Tag Archives: El Pais

#media140 – El Pais writer Joseba Elola ‘witnessing history’ with WikiLeaks

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“I’ve never lived something like that and I don’t think I will live something again like that,” – these are the words of El Pais staff writer Joseba Elola, reflecting on his work on the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Speaking on a WikiLeaks roundtable discussion at #media140, Elola spoke about the journey from arranging to meet with Julian Assange for an interview, to helping El Pais join outlets such as the Guardian and Der Spiegel as a media partner of the whistleblower website in its release of more than 250,000 secret and confidential cables sent by US embassies around the world.

Three months after requesting an interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the pair met, Elola told the conference.

He is a fascinating character, a brilliant person, extremely intelligent.

At the end of the interview I asked him if he had anything on Spain. Why don’t you include also a Spanish media as part of your launch, I asked him, why don’t you transfer your documents to El Pais, we will help.

He said let him mull it over. I came back to Madrid, I was excited and then quite an ordeal began.

You meet them, you see them, but then it takes a long, long while to get to see them.

I got an email from him three weeks afterwards and in the newsroom we were excited, finally that long-awaited email came asking for the specific number for the director.

I have never lived anything like it in my life, it was like witnessing history of the 21st century.

All of a sudden you get new information every day, day after day, it was a very exciting experience.

Speaking further with Journalism.co.uk he added that while he fears it will take “years before we manage to get another release of such relevant information”, he is “so happy to have been able to play a little role in that story”.

I hope we keep on being a reliable media for any platform; WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, KanariLeaks, BrusselsLeaks or whatever.

I think the important thing is to keep your brand reliable to the public and I hope that the fact we were involved in Cablegate might raise some confidence in the people who leak information into the public, too.

I really think the media for years have been a little bit asleep and didn’t do their job properly, and I think WikiLeaks brought something really good for journalism and for society.

#cablegate: Newspaper editors on their part in the WikiLeaks cables release

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The Guardian has published a series of editorials from the editors of the newspapers who have worked alongside the Guardian in publishing parts of WikiLeaks’ latest release, the cables sent by US embassies across the globe.

George Mascolo, editor-in-chief, Der Spiegel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-cables-spy-hunt-germany

Bill Keller, executive editor, the New York Times: “The reader response has been huge. Millions of page views.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-cables-new-york-times

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.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-cables-french-reaction-diplomacy

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.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-huge-impact-spain


Cit-J agency photographs from Iran make front page of NYTimes… twice

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Further to our round-up of Demotix activity from Iran, here are two front pages from the New York Times, both featuring images from the pro-am agency’s contributors.

Demotix images have also been published by the Telegraph, El Pais, Wall Street Journal, ABC.es, and syndicated by Reuters, AFP and EPA to other outlets around the world.

“The bravery of our Iranian reporters has been astonishing. They are defying their government and risking their safety to tell their stories to the world, and we are delighted to be able to help them make their voices hear more loudly,” said Demotix commissioning editor, Andy Heath. “Demotix exists for moments like this.”

nyt1

nyt2

WAN 08: Disparities between pay of web and print journalists – a problem all over the world for integrating newsrooms

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Integrating newsrooms isn’t just a matter of putting all you desks in a spoke and fulcrum formation and projecting the web traffic figures on the wall.

The small matter of how you remunerate journalists expected to work both for print and web is an issue for newspapers across the globe.

It’s an issue that the Guardian and Telegraph, to name just two in the UK, have been wrestling with as they bring their divergent print and online editions closer together.

International editors sitting on a panel looking at whether integrated newsrooms are really working at the World Editors Forum, today in Goteborg, Sweden, admitted to a similar set of problems.

Jim Roberts, editor of digital news at the New York Times, told delegates that the Times’ own integration plans were hampered by the different contracts and lower pay web journalists were receiving compared to their print colleagues.

Roberts is overseeing the introduction of a ‘horizontal’ news production system where each separate news department has web producers embedded with them to encourage multimedia content production, oversee publication.

The Times is trying to spread multimedia, video, podcasts and interactive features across all its news verticals – even to the point where the Times is reverse publishing blog content as columns into the printed edition of the newspaper.

This drive for web content has also brought a renewed thirst to keep the newspaper print edition fresh, as Roberts said ‘to redirect this energy back into print’.

But as staff are now expected to work for both web and print, the different contracts they work under has led to union wrangles. WSJ.com managing editor Almar Latour and Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El Pais, Spain, agreed that they faced similar contractual problems on their integration projects.