Tag Archives: journalist

Reuters ‘dissatisfied’ by investigation into death of Fadel Shana

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Reuters has said it is ‘disappointed with and dissatisfied by’ an investigation by the Israeli military into the death of its cameraman Fadel Shana.

The Israeli tank crew who killed Shana in the Gaza Strip four months ago will not face legal action as a result of the investigation.

Troops could not determine whether Shana, who had covered events in Gaza for Reuters for three years, was carrying a camera or a weapon, but were ‘nonetheless justified’ in firing the shell, a letter from Israel’s senior military advocate-general to the news agency said.

“I’m extremely disappointed that this report condones a disproportionate use of deadly force in a situation the army itself admitted had not been analysed clearly. They would appear to take the view that any raising of a camera into position could garner a deadly response,” said David Schlesinger, Reuters editor-in-chief, in a press statement.

Reuters has responded to the findings with a letter to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) asking why the tank crew did not attempt to find out if Shana was a cameraman as his blue flak jacket marked ‘PRESS’ suggested.

According to the army, the troops could not see this sign.

“These findings mean that a journalist with a camera is at risk of coming under fire and there’s not that much that can be done. That’s unacceptable. It’s difficult to believe (…) that the IDF took the necessary precautions to avoid causing harm to civilians – as it is obliged to do under international law,” said Joel Campagna from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The video from Reuters below shows the last seconds of footage shot by Shana before his death:

Death toll rises for journalists killed in Georgia

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According to reports, four journalists have been killed in Georgia, since the country’s armed conflict with Russia began on Friday.

Dutch television cameraman Stan Storimans, 39, who was working for news channel RTL, was killed during the Russian bombing of Gori, the Associated Press has said. Storiman’s colleague Jeroen Akkermans was also injured by blasts, which killed five.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also reported the deaths of two journalists in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Grigol Chikhladze, head of Alania TV, and Alexander Klimchuk, head of the Caucasus Press Images agency and a correspondent for Itar-Tas, were shot at a roadblock erected by Ossetian freedom-fighters, RSF said.

US reporter Winston Featherly-Bean and fellow Georgian reporter Teimuraz Kikuradze, who were travelling with Chikladze and Klimchuck, were wounded in the attack and later taken to a field hospital.

An as yet unnamed Georgian journalist has also died in the conflict, after a shell hit his car outside Gori.

The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt also claimed his crew were under fire from Russian forces (thanks to Daniel Bennett for flagging this up):

Innovations in Journalism – Newsvetter – taking the pain out of press releases

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Screenshot of Newsvetter logo

In our Innovations in Journalism series we give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are developing.

Today’s candidate is Newsvetter – a site that wants to build better connections between journalists and PRs, starting with more targeted press releases.

Founder Andrew Fowler tells us more:

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m a former PR practitioner who worked in the profession for about eight years. I cut my teeth at a big PR agency and then after a couple of years started consulting for smaller companies and organizations as a solo practitioner.

I have spent the bulk of my career pitching ‘news’ to journalists – a core PR function that now more than ever is being equated with spam.

Why is this happening? Quality has given way to quantity. With the aid of press release distribution services and social networks, journalists are receiving record numbers of poor quality and irrelevant material from PR people.

In November 2007, I launched the online news vetting and delivery service Newsvetter. Based in Portland, Oregon USA, Newsvetter is designed to discourage mass pitching and help journalists extract higher quality information from companies and PR agencies.

Instead of sending press releases and cut-and-paste pitches, PR people go through a vetting Q&A process on the site made up of key questions commonly asked by journalists. Follow this link for an example of a completed Q&A.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
The vetting process provides answers to key questions which then allows journalists to quickly evaluate a story idea’s potential and verify its accuracy. Journalists can also register, create a public profile on the site which allows them to provide details about their beat, publication, current interests, recent stories, and when and how they like to get contacted. Journalists can share their profile URL with the PR people they work with. To see an example profile of a journalist on Newsvetter use this link.

After viewing a journalist’s profile, PR people email them news ideas, but only after they complete the vetting process.

