Author Archives: Joel Gunter

About Joel Gunter

Joel Gunter is a senior reporter at Journalism.co.uk.

Chinese state news agency eyes Times Square headquarters

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Chinese state news agency Xinhua may be taking up residence in Times Square alongside the likes of Thomson Reuters and Conde Nast, reports the Wall Street Journal.

According to Xinhua’s North America bureau chief, Zeng Hu, the agency is closing in on a deal to move into the top floor of a 44-story skyscraper at 1540 Broadway. The move would be an upgrade from the agency’s current headquarters in the Woodside area of Queens, New York.

The Journal calls the move “part of a broader push by China’s government to enhance its ‘soft power’ abroad by countering the dominance of Western news outlets and conveying a Chinese perspective on events.”

Xinhua, founded in the 1930s when China’s Communist Party was still a revolutionary organization, has made efforts in recent years to go beyond serving as a government mouthpiece. In China, it has made a push to compete with Reuters and Bloomberg LP as a provider of financial information.

But the news agency still draws controversy for bending the news of events like the ethnic riots in China last summer.

The news agency today launched CNC World, an English-language TV service which we will be broadcast around the world and focus on global news. Along with the agency’s potential move into Times Square, the launch represents China’s desire to strengthen its media influence abroad. The station will be part-funded by private investment.

Full story at this link…

Police remove teenage photographer from parade, citing terrorism act

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Jules Mattsson, a 15-year-old photographer, challenged police officers attempting to restrict his photographing of an Armed Forced Parade in Romford on Saturday. As the recording posted to YouTube demonstrates, Mattsson was unrelenting in asserting his rights to the policeman, who eventually resorted to telling him he was a “threat under the terrorism act” and confiscating his camera. Mattsson can then be heard accusing the officer of pushing him down a flight of stairs.

Mattsson writes about the incident on his blog:

Especially poignant this incident took place the day after photojournalist Marc Vallee and videographer Jason Parkinson won their case against the met for an incident outside the Greek Embassy where Marc had his camera grabbed and Jason had his lens covered by an armed police officer. Many have hailed this ruling as ‘a victory for press freedom’, and I would be inclined to agree. However, until the met’s guidance on photography and a clearer understanding of the law filters down to the streets, we will continue to see incidents like this.

Read more on the Marc Vallee/Jason Parkinson case on Journalism.co.uk.


Source: Boing Boing

‘The imperatives of the news cycle’: A licence to steal?

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Last week we highlighted some of the criticism being directed at Rolling Stone magazine for its decision to hold off publishing the now notorious General McChrystal article online.

The magazine’s hold-for-the-newsstand tactic led Time.com and Politico to make full PDF copies of the printed article available through their websites – copies which were not provided directly by Rolling Stone, as was first thought, but by third parties.

In the wake of Rolling Stone’s much-derided decision, New York Times’ Media Equation blogger David Carr turns his attention to the behaviour of Time.com and Politico, which later linked back to Rolling Stone’s website when the magazine finally published online.

Publishing a PDF of somebody else’s work is the exact opposite of fair use: these sites engaged in a replication of a static electronic document with no links to the publication that took the risk, commissioned the work and came up with a story that tilted the national conversation. The technical, legal term for what they did is, um, stealing.

Jim VandeHei, executive editor and a founder of Politico, defended the site’s move by claiming that “the imperatives of the news cycle superseded questions of custody”.

Full story at this link…

Rolling Stone under fire for mishandling of General McChrystal scoop

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Rolling Stone has come in for a fair amount of flak from media commentators for the way it handled its General McChrystal scoop. It’s a very big scoop, the fallout from the story has seen McChrystal, who was US and NATO Commander in Afghanistan, sacked by President Obama. And yet the magazine decided to hold back the story for its print edition, aiming instead to generate buzz online and direct the money to the newsstands.

