2005-2014

SAN FRANCISCO - RSS ads appearing as individual feed items generate a 7 percent click-through rate (CTR), over nine times higher than ads displayed within content posts. That's according to a new study released today by RSS ad firm Pheedo, which compiled the research based upon its network of 8,000 publishers. "We're trying to find what's the perfect ad unit for RSS," Bill Flitter, Pheedo's VP of...

For a scribe, Gebran Tueni was shockingly high mannered. In his dapper suits, crisp shirts and designer ties, wearing a thin moustache that was always immaculately trimmed, he seemed to belong in a gentleman's club, not a newsroom. He didn't look the part of the bravest newspaperman in the Middle East. But after he was assassinated at the age of 48 this week in a car bombing that obliterated his...

(AP) Tens of thousands of Lebanese _ men and women, Christians and Muslims _ shouted insults at Syria on Wednesday in an outpouring of anger as yet another assassinated anti-Syrian campaigner was buried. Lebanon was brought to a halt by a general strike called in mourning for editor and lawmaker Gibran Tueni, who was killed along with two bodyguards Monday in a car bombing, but neighboring Syria...

CAIRO -- In the explosion that killed An Nahar publisher Gebran Tueni in Beirut Monday could be heard the echoes of a new battle being waged in the Middle East. It is a conflict that pits the old guard of Arab politics against the young Turks of the Arab media. Tueni's assassination is a twisted testament to the growing influence of Arab journalism -- just as the anti-Syrian backlash it has set...

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is awash in controversy. The imbroglio was touched off by an anonymously written biography entry that linked former USA Today Editor John Seigenthaler Sr. with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The writer, Brian Chase, has issued an apology for a prank he says went terribly awry. Seigenthaler, in a Nov. 29 USA Today...

JOHANNESBURG, 14 Dec 2005 (IRIN) - International media rights body Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned an arson attack at the premises of a pro-opposition weekly in the Seychelles. The attack took place on Friday last week and damaged the printing press of the weekly newspaper, Regar. Léonard Vincent of the RSF expressed concern, saying it was the first instance of a physical attack on...

JOHANNESBURG, 14 Dec 2005 (IRIN) - Zimbabwean authorities on Wednesday returned the passport of the country's only remaining independent publisher after seizing it last week. "The attorney-general's office has conceded that the seizure was unlawful ... the passport is with my lawyer," Trevor Ncube, the Zimbabwean owner and publisher of the Standard and the Independent newspapers in Zimbabwe, and...

It used to be that alternative weekly newspapers were like that Marlon Brando line from "The Wild One" – when someone asked him what he was rebelling against and he replied, "Wadda ya got?" There was war in Vietnam and an international nuclear stare-down, economic injustice and racial inequality, and a dominant corporate culture against which nonconformity was a political statement. Cut to late...

France can put aside its worries about the effects of the recent rioting on tourism and travel to its country, according to a new study by leading media analysis firm Carma International. Global measurement company CARMA examined how leading US media were depicting tourism in France in light of the riots and found that the media's portrayal of the unrest was unlikely to hurt French tourism. Carma

Editors of The Weekly Observer were yesterday summoned and charged by the police for allegedly promoting sectarianism. The paper’s editor, Mr James Tumusime and the political editor, Mr Ibrahim Semujju Nganda, were also questioned for hours over a story they published on December 1, titled " Tinyefuza meets FDC over Besigye". Police said a reference in the story that Bahima generals were allegedly...