2005-2014

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has ordered the release of two journalists accused of defaming Islam, but says they must stand trial for blasphemy. The men, who write for the weekly newspaper Aftab, were arrested last week after the publication of an article headlined Holy Fascism, which attacked what it described as "crimes committed in Islam's name." It also criticised some members of the...

International pressure is mounting on the Afghan authorities over the arrest of two journalists accused of defaming Islam in the country. Both the United Nations and Reporters Without Borders have voiced concerns about the Kabul supreme court's order to close the weekly Afghan newspaper Aftab and arrest its editor, Sayeed Mirhassan Mahdawi, and his Iranian deputy on counts of blasphemy. A column...

Reading a print newspaper every day involves a standard exchange: Before wading through the stories, customers buy the paper. There's nothing standard, however, about reading news online. Everybody who wants to read the Wall Street Journal's cyberspace edition (online.wsj.com/public/us) must pay, whether or not they're print subscribers. At the Albuquerque Journal (www. abqjournal.com), print...

We've been here before. Too often. There was Ruth Shalit, the young New Republic writer who was Washington journalism's It Girl in the mid-'90s, until she imploded with a couple of high-profile plagiarism episodes and a powerful but error-riddled assault on the Washington Post's approach to race. Then there was Stephen Glass, also of The New Republic, whose stories, packed with amazing, dead-on...

The angels of the public interest, with large pink wings and glittering halos, descended on Michael Powell this fall, five years after he had, somewhat sarcastically, first invoked them. That was back in April 1998, when Powell was speaking to a Las Vegas gathering of lawyers. Only a few months had passed since his appointment to one of the five spots on the Federal Communications Commission, and...

Twenty-four of us had come together on a Saturday in January to form a public journalism society. About midway through this charter meeting of the Public Journalism Network, Chris Peck, editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, put his hands a foot apart and announced in somber terms that public journalism is on the verge of being "book-ended," with his right hand representing the movement's start...

New York, May 27, 2003– Just before noon on April 8, 2003, journalists covering the battle of Baghdad from the balconies of the Palestine Hotel looked on as the turret of a U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank positioned about three quarters of a mile away on the Al-Jumhuriya Bridge turned toward them and unleashed a single round. The shell struck a 15th-floor balcony of the hotel, fatally wounding veteran...

Close on the heels of the personality-led campaign launched in February this year, Mathrubhumi has launched a new campaign aimed squarely at driving its circulation up. "While the earlier campaign was to demonstrate the equity and trust enjoyed by the newspaper, this time we are directly working on driving circulation," says Sajan Abraham, managing director, Maitri Advertising, the agency handling...

One could call it the ripple effect. Dainik Bhaskar announces its imminent entry into Ahmedabad, Gujarat; old-timer and regional player Gujarat Samachar unleashes a revamp exercise and now, Sandesh, the third angle in the triune is readying itself for battle royale. The 80-year old paper with a readership of 49.64 lakh, according to round 10 of the Indian Readership Survey or IRS, has plans to...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the threat issued yesterday by the militant group Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen against journalists working "against the freedom struggle" in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The organization is one of more than a dozen armed groups fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan. The rebel group's statement was...