Tag Archives: Editor&Publisher

E&P: New Jersey newspaper prints governor’s leaked emails in full

Editor&Publisher takes a look at the aftermath of New Jersey newspaper the Sunday Star-Ledger‘s two-year battle to get hold of emails between the state’s former governor and an ex-girlfriend – emails which were denied to a political opponent by New Jersey’s supreme court last year.

E&P hears from Josh Margolin, the reporter who broke the story this weekend, about the material uncovered and the immediate impact following publication.

Teased atop the Saturday edition and occupying almost all of Sunday’s page one and six entire inside pages, the package consisted of an in-depth write-up accompanied by all 123 e-mails received by the newspaper, with only very minor edits for obscenity and relevance. The investment in paper and ink preserves not only every intimate detail and typo, but also, as the story notes, “clear discussion of state business.”

From the Star-Ledger’s statehouse bureau, Josh Margolin supplied background and a long look at the issues that brought the e-mails into play. The communications stretched over two months in early 2007, when Corzine was in contract negotiations with several state workers’ unions. Lawyer and former girlfriend Carla Katz was the president of one of them, the Communications Workers of America’s largest local.

In a video interview with NJ.com’s Ledger Live, Margolin – in a move which in part reflects that of WikiLeaks last week – said the paper decided to publish the emails in their entirety because they wanted readers to make their own judgement, not the reporter.

The reason why we’re running so much of the content in our newspaper is because we want people to understand what it is. This is one of those cases we’re trying to remove as much of the reporter filter as much as possible.

See E&P’s full post here…

Michigan news organisations join together to create aggregation site

News organisations across Michigan have joined together to launch an online aggregation site.

According to a report by Editor&Publisher, Michigan.com features content provided by more than 30 companies from the Detroit Media Partnership, which includes the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News.

The site pools information across a range of categories from news and sport, to traffic and weather updates, as well as a Twitter stream of relevant comments.

Users can reportedly customise topic boxes to suit their needs.

See the full post here…

Editor&Publisher in exile

Editor&Publisher, the 125 year old US journalism industry publication, suspended operations on New Years’ Eve, but some of its staff are carrying on with a blog, E&P in Exile.

In a final post on 31 December, editor Greg Mitchell said there was a “fairly good chance that Editor & Publisher will resume but we cannot say when or in precisely what form”.

Several possible buyers have stepped forward but any firm agreement, we’re told, is at least two weeks away.

Full post at this link…

Poynter: Nielsen to sell Mediaweek in US; closing Editor&Publisher

A long-term source of editor’s picks for this blog, US trade publication Editor&Publisher is being axed by parent company Nielsen Business Media.

The sale of the title, which provided industry news on the newspaper and newsmedia industry, will be accompanied by the sale of eight brands from the group’s media and entertainment division, including Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek.

Full story at this link…

Also Steve Outing, regular columnist for Editor & Publisher: Farewell, Editor & Publisher (We all knew this day would come); and also reports of support from the industry – but is it enough to rescue the title?

Editor&Publisher: Pulitzer relaxes web-only rules for 2010 prizes

The Pulitzer Prizes yesterday announced that even more web-only outlets will be able to compete in its journalism prizes for 2010.

Editor&Publisher reports:

Last year, the Pulitzer Board allowed non-print newsrooms to compete for the first time in the 14 journalism categories, but stipulated they must be ‘primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing events’. Today’s announcement states that restriction has been lifted.

Full story at this link…

Editor&Publisher: Should newspapers forget paywalls and focus on online ads?

A lengthy report from US-based Editor&Publisher looks at news payment models and whether it would be more sensible to focus on online advertising.

It opens with a quote from Ken Doctor, affiliate analyst at Outsell Research and author of the blog Content Bridge:

“The industry needs to turn its attention back to advertising. It has long been what has sustained the American press, and it’s an important revenue source going forward.

“With online revenue flagging as much as it has, attention has been turned and diverted. If advertisers aren’t going to save us online, maybe the readers will save us online. Even if [paid content] worked, it adds only a small revenue stream.”

Full story at this link…

Stephen Farrell’s kidnap raises the ‘media blackout’ question: it’s time for a debate in the UK

This week’s operation in Afghanistan to rescue New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell, during which a British soldier, Farrell’s Afghan translator (Sultan Munadi) and two civilians were killed, has provoked national debate in the UK:

“One senior Army source told the Daily Telegraph “When you look at the number of warnings this person had it makes you really wonder whether he was worth rescuing, whether it was worth the cost of a soldier’s life.” (Telegraph.co.uk)

Many of the commenters on news stories feel very strongly that it was wrong for a journalist’s actions to lead to such tragic consequences, as Jon Slattery noted on his blog yesterday. Further still: “Members of the Armed Forces have expressed anger that he [Farrell] ignored warnings not to visit the site of an air strike on two hijacked fuel tankers that killed scores of Taliban and innocent villagers,” the Telegraph reported. Others defend the role of journalists in Afghanistan: for example, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists.

