Category Archives: Editors’ pick

paidContent: Seven more tablet titles on the horizon at Nomad Editions

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paidContent reports that Nomad Editions, a US company which aims to produce magazines for tablet subscriptions, has more than half a dozen titles “in the pipeline”

In an interview with paidContent, Nomad Editions’ CEO Mark Edmiston, former president of Newsweek, claims 50 per cent of those taking subscriptions for existing titles are taking out a whole year.

Nomad is trying to prove that tablets can be platforms for new as well as existing brands. Rather than convert existing titles to tablet, it taps journalists to devise new titles along with it, with an interesting new model – for pay, each editor takes five percent of subscription income, whilst writers split 30 percent between them.

Read more here…

NYT: ‘Syed Saleem Shahzad’s murderers must be found quickly and held accountable’

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The New York Times has devoted this morning’s editorial to the death of Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.

Shahzad, who was investigating links between the military and al Quaeda before his death, disappeared on Sunday. He was found dead on Tuesday.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been widely accused of being behind the death but has fiercely denied any involvement.

The Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad knew he was a marked man. Mr. Shahzad, who covered national security and terrorism, had received repeated threats from Pakistan’s powerful spy agency. Yet he courageously kept doing his job — until somebody silenced him. His body, his face horribly beaten, was buried on Wednesday.

Suspicion inevitably falls on Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s chief intelligence agency. For the sake of justice, and the shredded credibility of Pakistan’s government, his murderers must be found quickly and held accountable.

Read the full editorial at this link.

Dan Slee: Case studies on connecting people with social media [slideshow]

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Walsall Council press officer Dan Slee has posted the slideshow from a presentation he gave at the Socitm Learning from Better Connected event in Manchester.

The slideshow takes a detailed look at case studies of social media use by local government and media.

Here’s my preasentation that I’ve posted to Slideshare.

Included on it are:

Some stats on internet use.

Some stats on the mobile web.

A quick map of the Walsall media landscape 2011 and 2005.

A quick case study on engaging with the community through Flickr.

A quick case study on two hyperlocal sites: WV11.co.uk and Pelsall Common People.

How a countryside ranger can tweet from the sharp end.

Some stats on Walsall 24 which saw us live tweet for 24 hours in real time.

Connecting People: Advice for Local Government on Social Media and Hyperlocal sites.

View more presentations from Daniel Slee

See more on Dan Slee’s blog.

Dan Slee on Twitter.

Independent: Poll finds judges ‘too ready’ to gag newspapers

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The findings of a poll run by the Independent show  the majority of respondents believe “judges have been too ready to issue gagging orders” which enable the rich and famous to protect their privacy, the paper reports.

People appear to have little sympathy with those high-profile film, television and sports stars who have resorted to the courts to stop embarrassing details of their private lives reaching the public domain, according to the ComRes survey.

According to the Independent, which reported last week that at least 333 gagging orders have been granted in the last five years, 70 per cent of voters in the poll agreed that courts had been “too willing” to grant injunctions.

A total of 65 per cent believed that “celebrities and sports stars owe their lifestyle to their public profile so they should not complain about intrusion into their private lives”.

Although voters disapprove of the efforts that well-known figures make to prevent damaging headlines, they also believe by a narrower majority that privacy rules have failed to keep pace with the rapid growth of the internet.

This comes as a new account appears on Twitter publishing allegations of identities said to be being protected by injunctions. Following a previous case of a Twitter account publishing accusations against celebrities of taking out injunctions, as well as the wide Tweeting of individual identities said to be subject to privacy injunctions, the site reportedly confirmed it would hand over details about users if legally obliged to do so.

According to reports, just this weekend, in an entirely separate case not related to injunctions, a local council was allegedly successful in making Twitter hand over user details for a court case.

Editorsweblog: AFP launches YouTube channel for election coverage

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International news wire Agence France-Presse (AFP) has launched a YouTube channel which will be dedicated to covering next year’s French presidential elections, the Editorsweblog reports.

The new channel has been launched in conjunction with Twitter and the CFJ journalism school (Centre de Formation des Journalistes), the report adds.

