis’ blog, Ed Roussel, digital editor of Telegraph Media Group, made the following statement:

“Reducing the cost of manufacturing and distribution is an imperative for any newspaper group that is determined to remain profitable, as we are (…) The principle holds true on the digital side. ITN creates our video content, providing quality and value that we would struggle to generate internally; Brightcove handles our video distribution; Google powers our search; Escenic provides our web publishing tool; we use software developers in Bulgaria and India.

“Newspaper-web companies should focus internal resource on what they do best: creating premium editorial content.”

Similar to Jarvis’ own mantra of ‘do what you do best and link to the rest’, Roussel’s ‘outsource the rest’ makes sense in a journalism industry where partnerships and collaboration, especially online, seem to be the way forward.

So, outsourcing – not all bad?

Tags: Australia, Bulgaria, digital editor, Ed Roussel, google, India, ITN, Jeff Jarvis, manufacturing, newspaper, Outsourcing, software developers, Telegraph Media Group, web publishing, web publishing tool

AP: Top 10 news stories of the year

December 22nd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted by Laura Oliver in Editors' pick, Journalism

Barack Obama’s election victory named top news story of 2008 in Associated Press’ annual poll, voted for by US editors and news directors.

Oil prices, the Beijing Olympics and Mumbai terror attacks all feature in the list.

Tags: Associated Press, Barack Obama, Beijing, China, India, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Oil prices, Olympics, the Beijing Olympics, United States

FromtheFrontline: More Twitter conventions would have aided Mumbai coverage

December 12th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted by Judith Townend in Citizen journalism, Editors' pick, Online Journalism

“As Twitter use becomes more widespread, so it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint the type of information you are looking for,” writes Daniel Bennett.

“A vast of sea of tweets with #Mumbai quickly developed, and if you were a journalist trying to find eyewitness accounts you found yourself painstakingly wading through them all. Those who did probably found it was time well spent, but is there a better way?” Bennett asks.

Tags: Daniel Bennett, India, journalist, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Twitter

Mumbai bloggers interviewed – video collection

November 28th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted by Judith Townend in Broadcasting, Citizen journalism

Here are clips of the various Mumbai blogger interviews. Fuller multimedia round-up here.

Dina, who blogs at Mumbaihelp.blogspot.com and on her own site and Vinu, whose photographs have been viewed by nearly 100,000 (at time of writing) on Flickr, speaking on CNN.

Amit Varma, who blogged a first-hand account, interviewed by the BBC (vision very poor but audio is adequate)

Gaurav Mishra, also interviewed in a text interview on the main page of Journalism.co.uk, here featured in the CBS Early Show coverage, looking at the reportage through citizen journalism:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Tags: Amit Varma, BBC, bombay, British Broadcasting Corporation, CBS, CBS Corporation, CNN, Gaurav Mishra, India, Journalism.co.uk, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Mumbaihelp.blogspot.com, terror attacks, terrorism, Time Warner Inc.

Mumbai online: the attacks reported live (updating)

November 27th, 2008 | 11 Comments | Posted by Judith Townend in Citizen journalism, Editors' pick, Multimedia, Online Journalism

A look at where the news has unfolded. Please post additional links below. Journalism.co.uk will add in more links as they are spotted.

Washington-based blogger and social media expert, Gaurav Mishra talks to Journalism.co.uk in an interview published on the main page.

One of the few on-the-ground user-generated content examples, Vinu’s Flickr stream (screen grab above). Slide show below:

How it has been reported:

NDTV looks at the way it unfolded on the net and promotes its own forums. “Citizens of the World Wide Web have connected to terror-stricken Mumbai in a way never seen before,” it reports. One eyewitness, Dinesh Kumar, used a forum on NDTV.com to share his experiences as he tried to make his way back home from work, the article says.
The Wikipedia current event page is almost filling role of a blog or news service, with its extremely quick updates.

