2005-2014

15 September 2005

Industry takes objection to new Divya Bhaskar campaign

The new Divya Bhaskar campaign has attracted more than just media attention. The campaign used statements made by media practitioners on Divya Bhaskar's growth. While, on the one hand, competition like Gujarat Samachar has taken serious objection to this, the professionals whose quotes have been used insisted that they were not informed that these were to be used as testimonials in these ads...

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15 September 2005

The Guardian sales surge after Berliner redesign

LONDON - The Guardian's Berliner relaunch provided a dramatic 40% sales increase on its first day of distribution. Unofficial figures suggest that The Guardian put on the 40 per cent growth following the move to the smaller format, which was supported by a major advertising campaign through DDB London. The paper is in need of significant sales increases to offset the £80m it has invested in the...

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15 September 2005

Are newspapers dying?

Within one week, a 184-year-old re-invents itself, a nova product for an up to now non-existing market will hit the streets, and an online product's official print version is launched. Is it coincidence that all these happened within one week, or is it just emphasising the vibrant potential of the print media market? Previously, analysts were reluctant to sound anywhere near positive about print...

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15 September 2005

Downsizing In London

A couple of parts of the traditional English landscape changed significantly this week. Not only did the country's much-maligned cricket team--eventually and after much anxiety--regain The Ashes (a sporting trophy the origin of which, like the game itself, perpetually confounds brief description), but there is now an unfamiliar presence on news stands each morning. The Guardian, the venerable...

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15 September 2005

Conglom deal could hurt MSNBC

In a move that could deal a blow to MSNBC, Microsoft is in talks with Time Warner's America Online to join forces against the might of Yahoo! and Google. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is negotiating a possible stake in AOL as part of a broader deal that would place Microsoft's search technology on AOL.com and tie up their ad sales networks. Such a deal could give the two companies a big...

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15 September 2005

Microsoft takes on Google by opening up MSN

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. is making some of the features on its Internet division site, MSN, available to outside software developers as it takes on Google Inc. in the Web-based information and services market. Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, is encouraging software developers to write programs that tap into MSN, hoping such programs will increase the number of...

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15 September 2005

Keeping Journalists Safer: What Can Be Done

Nearly five years after five major television organisations agreed on a policy to keep journalists safer, journalists are being killed in ever-increasing numbers. Among the latest was Waleed Khaled, 35, a Reuters Television soundman who was killed Aug. 28 in Baghdad, and Steven Vincent, an American freelancer in Iraq who was shot to death in Basra Aug. 3. Around the world, more journalists and...

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15 September 2005

NBC, CNN to Open Bureaus in New Orleans

NEW YORK (AP) - Anticipating that the Hurricane Katrina recovery will be a big story for months to come, both NBC and CNN said Thursday they are opening full-time news bureaus in New Orleans. NBC News said its bureau will operate out of space at WDSU-TV, its local affiliate, and will help the network and MSNBC originate shows in the city. Brian Williams anchored the "NBC Nightly News" from there...

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15 September 2005

Katrina Shakes Global Faith in U.S.

Readers and commentators from abroad are watching images of chaos and despair in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and are wondering how a country so mighty could have fallen so far. "Nature Lays a Superpower Low" reads the headline of an editorial in The Hindu, a daily in Chennai. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, commenting in another article in the paper, writes that Katrina exposed "squalor that would...

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15 September 2005

Katrina-coverage, American-style

Personally, I'm not very fond of the American media. On the one hand, there are the frivolous, superficial television news shows, with their low standards of newsworthiness and their Hollywood-driven agenda, which forces interviewees to compress complex messages into five-second sound bites. American newspapers, on the other hand, take themselves too seriously: grey, unwieldy and laboriously...

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