2005-2014

A SURVEY of six mainstream local media outlets has found that 75 per cent of journalists, photographers and camera crew do not feel free to write, shoot or edit news as they find it. The survey was carried out two weeks ago by former Fiji Times night and deputy editor Sophie Foster. She presented the findings at a Media Freedom Day seminar at the University of the South Pacific last week. She said...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Kraft, Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola are among the marketers that are prepared to stop spending in magazines if they don't get issue-by-issue circulation guarantees. Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print investment and activation at MediaVest, insists that magazines should make issue-by-issue circulation guarantees to marketers. Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Facing revenue and circulation declines, the Star Tribune said Monday it would eliminate 145 positions, or about 7 percent of its work force. The cuts will include about 50 positions in the newsroom, the paper said, and a voluntary buyout program has been proposed to the Newspaper Guild, which represents newsroom workers. The paper said about two-thirds of the jobs to be...

Two former top Dow Jones & Co. executives who have long associations with the controlling Bancroft family say they oppose News Corp.'s $5 billion offer to take over the company, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. In a sharply worded statement that questions the motives behind News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch's pursuit of the company, James H. Ottaway Jr., a large shareholder, warned that...

One has to wonder how many of the newspaper industry's current problems are self-inflicted. Take free news. News has become ubiquitous, free, and as a result, a commodity. Anytime you are trying to sell something that becomes a commodity, you have lost much of the value in providing that product or service. Not many years ago if someone wanted to find out what was in the newspaper they had to buy...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Kraft, Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola are among the marketers that are prepared to stop spending in magazines if they don't get issue-by-issue circulation guarantees. Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print investment and activation at MediaVest, insists that magazines should make issue-by-issue circulation guarantees to marketers. Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print...

May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sold its shares in Fairfax Media Ltd., six months after buying the stake to thwart any attempt to take over its nearest Australian rival. The sale comes just days after Australian-born Murdoch bid $5 billion for Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. News Corp. sold its 7.5 percent stake for A5.07 a share, Fairfax said in a statement...

May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer interrupted a Hawaiian vacation to call his top Internet ad man, Yusuf Mehdi, on April 16 after Google Inc. announced its $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc. Mehdi says Ballmer offered money, personnel, acquisitions or whatever he needed to fight the threat that buying Web- advertising company DoubleClick will advance...

Srinagar, May 6: Unidentified gunmen in civvies, suspected to be personnel of Special Operations Group, abducted and beat up a prominent journalist and human rights activist of Doda district, Naseer Khora, on Saturday evening. Police has registered a case. “I was picked up by gunmen in civvies near Ram Munshi Bagh Police Station around 8:30 pm. They bundled me into a white Mahindra vehicle and...

New Delhi: In a one-off case, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government has the power to ban or forfeit any publication that endangers public order, even if it means restricting the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. “Government has the power to confiscate material, which contain references that could spark violence,” the Bench comprising Justices B P Singh and H S...