News

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia...

When people ask why I recently left The Wall Street Journal to join the Marines, I usually have a short answer. It felt like the time had come to stop reporting events and get more directly involved. But that's not the whole answer, and how I got to this point wasn't a straight line. It's a cliché that you appreciate your own country more when you live abroad, but it happens to be true. Living in...

When NBC newsman Reuven Frank started in television journalism more than 50 years ago, corporate sponsors commonly attached their names to programs -- even news broadcasts. Frank got his break in 1950 with a classic of the genre: "Camel News Caravan," the NBC evening news program sponsored entirely by Camel cigarettes. "We weren't allowed to show a live camel, because a Camel is a smooth cigarette...

Dick Parsons has no shortage of friends. This month, the affable chairman and chief executive of Time Warner has had a steady stream of phone calls from some of the world’s top corporate chiefs. heir message to him: we support you, even as Carl Icahn and Bruce Wasserstein team up to try to unseat you and break up the company you run. The messages come as Mr Icahn, who made billions of dollars as a...

SAN FRANCISCO - RSS ads appearing as individual feed items generate a 7 percent click-through rate (CTR), over nine times higher than ads displayed within content posts. That's according to a new study released today by RSS ad firm Pheedo, which compiled the research based upon its network of 8,000 publishers. "We're trying to find what's the perfect ad unit for RSS," Bill Flitter, Pheedo's VP of...

For a scribe, Gebran Tueni was shockingly high mannered. In his dapper suits, crisp shirts and designer ties, wearing a thin moustache that was always immaculately trimmed, he seemed to belong in a gentleman's club, not a newsroom. He didn't look the part of the bravest newspaperman in the Middle East. But after he was assassinated at the age of 48 this week in a car bombing that obliterated his...

(AP) Tens of thousands of Lebanese _ men and women, Christians and Muslims _ shouted insults at Syria on Wednesday in an outpouring of anger as yet another assassinated anti-Syrian campaigner was buried. Lebanon was brought to a halt by a general strike called in mourning for editor and lawmaker Gibran Tueni, who was killed along with two bodyguards Monday in a car bombing, but neighboring Syria...

CAIRO -- In the explosion that killed An Nahar publisher Gebran Tueni in Beirut Monday could be heard the echoes of a new battle being waged in the Middle East. It is a conflict that pits the old guard of Arab politics against the young Turks of the Arab media. Tueni's assassination is a twisted testament to the growing influence of Arab journalism -- just as the anti-Syrian backlash it has set...

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is awash in controversy. The imbroglio was touched off by an anonymously written biography entry that linked former USA Today Editor John Seigenthaler Sr. with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The writer, Brian Chase, has issued an apology for a prank he says went terribly awry. Seigenthaler, in a Nov. 29 USA Today...

JOHANNESBURG, 14 Dec 2005 (IRIN) - International media rights body Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned an arson attack at the premises of a pro-opposition weekly in the Seychelles. The attack took place on Friday last week and damaged the printing press of the weekly newspaper, Regar. Léonard Vincent of the RSF expressed concern, saying it was the first instance of a physical attack on...