To encourage quality, journalists can rate and comment on the work submitted by PR people. Comments and ratings become part of a PR person’s public record on Newsvetter (one that can be viewed by journalists, peers, employer, client etc.). One goal of mine is to create a system similar to eBay’s “feedback score” for sellers which will reward those who submit quality story ideas.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
The site is currently in beta. Under development are some changes to the user interface, which will make the site easier to understand and use, as well as some features that will make the service more attractive for PR people.

4) Why are you doing this?
I’m hearing loud and clear from journalists that the quality of news pitches to them is substandard (and largely irrelevant). Rather than talk (more) about it, I’ve created a working tool that addresses this issue head on.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Newsvetter will always be a free service for journalists. It is also currently free to PR people. In the coming months, Newsvetter will offer a set of premium features, which companies and PR agencies can pay to access.

6) How will you make it pay?
The pay-off is that journalists associate Newsvetter with quality and will thoughtfully review PR submissions that come through the site (rather than simply delete them ). PR people will see Newsvetter as a service that can help build relationships with journalists and increase quality coverage for their company or client.

links for 2008-07-14

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Online Journalism Scandinavia: David Montgomery’s toughest general – Lisbeth Knudsen, editor-in-chief of Berlingske Media

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Once so controversial as the boss of The Mirror, over the last few years David Montgomery has reinvented himself as a European media mogul.

As head of the pan-European media company Mecom, Montgomery has emerged as an internet evangelist and one of the most optimistic advocates of a multimedia future.

This is good news for Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO and editor-in-chief of Mecom’s worst performing subsidiary.

Denmark’s Berlingske Media is the biggest publisher of daily newspapers in one of Europe’s toughest newspaper markets. Revenues of paid for dailies in Denmark have been ravaged by a costly two-year-long freesheet war.

When Montgomery bought the Danish company in 2006, it had a paltry 3.5 per cent profit margin – miles away from the 15 – 20 per cent Montgomery was promising his investors.

But it’s all grist to the mill for Knudsen, who rumour has it secured her job last spring by submitting the longest list of potential cost cuts.

Montgomery’s toughest general has been charged with justifying his professed faith in the profits to be made from the new media world.

“It is my task to deliver what I have promised, but also to tell Berlingske’s journalists that we have exciting times ahead of us. It is necessary for our survival that we start using new work processes, develop our journalism and launch new digital products. Old traditions are no longer enough,” Knudsen told Journalism.co.uk

Her first act as head of Berlingske was to publicly denounce Mecom’s profit demands as unrealistic.

Simultaneously, she made it crystal clear that the financial situation required radical changes, skilfully lowering the expectations of both her boss and the unions.

Integrate everything
Central to those changes is integration. Not only converging media platforms, but also altering most of the company’s titles into ‘verticals’ that deliver copy across platforms and titles be they broadsheet, tabloid or regional newspapers.

Berlingske may have created one of the most integrated media operations in Europe, but it has also caused great concern among the company’s journalists about work flow, work culture and how it may erode the different media brands.

“Everyone has to be able to work and plan to all media platforms. Journalists get more resources to cover events in this way. Instead of sending three journalists from three different platforms or titles, we will now have one journalist cover the results of a football match, one live blogging it, and one writing the portrait of the game’s top scorer,” said Knudsen.

To ensure editorial standards, she added, each title will have a brand manager to makes sure it runs only content that is appropriate and in line with its specific values.

Discontent
These assurances have not been enough, however, to assure the domestic journalists union. It has voiced continuous concern about merging titles, job cuts and the new ‘integrated’ work environment where journalists are confined to hot desks to create a paperless environment.

Knudsen says that new technology is necessary. Adding that the increase in the number of tools at the disposal of her reporters has also created many exciting new opportunities for journalists.

“This integration is necessary to survive. Journalists today have to accept that they have to fight for every pair of eyeballs. I accepted this job because I believe, both as a journalist and as CEO, we can create something great in this company,” she said.

