2005-2014

THE NEW YORK TIMES CAUGHT my eye last week with its short August 5 editorial, "Measuring the Blogosphere." Pegged to Technorati's recent "State of the Blogosphere" report - which said 80,000 new blogs are created every day, with some 14.2 million in existence already -- the editorial essentially conceded the arrival of blogging. While the old Gray Lady's editorial revelation is rather late in the...

Hostilities flared this week between the two best-known blog networks after comScore released a blog readership study that was co-sponsored by Six Apart and blog network Gawker Media. The turmoil highlighted both the problems of panel-based media research and the increasingly high stakes of blog advertising. The report aims to measure the size and characteristics of the blog audience, as well as...

NEW YORK (AP) -- With its official-looking BBC News banner, the Web site looked real enough, but the sick tale it told seemed too preposterous to be true. "Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight," blared the headline. An article followed about a circus-like spectacle that went awry and resulted in many deaths. The page was a hoax, but it exploded across the Internet. Soon it was being...

WASHINGTON – Mainstream journalism is running scared. It's watching its audience numbers decline and its public trust numbers drop. Newspapers, magazines, and network television news have been shaken by major scandals. The media have seen the future and it is blogging. Or at least that's the story this year. "Mainstream journalism," however you want to define it, has been under siege so long it's...

WHEN celebrated ABC News lead anchor and host of the World News Tonight programme, Peter Jennings, passed away yesterday, after a battle with lung cancer, the world mourned him. He was one of the longest serving among prominent anchormen, having started his career in 1980 and carrying on famously till 2003. He appeared for the prime time news at 7 pm, and was part of a famous trio, the other two...

NEW DELHI, August 10: It is a classic case of small numbers driving big numbers � barely 5 per cent of urban Internet users in India drive 42 per cent of all online sales. No, things are not as bad as they may sound – two out of every five urban Internet user makes purchases online, and a quarter of the Internet users shop online regularly. Now for the big number � as many as 4.2 million people...

GKP and Panos are pleased to invite submissions for the 2005 "Reporting on the Information Society" awards. The topic for this year is "Where is the money for bridging the digital divide?" Four awards of $1,000 each will be made for the best journalism on this topic produced by journalists in developing and transition countries. The winners will also be invited to participate in the World Summit...

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has taken its row with Nielsen Media Research over the new US TV ratings system all the way to Capitol Hill, claiming black and Hispanic viewers are being undercounted. Nielsen, which tracks TV viewing throughout the US, has been replacing the paper diaries it has used since the 1950s with electronic people meters in the 10 largest local TV markets. Since Nielsen began...

Advertisers pay to reach the readers and that’s how newspapers – by acting as a bridge between the two – make their moolah. But what about their online editions? After all, no newspaper worth its masthead is without an online sibling. That online editions have not been deluged with ads so far has to do with several reasons, but the silver lining is that things are looking brighter with media...

DNA is still hiring at the top. Venkat B Rao, Executive Editor of ‘Today’, the afternoon newspaper from the India Today Group, has put in his papers after a three-year stint. He will be joining the recently launched paper as Associate Editor and will be based in Mumbai. Rao will be looking after the front page and city news in DNA. Confirming the appointment, DNA Editor Gautam Adhikari said, "I am...