The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) are calling for the Gaza authorities to release British freelance journalist, Paul Martin.
The arrest and detention yesterday [Monday] of documentary filmmaker Paul Martin came as he was about to give evidence at a military tribunal. His detention was a “shocking violation of journalists’ rights” according to the IFJ, who demanded his immediate released.
A superb piece of multimedia and investigative journalism here, by non-profit organisation ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and PBS Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/law-disorder/
The collaborative project, Law & Disorder, examines “violent encounters between police and civilians” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Last week the new Law & Disorder site, with additional multimedia content – video, audio, photographs and documents – was launched.
During the week after the storm roared ashore, police shot at least 10 people, killing a minimum of four. Our project raises questions about whether officers needed to use deadly force in all these instances, and documents the New Orleans Police Department’s flawed and cursory investigations of the shootings.
The latest report from the team reveals:
A former New Orleans police officer is under investigation for shooting Henry Glover outside an Algiers strip mall four days after Hurricane Katrina, the first act in a bizarre chain of events that has led to a massive federal probe into the city’s Police Department.
(Hat-tip: Murray Dick / Andy Dickinson)
The New York Times reports that the reporter accused of plagiarising parts of articles from rival titles has resigned.
Wall Street Journal managing editor, Robert Thomson, had complained to the New York Times over an article by Zachery Kouwe last Friday.
According to the NY Times, the Times editors “investigated and found other examples” of copied passages in Kouwe’s work:
The Times made the matter public on Monday, when it published an Editors’ Note stating that Mr. Kouwe had copied passages from Wall Street Journal and Reuters articles, and used them “in a number” of his articles and in blog posts, without attribution. It did not say how many times that had occurred.
Also related: Alan D. Mutter reflects on the concept of plagiarism in the age of the internet, in his most recent blog post:
[B]ecause the web is open, easily accessible and readily searchable, it is more likely than ever that cheaters will be discovered faster and more surely than ever before.
Le Figaro, the French daily newspaper, has unveiled its new payment plan, with three tiers: Connect (free), Select (eight euros/month) and Business (15 euros/month). The focus on charging for additional features and services, rather than the site’s main news content – still outside the paywall.
Writing in the Guardian, Observer editor John Mulholland introduces his relaunched four-section newspaper, out next Sunday. The television listings, dropped last year, will return.
Arts, literature and cultural affairs will be at the centre of our New Review – with additional pages, improved newsprint and an elegant new design – which will further enhance the Observer’s reputation as the premier Sunday destination for discursive and thoughtful analysis of cultural, philosophical and artistic issues. The New Review will also include a new section devoted to science and technology, increased space for critics and the return of seven-day TV listings.
Google Buzz might be the talk of the social media town right now, but Huffington Post is concentrating on Yahoo, with the launch of its new app for HuffPost Social News. Arianna Huffington writes:
We’ve also made it so you can now use your Yahoo! ID to quickly sign in to HuffPost, and to join HuffPost Social News so you can easily link up with your friends from Yahoo! who are also part of the HuffPost community. Want to check out what they are reading or make sure you see their latest comment? Log onto HuffPost Social News using Yahoo! and that happens automatically. And when you write a comment, you can, with one click, share it with your Yahoo! friends and contacts – just like you can share to Facebook or via Twitter.
Owni.fr, a French language media site, has begun translating some of its posts. This article, by Benoît Raphaël, editor in chief at Le Post, explores what a “Google Newsroom” or “creation-oriented” might look like:
Your 80 journalists are gathered into ten business units, ie in thematic clusters. Just as an independent media (which could be branded in another way) managed (or not) by a cluster manager, around which you can gather eight journalists, bloggers, a community + one marketing + one sales officer (they can work on multiple clusters). Each cluster can also have its copy editor and its associated community manager. (One can also imagine three large clusters of 16 journalists and three clusters of ten journalists etc.).
The Times reports in its leader how one of its reporters, Dominic Kennedy, was expelled from a BNP meeting yesterday. The newspaper also claims that the reporter was assaulted.
