Tag Archives: us

New record for Storify as US bus monitor Storify gets more than 1.5m views

Digital storytelling platform Storify has announced that a Storify produced by US journalist and student Ben Doernberg, which curated the latest responses and reaction to a video in which a bus monitor is seen being taunted (there’s more on this story from the BBC at this link), has hit a new record for Storify by recording more than 1.5 million views.

At the time of writing the number of views stood at 1,575,345. More than $650,000 has also been raised after an Indiegogo page was set up to give the bus monitor a holiday.

See the Storify about the record here.

New York Times takes two wins at George Polk Awards

The George Polk Awards, run by Long Island University, announced the winners of its 63rd event today.

According to a release the New York Times won two of the 15 categories. The first, for military reporting, was awarded to CJ Chivers, and the second was the foreign reporting prize which went to Jeffrey Gettleman and Tyler Hicks for their “numerous exclusives and heart-wrenching photos of ethnic conflict, pillage, famine and piracy”.

It was also announced that Anthony Shadid, the New York Times foreign correspondent who died from an apparent asthma attack in Syria last week, will receive a posthumous award “for extraordinary valor for his work in the Middle East”.

Other winners include the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the New Yorker and the Boston Globe.

“There was a strong field of contenders this year, especially in investigative work,” said John Darnton, curator of the George Polk Awards. “It was a big year for news with the Arab Spring and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and reporters from many news organizations went behind the headlines to search for underlying causes and trends.”

The full list of winners can be found here.

Future PLC ‘considering options’ for US division

Magazine publisher Future has said it is “considering a wider range of strategic options” for its US division in light of “challenging” conditions for the business.

In pre-close trading update the publisher said its position in the US “is significantly more challenging” than the UK. In July Future announced plans to “accelerate the transition of Future US into a primarily digital business”.

But this week, in a report preceding full-year earnings in November, the group said trading conditions in the US “reflecting ongoing weakness and decreasing visibility at newsstand” means the board is now considering a wider range of strategic options. PaidContent reports that the language used suggests the company “now may look to sell its business there”.

The publisher also confirmed that 10 per cent of its workforce has been cut in the UK and worldwide, which equals around 100 jobs, as part of its restructure to focus on digital and print efficiencies.

The company also claims in the latest report that the trends identified in its Interim Management Statement, published in July, have continued.

Revenues for the twelve months ending 30 September 2011 are expected to be down 6 per cent on last year, in constant currency.  The Board remains comfortable with market expectations of results for 2011, subject only to any period-end adjustment required in relation to US newsstand returns, beyond those already announced and incorporated into fourth quarter estimates.

paidContent: Guardian News & Media director of international leaving later this year

The director of international at Guardian News & Media, Stella Beaumont, is to leave later this year, it was announced this week. Beaumont has worked at the news group for 28 years and will depart after helping to launch and oversee the company’s new digital operation in the US.

In a report paidContent quotes Guardian Media Group CEO Andrew Miller as telling staff that reporting lines for ContentNext, publisher of GNM-owned paidContent, following Beaumont’s departure, “will be determined as part of the wider planning for our American operation”.

Read more here…

The Cutline: Guardian working on ‘significant US expansion’

Yahoo media blog the Cutline reports that the Guardian is busy building a new US digital operation which “will be significantly larger” than the Guardian’s previous work in the US.

Vague details around the plans were revealed in a Cutline interview with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

He said the liberal English broadsheet is building a new US digital operation that will be based in New York rather than Washington, D.C. (The paper’s roughly 10 stateside reporters are currently based in both cities.) Pressed for additional details, Rusbridger demurred, but said the venture “will be significantly larger than anything we’ve done in the states before.” He was presumably referring to the Guardian’s previous attempts to crack the American news market, the most recent being GuardianAmerica.com, which had a short run between 2007 and 2009.

The Guardian began laying the groundwork for this expansion of its American shop last week with the addition of a New York-based chief revenue officer, whose job will be “to plot a fresh course in the US,” according to paidContent’s Robert Andrews.

A spokesperson for the Guardian had no further comment.

Guardian: Republicans seek congressional inquiry into WikiLeaks

The Republican party is planning on holding a congressional inquiry into WikiLeaks as well as its founder Julian Assange following the recent release of diplomatic cables, the Guardian has reported.

WikiLeaks appears in a list of priorities for investigation by the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, published here by Politico. The Republican party reportedly takes control of the House this week.

The move is partly political, aimed at the attorney general, Eric Holder, who the Republicans claim has been too slow and too weak in reacting to the leaks.

He said last month that the justice department was looking at what action can be taken against Assange but that lawyers are struggling to find legislation under which the Australian national can be prosecuted.

Full story on MediaGuardian at this link.

Bloomberg: Interview with Arianna Huffington as HuffPost eyes first profits

The Huffington Post will post its first profit this year, according to a Bloomberg interview with founder Ariana Huffington, which also looks at the site’s plans for growth.

The Huffington Post aims to more than triple its sales to $100 million in 2012 from $30 million this year, according to a person close to the company who declined to be identified.

Full story at this link…

Editor & Publisher takes down its paywall

US industry news website Editor & Publisher has removed the paywall from its website. Says its publisher:

Paywalls in name alone connote a psychological negative, which is one reason we have never been big believers. [Former owner] Nielsen had been using one for a number of years, but nothing during the past year has changed our opinion about them. We have removed it to build more traffic and make more of our original content available to our visitors.

Full story at this link…

Don’t direct students to file FOI requests to universities, Texas lecturers told

From the US last week, but worth reading – a curious situation for journalism academics:

Journalism teachers sometimes instruct students to file such requests under the Texas Public Information Act to gain experience using an important tool for reporters.

But in response to an inquiry from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, an A&M [Texas A&M University] campus about 155 miles north of Austin, the system’s general counsel warned that a faculty member could be disciplined and even fired for directing students to file requests with any of the system’s 12 universities and seven agencies. Faculty members are free to direct students to file requests with other state universities and agencies.

Full story on Statesman.com at this link…

Press+ paid content system targets US college media

Press+, the paywall and micropayment system launched by US venture Journalism Online, has added new features to its technology aimed at signing up student media partners in the US and attracting payments from off-campus users, such as parents and alumni.

In 2011 the Daily O’Collegian at Oklahoma State University will launch the system on its website, ocolly.com, a release states.

The paper will collect a small fee from online readers who are outside the school’s immediate geographic area and who do not use an email address with an .edu affiliation and who read the paper online more than three times a month. This is achieved by deploying two aspects of the Press+ platform in tandem: the “meter” technology combined with “geo-targeting” technology.

Full release via Smudged Newsprint at this link…

Journalism Online was launched in April 2009, and won investment from News Corp in June 2010. Its first client was LancasterOnline.com, which began using the Press+ system in July to charge for its access to its obituary pages. Last month non-profit investigative journalism organisation ProPublica signed up to the system.