Buzz successfully generated (as Roy Greenslade reports, the New York Times has led with the story since it broke, as have many other outlets), readers who logged onto the Rolling Stone site couldn’t access the article. In fact, the story was nowhere to be seen.”It is one of the best pieces of reportage I’ve ever read. In these digital days, how could Rolling Stone ever imagine it could keep such an agenda-setting story to print alone?” writes Greenslade.

The story is still not available in print, it hits the newsstands tomorrow. “Clearly, competitors can’t wait until Friday to pick up a copy, especially when McChrystal has already been summoned to the White House,” wrote former Politico staffer Michael Calderone on his Yahoo! blog that day. They didn’t need to wait though. Rolling Stone had provided advance copies to Associated Press and others as part of its buzz-generating exercise, and in an unauthorised move Politico made the full text available for download from their site hours before Rolling Stone conceded and published it online.

The story eventually went up on the Rolling Stone website at around 11:00am ET, the following (Tuesday) morning.

If you are a news outlet looking to break a big story in a similar way, Megan Carpentier’s TPM Livewire article includes a step-by-step guide. Some of the key points:

  • Fail to publish even excerpts of the story on your own website, figuring that your promotion of the story will cause people to go out and buy the magazine.
  • Go to bed and sleep like a baby after the story hits.
  • Wake up to find out that Politico has published a reprint of the story you gave them, since you weren’t smart enough to put the story on your own site and despite the intellectual property violation.

California Watch tracks state’s gubernatorial candidates, verbatim

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California Watch, part of the non-profit Center for Investigative Reporting, has launched a new initiative aimed at tracking “every quote, promise and statement” made by California’s two major candidates for governor, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman.

Readers will be able to sort statements into nine different categories, reports the non-profit site, including promises, attacks and vague policy points, and a category designed to highlight issues that candidates have tried to avoid.

We are unveiling Politics Verbatim today with about 300 documents and 1,000 excerpts. We will be adding to the site daily, scouring news and campaign sites and Twitter and Facebook feeds. We also are encouraging crowdsourcing from other journalists and readers.

California Watch says it is interested in expanding the initiative to cover other candidates and races and the US Senate campaigns.

Full post at this link…

#followjourn: @michaelcross – freelance journalist

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#followjourn: Michael Cross

Who? Freelance journalist, specialising in public policy, technology, healthcare and the law.

Where? Cross’ work appears in the Guardian and in various specialist publications, including the British Medical Journal and the Law Society Gazette. He is co-creator of the 18th century cartoon scrivener Tobias Grubbe. He also co-founded (with Charles Arthur) the Technology Guardian’s Free our Data campaign. the best with real payouts online casinos the best with real payouts

Contact? @michaelcross

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

TechCrunch: HuffPo buys Adaptive Semantics to aid moderation of 100,000 comments a day

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The Huffington Post’s first business acquisition has not brought a blog or media site under its umbrella, reports TechCrunch, but a technology startup.

Adaptive Semantics provides a ‘semantic analysis engine’ already used by HuffPo to help moderate the staggering 100,000 comments posted on the site every day.

“Technology is very critical to us,” says CEO Eric Hippeau. “In this case, the technology has implications for our content. It makes moderation hyper-efficient.” With close to 3 million comments a month, the only way to moderate them is through automation tools (as well as a corp of about 30 professional human moderators).

Full story at this link…

followjourn: @davidjwoodward – deputy editor

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#followjourn: David Woodward

Who? Journalist and blogger

Where? Woodward is deputy editor of Director.co.uk, and has a blog entitled Award for Best Alien.

Contact? @davidjwoodward

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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E&P: AP videojournalist in the thick of it in the Gulf of Mexico

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Rich Matthews, a videojournalist with Associated Press, decided to report from the Gulf of Mexico’s oil-slicked waters. Not content with looking overboard, he went diving, intending first to go 60 feet but having to cut this back to 20 feet due to the lack of visibility.

I jump off the boat into the thickest, reddest patch of oil I’ve ever seen (…) I open my eyes and realise my mask is already smeared. I can’t see anything and we’re just five seconds into the dive.

Full story at this link…