2005-2014

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A sharp drop in classified advertising sales brought on by free Internet listings and a cooling real estate market helped push U.S. newspaper publishers' financial results lower in the first quarter. Gannett Co. Inc., New York Times Co. and Journal Register Co. reported drops in revenue and profit on Thursday, while Tribune Co. and Media GeneralInc. both swung to losses from a...

Students at Virginia Tech have objected to the widespread media coverage given to the videos, photographs and writings made by Cho Seung Hui in the days before and during Monday's massacre at the university, in which he killed 32 people and then himself. Planet Blacksburg, a news website maintained by students, announced last night that it would no longer publish Cho's name, while others...

COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lanka's top defence official summoned Britain's envoy Thursday after he expressed solidarity with an editor facing death threats, diplomats said. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse "invited" British high commissioner (ambassador) Dominick Chilcott to his tightly-guarded office at short notice Thursday, a high commission spokesman said. "They talked about the role of the...

A top defence official has issued a death threat against a Sri Lankan newspaper editor for reporting on military excesses and human rights abuses, journalists and a media rights group have said. Defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa being hugged by his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan President, after the former escaped an attack on his life last year. The defence secretary described...

The emergence of 24/7 television as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public’s news habits. But this has had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs. On average, today’s US citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public...

April 19, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The trial began today of an independent Uzbek journalist accused of charges stemming from her trip across the border to report on 2-year-old violence in eastern Uzbekistan. Umida Niyazova faces allegations of illegally crossing the border and carrying contraband, and fostering unrest with the help of foreign funding. Niyazova appeared briefly in a Tashkent courtroom...

CHICAGO: The Chicago Tribune has launched a community journalism Web site encouraging readers in nine suburbs to post their own unedited articles, photos and blogs. "This started with the question of how can we make the paper more relevant to readers who continue to live further and further away from the center city," said Ted Biedron, president of the Tribune division that designed the site. The...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a government decision to withhold state advertising from the Standard Group media, which include The Standard daily newspaper and Kenya Television Network (KTN). “The culmination of a war of words in which the police and courts have at times been enlisted, this decision is absurd and dangerous,” the press freedom organisation said. “A state advertising...

A reporter for a government-run radio station was found dead with a gunshot wound to his chin in the northern Philippines on Wednesday, police said. The body of Carmelo Palacios, 41, a reporter for Radyo ng Bayan in northern Nueva Ecija province, was found sprawled in front of a roadside farm in the township of Santa Rosa, 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of Manila, said Chief Superintendent Ismael...

Dream journals being kept by students in a college psychology class have provided researchers with a unique look at how people experienced the events of 9/11, including the influence that television coverage of the World Trade Centre attacks had on people’s levels of stress. Reported in the April 2007 issue of journal Psychological Science, the study data foud that for every hour of television...