This tragic incident also raised another issue, that of media silence. Today a special report by Joe Strupp on Editor&Publisher questions whether media blackouts are appropriate when reporters are kidnapped in war zones. It’s an excellent overview of recent events, that looks back at the case of another New York Times journalist, David Rohde – the paper managed to keep news of his kidnap off Wikipedia until his escape seven months later.

The question of media blackout is one Journalism.co.uk has raised in the past. In January, we reported on the silence surrounding the kidnap of the Telegraph’s Colin Freeman and José Cendon in Somalia. We had been asked not to report on the case by the Telegraph and the UK Foreign Office when the pair went missing at the end of 2008. The ban was lifted when they were released.

However, as we reported, some information was published before the blackout request was made clear: the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released information relating to the journalists’ kidnap on November 26 2008 and Roy Greenslade subsequently blogged about it at Guardian.co.uk – the post was removed but it was still captured in the RSS feed.

It’s a complex issue that Strupp raises in his E&P article:

“With Rohde’s escape, a major debate ignited in and out of the journalism community about how responsible the coordinated secret had been. Was this a breach of journalistic ethics, sitting on a story for so long mainly because a colleague was involved?”

Strupp quotes Edward Wasserman, a journalism professor at Washington & Lee University in Virginia, who echoed claims of other critics, that the Times and similar news outlets would not do the same for a non-journalist: “Some people are in a position to implore the press for restraint better than others”.

It is a debate we need to have in the UK too: the London-based Frontline Club would be an ideal venue in which to hold a discussion with representatives from the UK foreign office, press freedom and safety organisations and news organisations raising the reasons for and against media blackouts. The practicalities of enforcement also need to be discussed. We understand that such an idea is in the pipeline, so we’ll keep you posted.

Please do share links to existing debate online.

In the meantime, here is a link to an item on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme, featuring Frontline Club founder and cameraman (and former soldier) Vaughan Smith and the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen discussing the Stephen Farrell case.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8247000/8247681.stm

Journalism Daily: Collaborative journalism, freelancers’ rights and Observer/Shiny updates

Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features:

Ed’s picks:

Tip of the day:

#FollowJourn:

On the Editors’ Blog:


Editor&Publisher: DailyMe’s Newstogram follows readers’ ‘tastes’

News aggregation site DailyMe has launched ‘Newstogram’ – a new piece of tech that analyses the reading behaviour of users.

The idea is that publishers will be able to use this information to serve up personalised news recommendations based on a user’s individual interests.

This basic function will be free to publishers – more complex use of the data will require signing up to DailyMe’s applications.

Full story at this link…

Editor&Publisher: Bill Keller says future of NYTimes’ public editor still ‘much debated’

Bill Keller has responded to the New York Times’ public editor’s unflinching critique of errors made in a piece about Walter Cronkite by Alessandra Stanley, as part of a Q&A with James Rainey from the LA Times, published in full on Editor & Publisher.

Keller suggests that the public editor’s position is still ‘much debated’:

[James Rainey]

Q: Has the public editor helped build the Times’ reputation, or done more to knock the paper’s reputation down? It may help to address this question both as it pertains to this particular episode and, more generally, over the brief history of public editorship.

[Bill Keller]

A: On balance, I think the fact that we offer a paycheck and a platform to an independent critic to second-guess our journalistic judgments is good for, pardon the expression, the brand. I don’t always agree with our public editor, but I think he is fair-minded, his reporting is meticulous, and his targets – as in this case – are usually fair game. He doesn’t just blow raspberries. He tries to explain how bad things happen, and he reports what we are trying to do to avoid future mistakes. Whether a public editor should be a permanent, or at least continuing, fixture at The Times is a question much debated within our walls. I’ve kicked it down the road until we near the end of Clark’s term next year.

UK-related:

Journalism.co.uk is aware of full-time newspaper ombudsmen at the Guardian [Siobhain Butterworth] and the Observer [Stephen Pritchard] and yesterday learned that Sally Baker is feedback editor for the Times. Does anyone know of any other UK titles with full-time and independent readers’ editors? And do those without one need one?