Not here to please
As for her proprietor, she said: “It is my impression that you can have a discussion. If I am to be in charge of this, I have to believe in it. I have made it very clear that I’m not here to please. I have a very open and direct dialogue with the management about our goals and progress. During my thirty-something years in the newspaper industry I’ve encountered a lot of unprofessional owners. Mecom is a very professional owner, the company imposes certain demands to our revenues, but that is the way it has to be.”

David Montgomery may have got himself a straight shooter, but what impression is she likely to have made on her newsroom staff? It seems she is a journalististic champion who is both admired and feared.

“If anyone can stand up to Montgomery it is she. She is completely ruthless and resembles Montgomery in many ways. I cannot think of anyone in Danish media who dares to pick a fight with her,” said a journalist who has worked with Knudsen but did not wish to be named.

“But her journalistic integrity is above reproach. She is a journalistic champion.”

Innovations in Journalism – socially referred and aggregated news from Yahoo! Buzz

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on.

You’ll know and use Digg and the geeks will be into Reddit – loving it now its gone open source – but there is another one worth looking at, and it’s a biggie. Welcome to IIJ, Yahoo! Buzz.

1. Who are you and what’s it all about
My name is Tapan Bhat and I am senior VP of Yahoo! Front Doors and Network Services.

Yahoo! Buzz beta is an extension to Yahoo.com that unites people with the most remarkable content from websites across the internet and brings the most “buzz-worthy” stories to the Yahoo! homepage.

It determines the most popular, must-read stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs around the web, with an approach that combines user votes with search popularity to determine a story’s Buzz ranking.

2. Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Yahoo! Buzz can be useful to journalists on multiple levels. It can provide increased exposure for your great content. The most popular stories also may be selected by our editorial team and featured on Yahoo.com.

In addition, Yahoo! Buzz offers valuable insight for anyone interested in what is buzzing about and looking for timely story ideas or resources.

3. Is this it or is there more to come?
After only three month in beta, Yahoo! Buzz receives around 8 million unique monthly visitors worldwide according to comScore.

We’ll continue to listen to the feedback from publishers and our users to make sure the site continues to find the most relevant and interesting content online.

Since launching with around 100 large and small publishers, we have gradually been adding new publishers to the beta program and now have around 300 publishers participating.

In the coming months, we’ll continue adding more participants and once Yahoo! Buzz is generally available any publisher will be able to participate.

Looking ahead, Yahoo! Buzz will form the basis for an open ecosystem of publishers, advertisers and consumers.  We’ll develop this ecosystem by building out unique new syndication and monetisation tools that help publishers share relevant content, connect to more advertisers and reach a broader audience. Over time, we expect this to extend into a powerful content exchange that connects owners of content with distributors of traffic.

4. Why are you doing this?
While the homepage has always featured engaging stories and content, our editors could only scratch the surface before. With Buzz we can add more depth to the front page by bubbling up the best content from around the web, as indicated by users.

In addition, it creates a comprehensive, categorised database of content from across the web that can eventually make the Yahoo! network better.

5. What does it cost to use it?
Yahoo! Buzz is entirely free to use.

6. How will you make it pay?
As mentioned earlier, our primary goal is to further Yahoo!’s leadership position as the best starting point on the web and offering more relevant content brings people coming back to Yahoo! again and again.

During the beta process for Yahoo! Buzz, we will also be finalising our monetisation approach, including ways in which we may give prominent promotion to content from Yahoo! partners when appropriate.

Innovations in Journalism – Zemanta will find the online context of your article

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. In the spotlight this week is Slovenian start-up Zemanta.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
We are a young start-up from Slovenia, building a global tool to help online authors with their writing process.

Our product recognises what they are writing about through semantical analysis and as they are writing starts to suggest related pictures, links and articles they can include in their post to make it richer and more appealing.

It currently works for all major blogging platforms, but we envision providers of content management systems and publishers using our service as well.

Click here to see how Zemanta works with WordPress.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
To publish content online today means: after you write your story, you still need to add links and images, and tag it properly.

Your readers expect rich content, next generation semantic web applications require it, and we want to make it simple and fun to produce this high quality web content.

