Google is to sponsor six Tunisian journalists to spend three months at a leading French newspaper, picking up digital news-gathering skills.
The internet giant has teamed up with liberal daily Le Monde, which will offer a newsroom placement to each of the journalists, covering daily news and the French presidential elections taking place in May.
Our hope is that they then will return home with new skills that will serve to construct a new, free but responsible professional press in Tunisia.
At Google, we are aware of the need to work with publishers to smooth the transition not only from oppression to freedom, but from analogue to digital distribution. We are sponsoring a series of digital journalism prizes with Institut de Sciences Politiques, the International Press Institute in Vienna and the Global Editors Network in Paris.
Meanwhile, journalism academics at City University in London are heading to Tunisia next week to lead a series of workshops for Tunisian journalists on “reporting a democracy”.
The courses are the first to be held in Tunisia since last January’s overthrow of Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime.
They will provide practical advice to journalists on coping with the realities of reporting in a free society. But the classes will be held amid an ongoing battle for media freedom.
Sylvia Kauffman, executive editor, Le Monde: “The arguments against us didn’t last long – people soon accepted this wasn’t totalitarian absolute transparency but that we had been selective in what we published.”
Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief, El Pais: “All in all, it’s been the biggest story I’ve had in my five years as editor of El País, without any doubt. And measured by its international impact, it’s probably the biggest story this newspaper has ever been involved with.”
Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has announced it will become a joint plaintiff in a complaint filed by French newspaper Le Monde, which accuses government officials of violating new legislation intended to protect the secrecy of journalists’ sources.
Le Monde claims that an intelligence service was used by the French President’s office to identify a source used in a story on L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and donations made to President Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign.
The row over an alleged attack on press freedom by French president Nicolas Sarkozy continues this week after it was confirmed by police that a senior official has been implicated as part of an investigation into leaked information.
According to a BBC News report, French newspaper Le Monde is to file a lawsuit accusing the office of President Sarkozy of spying on its journalists, claiming it understands an intelligence service was used to identify one its sources in relation to a story ran in July.
The report in question by Le Monde linked a minister to an investigation by authorities into L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and donations to Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. The president’s office reportedly rejects the claims made by the paper.
If the Elysée Palace really ordered government personnel to violate the law on the secrecy of sources in the Woerth-Bettencourt case, it would constitute a violation of press freedom as serious as tapping journalists’ telephones.
We offer Le Monde all our support in its determination to establish whether the government violated the confidentiality of sources. These allegations must be treated with the utmost seriousness. Reinforcing the protection of journalists’ sources was one of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign promises and a law was even voted in January. It would be intolerable if the Elysée Palace were the first to break a law requested by the president.
The two potential buyers are France Telecom subsidiary Orange, as well as a consortium led by Pierre Berge, ex-partner of late fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, AFP reported. The paper said earlier that it needs as much as €100 million to pay off debts and survive in the tough times.
And this snippet from FT indicates where France Telecom sees Le Monde’s potential:
[F]rance Telecom has stressed that its interest in Le Monde lies in the title’s digital operations and synergies between its website and those of Le Nouvel Obs and Prisa, which owns El Pais, the Spanish daily.
paidContent:UK reports: “Just as newspapers were looking to attract new mobile readers, Apple has rejected the first version of Newspaper(s), an iPhone app that let users read the content of over 50 newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, France’s Le Monde, and the UK’s tabloid the Sun. Apple rejected the app on the grounds that The Sun, with its topless Page 3 Girls, was ‘obscene’.
Well, we could have brought you ‘Flocking Around the Twitmas Tree’, ‘We Three Nings’ or just a straightforward end of the year list (if only to add to our list of lists), but instead we chose this: your sing-along treat to round-up 2008 is the ‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas’ (hyperlinked to relevant stories, but bear in mind it’s a selection of picks and not comprehensive…).
On the first day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … An editor in a law court
… Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the ninth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Nine strikers strikin’
… Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the tenth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Ten blogs a-blooming
… Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the eleventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eleven papers packing
… Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Twelve sites a-starting
… Eleven papers packing, Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks and an editor in a law court!
Staff at French daily newspaper Le Monde are taking further industrial action over plans to cut 129 jobs including 90 of the title’s journalists, the AFP reports.
