News

10 January 2006

Google takes overseas market share from Yahoo!

Bear Stearns maintained an "outperform" rating on Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) after industry data indicated that the Internet search giant increased its overseas lead on rivals Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) unit MSN. Citing data culled by comScore, Bear Stearns said Google's international market share in November rose to 71.3% from...

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10 January 2006

Time Warner gets $300 mln Google promotion credits

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc. has received about $300 million in promotion credits from Google Inc. as part of its previously announced deal, a top executive said on Tuesday. "Google has given us promotional dollar credits to drive traffic to the tune of about $300 million," Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner chief operating officer, told investors on Tuesday at an investors conference. AOL can...

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10 January 2006

When corporate bloggers take on their bosses

COMPANIES FROM GENERAL MOTORS TO Google have corporate blogs these days, but corporations that give bloggers license to completely speak their minds remain rarities. For that reason, when Microsoft's resident blogger Robert Scoble penned a scathing critique of his boss last week for pulling the plug on a controversial Chinese Web log, the blogosphere took notice. In a post last Tuesday, Scoble...

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10 January 2006

Fired Bangkok Post editor sues to get job back

(Thai Press Reports Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Section: General News - Fired 'Bangkok Post' editor says cousin of top TRT figure fed him information; sues for Bt13m damages and return of job, The Nation reports. A former Bangkok Post news editor on December 20 named a cousin of a government figure as the anonymous source who had told him in August about dangerous cracks in the runways at...

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10 January 2006

CSM journalist's abduction in Iraq: A statement from the Christian Science Monitor

Jill Carroll, a freelance writer currently on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor, was abducted in western Baghdad on Saturday morning, local time. Her Iraqi interpreter was fatally wounded in the kidnapping. Her Iraqi driver escaped unharmed. At this point, no one has claimed responsibility. Jill, 28, is an established journalist who has been reporting from the Middle East for Jordanian...

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9 January 2006

Stopping the presses is no easy matter

After the pounding from nature the world took in 2005, our hearts were ripe for the "miners miracle" in West Virginia. We wanted to believe it. And there seemed to be ample reason to do so. Before I went to bed Tuesday night, I heard on the 11 o'clock news that 12 of the 13 miners were alive; their loved ones were euphoric. My heart went out to the family of the man who had not survived, but I...

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9 January 2006

Miracle happened, but not on deadline

Sometimes, even journalists want to believe in miracles. We are, after all, unfailingly human, which might help explain why we got it so wrong last week. In hindsight, there appears to be no professional excuse for the lapse in reporting that led so many television stations and newspapers to run stories declaring that 12 of the 13 men trapped in a West Virginia coal mine had been found alive. A...

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9 January 2006

Will the Media Forget Tragedy in the Mines?

The sad but safe assumption about the Sago miners is that when their funerals are over, we will forget about them, their mourning families, and the working conditions that still threaten so many like them. We will forget and, with occasional exceptions in the pages of liberal magazines and daily newspapers, we won’t be reminded until the next mesmerizing catastrophe shows up on the cable channels...

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9 January 2006

Mine Disaster's Terrible Irony: A Failure to Look Deeper

It was the most heart-rending and humiliating botch of a life-and-death story in modern memory, yet most journalists, naturally, aren't blaming themselves. It was everyone else's fault, they say. We just published and broadcast what we were told, and it turned out to be wrong. Tragically wrong, as in the Washington Post headline in Wednesday's late editions: "12 Found Alive in W.Va. Coal Mine." Or...

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9 January 2006

First Pet Peeve of '06: Media Adulation About 'Innovative' Media Delivery

Already I know what my biggest pet peeve of 2006 is going to be: media-about-media coverage that automatically celebrates, as a good and interesting development, the launch of yet more subscription and pay-per-use portable media options -- like last week’s announcement from Starz about its new Vongo service. What we’re supposed to be excited about is getting "Unlimited Starz Movie Downloads" for...

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