2005-2014

Iceland, a country with just under 300,000 population has a battle royal going on between free newspapers. Frettabladid, which has been around four years, leads with 99,000 mostly home delivered copies daily, and Bladid, a free mail-delivered tabloid that started in May this year, distributes 80,000. That means enough free newspapers are available to satisfy about 64% of Iceland’s total population...

At a rally of the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon this past March, among the chants of "Death to America" and the banners lauding Syria, some of the demonstrators brandished posters that threatened, in Arabic: "We are going to sweep Gebran Tueni from Lebanon." That is what someone has now done, with the car-bombing Monday on the outskirts of Beirut that murdered the 48-year-old Tueni, who was...

Wikipedians have taken to heart the Mail & Guardian Online's recent article "Can you trust Wikipedia?" (November 10), which evaluated the quality of entries on this popular online encyclopedia. The M&G Online article looked at eight Wikipedia entries, including ones about sangomas, the media in South Africa, the African National Congress, boerewors and the country's economy. South African experts...

"If your mother says she loves you, check it out" stands as one of the most treasured journalistic maxims, a reminder that no assertion, no matter how likely it seems, should be taken at face value. Now, thanks to a volunteer online encyclopedia, we can add another: "If Wikipedia says John Seigenthaler plotted to kill the Kennedys, check it out." Wikipedia, the free digital reference book that has...

Wikipedia was yesterday described as being as reliable as the Encyclopaedia Britannica despite a sustained attack from vandals intent on further wrecking its reputation for accuracy. In an online article published by the respected scientific journal Nature , articles in Wikipedia - the web-based encyclopaedia created by volunteers - compared favourably to those in the foremost repository of...

Vaughan Bell, a neuropsychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, UK, has reworked Wikipedia's entry on schizophrenia over the past two years. Around five others regularly contribute to the reworking, most of whom have not revealed whether they have academic backgrounds. Bell says that is not a problem, as disputes are settled through the discussion page linked to the entry, often by...

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia...

When people ask why I recently left The Wall Street Journal to join the Marines, I usually have a short answer. It felt like the time had come to stop reporting events and get more directly involved. But that's not the whole answer, and how I got to this point wasn't a straight line. It's a cliché that you appreciate your own country more when you live abroad, but it happens to be true. Living in...

When NBC newsman Reuven Frank started in television journalism more than 50 years ago, corporate sponsors commonly attached their names to programs -- even news broadcasts. Frank got his break in 1950 with a classic of the genre: "Camel News Caravan," the NBC evening news program sponsored entirely by Camel cigarettes. "We weren't allowed to show a live camel, because a Camel is a smooth cigarette...

Dick Parsons has no shortage of friends. This month, the affable chairman and chief executive of Time Warner has had a steady stream of phone calls from some of the world’s top corporate chiefs. heir message to him: we support you, even as Carl Icahn and Bruce Wasserstein team up to try to unseat you and break up the company you run. The messages come as Mr Icahn, who made billions of dollars as a...