Photography:

Flickr users such as Vinu, have uploaded pictures from the scene (images: all rights reserved).
A Flickr search such as this one, brings up images from Mumbai, although many are reproduced from a few sources. People have also taken pictures of the television news coverage.
But before you re-publish your finds beware: an advanced search which filters pictures by copyright and only shows up images opened up under Creative Commons, limits the results.

Blogs:

Bloggers, such as Gaurav Mishra are tracking it live, and point out useful links. He has also collected together relevant Tweets.
Other blogs to look out for: Rediff.com; Mumbai.metblogs.com. More to come.
List of blogs, probably from outside, but outside Mumbai: Blogada roundup here.
On the ground blogs: Amit Varma’s India Uncut; Sonia Faleiro; Arun Shanbhag

Breaking news:

The BBC has a good stream of breaking news, with most recent at top; likewise, the Guardian’s is here.
Away from mainstream media, NowPublic are charting it here and Ground Report here.

Social Media:

Facebook doesn’t seem to have that much activity as yet and is not that helpful for finding news, although members of Mumbai related groups are posting comments on the walls.
Update (27/11/08): New Facebook groups formed:‘In memory of all those who died in the 26th-27th november MUMBAI massacre’; ’26 November 2008 – Terrorist Attacks on Mumbai’.

Microblogging:

This Roomatic page brings together Twitter updates in chatroom format: makes it very easy to follow and updates quicked than you can read.
Lloyd Shepherd blogged that Mumbai ‘tweets’ appear to have been restrained, seemingly by the Indian authorities. (update: however, seems quite unlikely… Anyone know if any truth in this?) Check out Amy Gahran’s post here, which raises some good points about the danger of Twitter rumours…
The Twitter stream can be followed here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mumbai
Gaurav Mishra writes, “so far, micro-blogging service Twitter seems to be the best source for real time citizen news on the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and “Mumbai” & “#Mumbai” are both on Twitter trending topics now.”
Summed up here, at Wired.com.

Mapping:

NYTimes.com has linked photos to the attack sites on its interactive map.
The Guardian does a nice job here. Click on the cameras to see what took place.

Video:

The Google video seach is here. YouTube videos are mainly limited to broadcast footage, with one user even filming the TV reports, for those without access to live television coverage. YouTube videos seem to be all second-hand broadcasts from mainstream media.

Timelines:

Mirror.co.uk (Mumbai November 26-7) and Guardian (for past terrorist attacks in India). BBC timeline here (complete with contentious Twitter quote).

Dipity timeline here:

Campaigns / Aid:

In the same vein as Tsunami Help started in 2004/5, MumbaiHelp has been launched, with lists of the dead/injured here: http://tr.im/1kg3 http://tr.im/1kg2 / http://tr.im/1kg1 / http://tr.im/1kg0 / http://tr.im/1kfz

Tags: Amit Varma, Amy Gahran, Arun Shanbhag, attacks, BBC, bombay, British Broadcasting Corporation, Citizens of the World Wide Web, creative commons, D.C., date, Dinesh Kumar, Facebook, Flickr stream, Gaurav Mirshra, Gaurav Mishra, google, India, Journalism.co.uk, Lloyd Shepherd, Maharashtra, mainstream media, media, media expert, Mirror.co.uk, Mumbai, NowPublic, social media, social media expert, Sonia Faleiro, The Guardian, Twitter, Twitter stream, United States, Washington, YouTube

I’ve Said Too Much: Mumbai government tries to crack down on Twitter updates?

November 27th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted by Judith Townend in Editors' pick

(J.co.uk update)Read Amy Gahran’s skepticism about this particular rumour on her blog. It seems unlikely, but as blogged and recorded by @Lloydshep (follow link at end): “The awful stuff coming out of Mumbai is one thing, but here’s another: the Indian government asking for live Twitter updates to cease to protect their operations. For all sorts of reasons, this seems to be significant.”

Tags: Amy Gahran, India, Indian government, J.co.uk, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Mumbai government, Twitter