2005-2014

SHANGHAI, CHINA – As China began to go online, observers made brash predictions that the Internet would pry the country open. Cyberspace, the thinking went, would prove too vast and wild for Beijing to keep under its thumb. Now these early assumptions are being sharply revised. Under an authoritarian government determined to control information, China has grown a new version of the Internet. As...

The proverbial 800lb gorilla, it was noted on the sidelines of last week’s Royal Television Society Convention in Cambridge, has recently bulked up. When discussing companies such as Google, a 1,500lb beast in the corner of the room is nowadays invoked. Was this, one television pundit asked, a case of "gorilla inflation"? Another industry is now asking whether the internet search and advertising...

Reporters Without Borders today published a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (in English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Persian), in which experts and bloggers from all over the world advise Internet users, especially those in repressive countries, how to set up their own blogs and get them known, while preserving their personal anonymity. Create your own blog, remain anonymous and get...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - This is a scary time to be a newspaper journalist. Stung by a gloomy advertising climate, publishers are taking out their machetes. The New York Times, for example, said on Sept. 20 that it will pare its newsroom by 45 employees. The industry's grim financial realities make me wonder about the politics of its layoff announcements. If the publishers use their financial woes...

The New York Times started charging readers for online access to its most popular columnists, the newspaper's parent company also announced it would shed 500 employees, or 4 percent of its workforce. By the end of the day Wednesday, the company's stock was trading at just $29.96 -- a new low for the year. Of course, the timing is coincidental -- the decision to place columnists behind a paid wall...

NEW YORK: Who are the greatest editorial writers of all time? Michael Gartner, who won a Pulitzer for editorial wiring in 1997, names his top four as Horace Greeley, Henry Watterson, William Allen White, and Vermont Royster, in a book due out next month that he co-produced with the Newseum. The lavishly-illustrated book is titled "Outrage, Passion and Uncommon Sense: How Editorial Writes Have...

On Monday, The New York Times introduced the first paid section of its online version. In less than 24 hours, someone found a way around the TimesSelect paid subscription service. Never Pay Retail was created on the same day that TimesSelect began. The blog links to other newspapers that syndicate the Times' Op-Ed content and are putting it online for free. To access the Op-Ed content and archives...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Round and round the Internet merger wheel goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. Frenetic is the best way to describe the pace of consolidation in the online sector during the past few months. Media giant News Corp. (Research) has made three significant Web deals since July. Yahoo! (Research) acquired a significant stake in Chinese Net firm Alibaba.com last month. And eBay...

Genocide is the ultimate crime against humanity. And a government-backed genocide is unfolding in the Darfur region of the Sudan. As the horror in Darfur continues, America's major television news networks are largely missing in action. During June 2005, CNN, FOXNews, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they...

NEW YORK: When The New York Times' columnists became part of NYTimes.com's premium subscription service this week, it changed the way New York Times News Service subscribers can use these popular pundits online. Previously, NYTNS clients could post Times columns on their Web sites for 24 hours if they also published them in their print editions. Now, newspapers can post the work of Maureen Dowd...