Mr Kennedy was not attending the meeting covertly. He had expressly been invited to report on it by Simon Darby, the party’s national press officer. On pointing this out, Mr Kennedy was physically ejected.
Kennedy’s account at this link…
Also see: BBC News video.
A group of journalists working for FT Chinese, a Chinese language website, are facing redundancy if they do not return to China, on half their salaries, the National Union of Journalists has reported.
Two of the four Chinese journalists are British citizens, and they already have “inferior” terms and conditions to other journalists at the Financial Times, it was claimed by the NUJ today.
The National Union of Journalists Financial Times chapel is threatening to ballot for action, if plans are not reversed.
The NUJ chapel at the Financial Times voted unanimously – at a meeting attended by over 80 members – to demand that the threat of the redundancies be lifted.
“We condemn the outrageous treatment of journalists on FT Chinese. We demand no redundancies on FT Chinese and that the journalists be placed on the same terms and conditions as the rest of FT editorial. It is unconscionable that the FT is sending FT Chinese journalists into harm’s way. We will ballot for industrial action if these demands are not met,” said a spokesperson from the NUJ office branch.
One of the FT Chinese staff wrote to colleagues: “It was a tremendous shock to the entire team. This reminded us of a very old Chinese saying: ‘kill the donkey after it has done its job at the mill’. The best equivalent in English I can think of is ‘kick down the ladder’.”
A email sent to FT staff on behalf of the NUJ chapel, said it “was shocked but not surprised to hear about the Chinese journalist situation”.
“This is no longer the FT that we all joined. The FT used to be a place of compassion, where people were looked after and, in return, gave the job their all.
“Now there are job cuts while new hires are ongoing, constant pressure from bosses to get more in a shrinking paper, filing for the web for ft.com and blogging, and yet no personal support in return. This new FT is not the great place to work of the past. The end result will be lack of commitment to the paper, which will, eventually, show up in the quality of the end product.
The Financial Times told Journalism.co.uk it did not have a comment to make at this point.
The Argus in Brighton is to track the whereabouts of different parliamentary candidates in the run-up to the general election, using Google Maps.
The project, launched by the Argus’ online editor Jo Wadsworth today, was originally the brain child of journalist and media trainer Steve Bustin, journalist Sarah Marshall and others, during a group activity at the first Brighton Future of News event [Disclaimer: I was the organiser of the inaugural meet-up].
The map allows Google account users to mark where they have seen candidates for the Brighton Pavilion constituency – Green Party candidate Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Nancy Platts and the Conservative’s Charlotte Vere – and upload additional information about what they said.
The MP candidate tracker page also displays tweets sent out by each candidate.
“I was really glad when election coverage was one of the discussion ideas, and when I heard Steve Bustin suggest the map, I loved it, and as soon as I had a spare couple of hours, I decided to put it together,” said Jo Wadsworth.
“Here in Brighton we’ve got one of the most interesting election battles in Brighton Pavilion, where the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas has her party’s best ever chance of picking up a seat in Parliament. But it’s a very close-run thing, with strong competition from both Labour’s Nancy Platts and the Conservative’s Charlotte Vere. Retail bookmakers allow to gamble offline in retail stores and so-called betting shops. The retail bookmaker solution is a software that helps retailers to manage their betting operations. The retail betting software provides the following features: It offers a complete management system for the betting operations, including customer management, inventory management, and accounting. It has an intuitive interface that makes it easy to use and navigate. It has an automated system for generating reports on the betting operation.
“Luckily for me, all three are also on Twitter, which gave me enough material to kick-start the data on the map, with very interesting results. It’s surprising how little green there is there, for instance, and the red and blue markers are already showing a clear geographical divergence. But that was the easy part – the real challenge now is actually getting voters to add their own markers.”
Within a few hours of launch, the project had already received its first public edit – from Green Party councillor Jason Kitcat (@JasonKitcat).