The channel hosts videos posted by political parties and tracks candidate popularity, but its main feature is an interface in which viewers can submit questions to candidates. The questions are then posed in interviews held by journalism students from CFJ.

Read more here…

See the YouTube channel here…

Complaint against i newspaper for ‘misleading’ claim of no celebrity gossip upheld

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The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against the i newspaper that its claim in a television advert that the paper does not contain “celeb gossip nonsense” is misleading.

The adjudication, published here, makes specific reference to the contents of the paper’s daily Caught and Social column, which the complainant felt was “dedicated to celebrity stories”.

In a defence advertising service Clearcast said i “concentrated on newsworthy stories without sidetracking readers to the kind of celebrity gossip published in red top newspapers and celebrity magazines” and believed the ad made this clear. It added that the complainant had misunderstood the claim to mean that there would be no mention of celebrities at all.

They said this was unrealistic because celebrities featured in a range of newsworthy stories that i reported on that were of significant interest.

But in its assessment the ASA upheld the complaint.

The ASA noted the Caught and Social column featured stories about celebrities and included sections entitled Scene & Heard, OMG, iquote and ichat that quoted celebrities and provided updates about where they had been and what they were doing. We considered that readers would understand from the ad that there was no celebrity gossip in i. However, we noted featured stories in two different publications from March included headings that stated “Alex fancies a pop at 007”, “Cilla moves with the times” and “Dame Helen and Russell snog for fans”. We considered that readers would interpret these stories as celebrity gossip and therefore concluded that the ad was misleading.

British journalist loses appeal against jail sentence in Singapore

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At the end of last week British journalist and author of a book about the death penalty in Singapore, Alan Shadrake, lost his appeal against a six-week jail sentence in the country.

Shadrake was handed a prison sentence and fined thousands of dollars at the end of last year, after being found guilty of contempt by a Singapore court.

The BBC reported on Friday that Justice Andrew Phang of the Court of Appeal panel said they affirm the sentence imposed by the judge.

According to the Telegraph after the verdict was given Shadrake said he had not expected the appeal to be successful. The Telegraph also reports that Shadrake will spend an extra two weeks in jail from tomorrow because he cannot afford to the pay the fine.

#newsrw: A great Storify of news:rewired highlights

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One of the speakers who presented at Friday’s news:rewired – noise to signal event has created a fantastic Storify of the event.

Mark Jones, who is global communities editor for Reuters News, has created this summary of tweets, photos, articles and personal comments brought together with an easy-to-follow narrative.

It does not include all sessions but gives an overview of journalist, writer and freedom-of-information campaigner Heather Brooke’s keynote speech, a session on sorting the social media chaos, another on social media strategy and a round-up what went on at a session on liveblogging.

Tabloid Watch: Mail’s correction after misquoting NHS chief

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Tabloid Watch has brought to our attention an apology, “buried in the US section” of Mail Online. The site links to two other apologies, also posted in that section.

Statements contained in an article published on 7 March, headed “Babies who are born at 23 weeks should be left to die, says NHS chief”, were wrongly attributed to Dr Daphne Austin, who is a medical consultant specialist employed by the NHS.

They were made in a programme in which Dr Austin participated and were published by us in good faith. In particular, Dr Austin did not state that babies should be “left to die” and did not express the opinion that the financial aspects of neonatal care were the issue. We apologise to Dr Austin for the errors.

The post by Tabloid Watch is at this link

The Mail’s apology is at this link

Guardian: Three decades of Steve Bell

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Steve Bell has been drawing cartoons for the Guardian for an impressive 30 years this year.

I interviewed him at his home last year for a feature and it was amazing to hear him talk about the days of having artwork sent between Brighton, Manchester and London by train and taxi, and hail the fax machine as a model marvel.

As the Cartoon Museum in London celebrates three decades of Bell’s work with a retrospective, he writes and talks on video for the Guardian about about his rise to prominence as one of the country’s leading newspaper cartoonists.

See the full piece on Guardian.co.uk at this link.