Tag Archives: guardian

Guardian: Jeremy Hunt stakes his reputation on local television

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Bids for expressions of interest for Jeremy Hunt’s proposed new national channel, dubbed ‘Channel 6’, are due tomorrow. The Guardian reports that community purists fear just another national channel while others are sceptical of plan’s commercial viability.

Hunt’s approach on this journey has been distinctive. The culture secretary has ignored the naysayers, ridden roughshod over the equivocal advice he has received from Lazard banker Nicholas Shott, and is relying on the bidders to make the idea work. Judging by the initial levels of interest, Hunt is doing well, although it is still early days. Tomorrow’s call for expressions of interest is limited to bidders providing a 10-page business plan – little more, critics say, than a beauty parade of half-baked ideas.

Full story on Guardian.co.uk at this link

 

Alan Rusbridger: The Guardian, the Scott Trust, and the thorny issue of tax

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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has penned a long piece for the Inside Guardian.co.uk blog about the newspaper’s tax status and its relationship with funding bodies the Scott Trust and Guardian Media Group.

It makes for interesting reading for anyone curious about the tax issues facing large, loss-making media organisations, or the affiliate revenue streams that keep them running, or the measures in place for making sure editorial content is not unduly influenced by the business dealings that provide for it.

Individual columnists – and even leader writers – may well disagree with some aspects of how the parent company has run itself over the years. Commercial colleagues may likewise fundamentally disagree with the views of the paper and its writers. The point of the trust is to allow each to operate independently. It seems an odd argument that individual Guardian journalists, who have no part in business decisions, should refrain from covering tax avoidance, or should feel inhibited in expressing their views.

Full post on Guardian.co.uk at this link.

CJR: Strange Eruptions from the WikiLeaks Saga

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At the end of last week, the Columbia School of Journalism has played host to the two newspaper editors credited with breaking the first major WikiLeaks stories.

The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger and the New York Times’ Bill Keller shared the stage to discuss their handling of the leaks.

It was not a night of revelations, except perhaps Keller going further than before in claiming that the email accounts of NYT staff working on the story had been “clearly hacked” around the time that the paper’s relations with WikiLeaks deteriorated.

WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange is in Belmarsh Magistrates Court today to fight extradition to Sweden on charges of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion.

Full story on Columbia Journalism Review at this link.

Martin Belam: The death of RSS? Not at the Guardian

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In this post on his Currybet.net blog Martin Belam responds to discussions about the future of RSS feeds. While feeds may remain a niche tool, the latest CMS release at the Guardian, where Belam works as an information architect, sees links to RSS feeds made much more easy to find, he says.

Previously we didn’t automatically link to an RSS feed from an individual article page. This was because articles could ‘belong’ to various different areas of the site, and so it wasn’t always obvious which RSS feed should be chosen as the parent. This blog post of mine, for example, ‘appeared’ on the Open Platform blog, the Datablog, and in the Technology and Politics sections.

We’ve just changed that in release 103 of our CMS, in response to a request on our new Developer Blog. Now in the <HEAD> of our articles you’ll get an auto-discovery link to all of the related keyword feeds.

Guardian: Jeremy Vine to quit Panorama

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Presenter of the BBC One’s Panorama Jeremy Vine will be leaving the show at the end of the year, according to a report by the Guardian.

When Vine steps down – after four years with the programme – the show will continue without a regular presenter.

Last month Journalism.co.uk reported on an investigation into corruption within FIFA by freelance sports journalist Andrew Jennings which was broadcast by Panorama and prompted an inquiry by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) into the claims.

The broadcast was criticised by some viewers for its timing, just before a meeting in Zurich where FIFA announced the host of the 2018 World Cup. But Panorama’s editors defended the investigation.

#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


Guardian: Andy Coulson denies phone-hacking at Sheridan trial

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Downing Street director of communications Andy Coulson was yesterday forced to once again deny that as editor of the News of the World “he ordered reporters to ‘practise the dark arts’ by illegally hacking phones and ‘blagging’ confidential information”, according to the Guardian.

Coulson was giving evidence at the perjury trial of Tommy Sheridan, a timeline of which is available at the BBC.

Coming face-to-face with Sheridan – who is conducting his own defence – Coulson told the high court in Glasgow that he had no idea his newspaper had used private detectives to illegally “hack” phone messages from members of the royal family and other targets. He repeatedly denied promoting a “culture” of hacking and “blagging”, where people’s confidential data such as tax details, criminal records or phone bills were illegally accessed, in the NoW’s newsroom.

According to the Guardian report Coulson also denied knowing private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who, along with former News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman, was convicted of conspiracy to intercept telephone calls in 2007.

Guardian: Cuts will see World Service merged with BBC News, says Thompson

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The BBC plans to cut its online spending by a quarter and merge the World Service with BBC News in 2014 as part of cost cutting measures, director general Mark Thompson said in an interview with the Media Guardian.

According to a report by the Guardian, Thompson said he aims to save half a billion pounds a year “to ensure the public broadcaster can function within the terms of its recently agreed licence fee settlement”.

In an interview with Media Guardian, Thompson said he expects to make efficiency savings of £330m a year by slashing overheads – including cutting the cost of licence fee collection and targeting evaders of the £145.50 household levy.

The BBC will also cut a quarter from its online spending – currently running at £200m a year – and make unspecified but significant savings by merging the World Service with BBC News in 2014 because “however well-resourced the BBC is, we cannot afford to run two global news operations”.

Guardian: Trinity Mirror and DMGT mulled merger of regional media

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Trinity Mirror had “contemplated” selling some of its shares to the Daily Mail and General Trust earlier this year in return for DMGT’s regional newspaper group Northcliffe Media coming under its control, according to a report from the Guardian.

This would reportedly have been part of a merger which was allegedly being considered by the newspaper owners.

The basis of the deal was a scheme to bring together the two companies’ regional newspaper groups under the control of Trinity Mirror. In return Trinity would have offered a mixture of cash and shares to DMGT, giving it a strategic shareholder for the first time since the days of Robert Maxwell.

Negotiations between the two sides came to a halt, although Daily Mail executives have told their counterparts at Trinity that negotiations could resume in future.