Tag Archives: us

Stars and Stripes: US to screen journalists for ‘positive coverage’ before embedding

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Story from the beginning of this week – the US government is using a PR firm to run background checks on journalists sent on embedded assignments with the US military.

“Rendon examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was ‘positive’, ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’ compared to mission objectives, according to Rendon officials. It conducts similar analysis of general reporting trends about the war for the military and has been contracted for such work since 2005, according to the company,” reports Stars and Stripes.

Full story at this link…

Tewspaper – the ‘online newspaper with no writers’

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A new online newspaper venture, Tewspaper, has been launched with automatic aggregation replacing the need for journalists. The sites use an algorithm to search and aggregate news from social media sites to create websites relevant to five US cities (though the site itself claims to cover 10), according to a press release.

The service uses publicly available APIs to find text updates and match images to stories for Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City.

“We began by limiting the news to trusted authorities on Twitter. From there, we are working on an algorithm that can find additional breaking news from anyone on Twitter and other websites as it happens,” said Jared Lamb, the creator of Tewspaper, in the release.

The sites currently look pretty basic, but add an RSS feed and this could be a handy tool for journalists in these areas wanting to track news in real-time.

There’s also an attempt at a Digg-style user-rating system, perhaps similar to plans for the blogpaper, though this isn’t yet explained on the site.

Full post at this link…

10,000 Words: ‘How Twitter saved my journalism career’

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An open and honest post from Mark S. Luckie, who was made redundant at the end of last year by his magazine employer, about searching for a new job and the impact of Twitter on his career since.

Despite numerous applications and ‘the fact that anyone who googled me would find the tweet “Someone should hire Mark Luckie”‘, he hadn’t found a new position, and was beginning to consider roles outside of journalism.

“[But] the most casual tweets, often written to take my mind off my situation, were retweeted hundreds of times, which lifted my spirits and made me feel like I still had the natural ability to spread the news,” writes Luckie, who has used his 10,000 words blog to explore the future of multimedia journalism and reporting.

He ramped up his search for jobs using Twitter and has now taken a multimedia producer position at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Full post at this link…

‘Our vanishing heritage’: @johnemcintyre’s list of disappearing ‘newspaper lingo’

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John E. McIntyre, who worked for the Baltimore Sun for nearly 23 years, has the beginnings of a glossary of disappearing newspaper terms from spike, stet and slug to ‘lobster shift’:

“The third shift on a daily newspaper, between midnight and 8 a.m.”

You can send him more suggestions via email or on Twitter.

AFP: CBS debuts in-magazine video ad

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The ‘video-in-print’ (VIP) ads in the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly will feature samples from upcoming shows broadcast by CBS, the North American television network.

The VIP ads will be limited to copies distributed in New York and Los Angeles.

Full story at this link…

Video from Wired’s YouTube channel below:

Reasons to be cheerful? Seattle paper, Roanoke Times and magazine publishers turning a profit

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In addition to reporting on plummeting profits for some newspaper groups, Journalism.co.uk thought it was about time we shared some better news or at least some examples of titles that aren’t making a loss.

  1. As the city’s only surviving daily newspaper since the decline of the Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times posted a rise in daily circulation of around 30 per cent for June. According to the New York Times, publisher Frank Blethen says the title is operating ‘in the black’ on a month-to-month basis now.
  2. “We are a profitable, debt-free enterprise,” says Debbi Meade, publisher of the US’ Roanoke Times, in this letter to readers.
  3. New figures from the US’ Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) suggest that 12 titles managed to attract more ad pages in the first six months of this year than in comparison to the same period in 2008. Newsweek looks at which titles are managing to buck the trend in this way.

SFGate: US accused of hypocrisy over imprisonment of Reuters cameraman

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While the US is calling for the release of its journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, Ibrahim Jassam, a Reuters cameraman, is still being held in US custody in Iraq, reports SFGate.

“[W]e are subject to the taint of hypocrisy if we detain journalists and then criticize other countries for doing the same thing,” Allen Weiner, co-director of the Stanford international law program and a former State Department legal adviser, says in this report, which also raises questions about the lack of special protections for journalists under international law.

Full story at this link…

Recovering Journalist: Growthspur – supporting local media entrepreneurs

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Mark Potts, founder of hyperlocal venture Backfence, discusses his latest venture: Growthspur, a new company aimed at finding new business models to support local news and information sources.

Jeff Jarvis helped develop the concept and Potts also has former Microsoft executive Dave Chase and co-founder of the Yale Entreprenuerial Insititute, Jennifer McFadden, on board.

Full post at this link…

Malcolm Coles: How US traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites

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This is a cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ personal website. You can read other posts by Coles on the Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog at this link.

The latest figures for UK users from the audited ABCes together with Compete‘s figures for American site usage show how USA traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites.

On average, US traffic is 36.8 per cent of the UK traffic (i.e. there is just over one US visitor for every 3 UK visitors). The figure for the Telegraph is slightly higher (44.5 per cent) and for the Mail it’s a massive 62.5 per cent.

Newspaper
site		 USA
visitors
(Compete)		 UK
visitors
(ABCe)		 US users
as % of UK
Daily Mail 5,199,078 8,316,083 62.5
Telegraph 4,087,769 9,184,082 44.5
Times Online 2,805,815 7,668,637 36.6
Guardian 3,676,498 10,211,385 36.0
Independent 1,317,298 3,781,320 34.8
The Sun 2,419,319 8,704,036 27.8
Mirror 748,098 4,907,540 15.2
FT.com 5,960,589 n/a n/a
Express 63,216 n/a n/a
Average 2,919,742 7,539,012 36.8

These figures are all for June 2009. The FT wasn’t audited in June’s ABCes. The Express isn’t in the ABCes.

They are further proof that the Mail’s success in the June ABCes was driven by American searches for Michael Jackson’s kids.

Mlive.com: A farewell from the editor of the Ann Arbor News

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“Readership was never our problem. It was strong, and higher than ever when print and online were added together,” says Ed Petykiewicz, editor of the Ann Arbor News, the 174-year-old US newspaper, which printed its last edition this week, in a letter to readers.

“There has been a small undercurrent of community guilt because of our closing; that some of you let us down. That’s not the case. How could you have helped when we never told you that we were bleeding?

“Our problems were revenue and expenses. Too little revenue; too much expense. Knowing that newspapers across the country are struggling with the same issues doesn’t make it any easier.”

Petykiewicz describes the last four or five months at the paper as ‘akin to visiting a hospice daily’. But he urges readers to learn a lesson from the News’ fate:

“The business models for newspapers and credible online efforts are precarious. You’ll need to support them if you want to know what is going on. They’re the only ones who separate the self-serving spin by public officials from what is really happening.”

Full letter at this link…