Our service utilises the power of advanced machine-learning and natural language processing algorithms, so that you don’t have to do repetitive tasks and can just be creative.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We will be adding a lot of new releases, such as personalization of suggestions, linking to own old posts and tools for additional media formats. [Since this interview Zemanta has added a reblogging function allowing bloggers to quote from others’ sites with correct attribution]

4) Why are you doing this?
We want to solve the problem authors are facing trying to create interesting online content that their readers will appreciate. It is becoming increasingly hard to produce rich, web articles as the amount of content available is rising.

5) What does it cost to use it?
It’s free for non-commercial use and for a reasonable amount of requests per day. We will keep it free for bloggers.

6) How will you make it pay?
We will be suggesting affiliate links and earning commission on them. We will also offer our extended API for commercial applications.

Innovations in Journalism – PRs, sources – time to Help A Reporter Out

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Showing us its wares today is the aptly named HelpAReporter.com – set-up by Peter Shankman.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
HelpAReporter was designed simply to help journalists find the sources they need without a lot of hassle. I started the site for two simple reasons:

a) I think that other services are more about making money and less about actually getting reporters what they need. “I need someone who understands 18th century art” turns into 600 emails that say “I once saw a piece of 18th century art as I WAS WRITING MY BOOK ON HOW TO SELL THINGS ON THE INTERNET DO YOU WANT A COPY TO REVIEW?!”

b) I think that in the end, reporters don’t WANT to hate publicists, and publicists don’t WANT to come across as idiots. I’d like to help prove that.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Journalists start every single day behind the eight-ball. They need sources. Sadly, most publicists send emails that do nothing more than waste their time. I’m trying to change that – journalists simply submit their queries at www.helpareporter.com/press, and it goes out to my list – now over 10,000 sources big. They can put in their email or go anonymously if they choose.

I make all my sources promise to stay on topic, and not waste a journalist’s time. So far, they’re all agreeing! That rocks.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
I never say never – I didn’t expect this to be any bigger than the original Facebook group I started. Now, 10k members and growing? Who knows how big it’ll go?

4) Why are you doing this?
Here’s why… The site takes probably 15 minutes a day to administer. I simply take the emails, put them into a text document, at a few times a day, send them out through the email distribution list.

Too many people (in this industry and well as in the world) simply live on a ‘ME, ME, ME’ mentality. Why not do something good for others? I’ve been very fortunate – The companies I’ve started have all done very well. Why shouldn’t I give something back to account for all that luck? The fact that more people don’t think like that kinda saddens me – but on the plus side, it means that I can shine without doing that much extra. So it’s a nice balance.

5) What does it cost to use it?
The site is 100% free for both journalists and sources.

6) How will you make it pay?
Right now, I don’t need to. Perhaps I will one day? A text ad? Who knows. Right now, if people really like it, I invite them to donate to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in California. Perhaps one day I’ll sell it, or start some small advertising on it. For now, it’s totally not necessary.

Innovations in Journalism – one-click image uploading from Skitch.com

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today’s candidate is Skitch.com – an easy way to upload your images.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Mark Pearson and I work for plasq – a company of about 10 people spread around the globe.

We work to make fun, intuitive and expressive software, and are best known for “Comic Life”, an application which makes it easy to turn your digital photos into photo comics.

We’ve now developed Skitch and Skitch.com:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60dQekmsEGg&feature=related]

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Skitch makes the screen grabbing process enjoyable and very fast.

Journalists involved in the tech industry often need to take many screenshots. Skitch supports many common formats including TIFF, which publishers often need for magazines. If the journalist produces content for online use, jpg and png are available too.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are just getting started! We recently released two new features to allow you to email images to Skitch.com as well as send images hosted on Skitch.com to twitter.

Combine these two features and you can send images from your camera phone to Skitch.com then automatically have them appear on twitter.

4) Why are you doing this?
To improve and speed up sharing images with others.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Currently while in beta, it is free.

6) How will you make it pay?
We haven’t announced our pricing yet.