News

A union representing US employees of Reuters Group Plc is mounting a legal challenge against outsourcing of many of their editorial jobs to Bangalore in India. An independent arbitrator will hear the Newspaper Guild of New York's charge that offshoring US-based editorial jobs violates its contract with Reuters. The arbitrator's decision will be legally binding. The case could take months to...

The Police Commissioner of Mumbai, A.N. Roy, has issued a circular to all police stations and other establishments within his Commissionerate not to give any information to journalists. As stunned crime reporters sought a meeting with the Deputy Chief Minister, R.R. Patil, the Opposition Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party assailed the Police Commissioner for taking a dictatorial step that would...

Not that long ago, you had to be a professional reporter to publish defective copy. Not any more. Thanks to blogs, the journalist monopoly on the wide-scale propagation of blunders, boo-boos, and bloopers has vanished. Now, complete amateurs can embarrass themselves before huge audiences. Bloggers demonstrated their skill at botching a story last month when a swarm of them accused the Washington...

Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and self-appointed champion of middle England, is considering launching a title in India. The group has been drawing up plans for the market since the beginning of the year. Associated executives who looked at the subcontinent 18 months ago were encouraged to look again by regulatory changes and marked growth in the urban Indian professional...

Search supremo Google is to gain a toehold in the emerging market of ‘video blogging’ after co-founder Larry Page this week vowed to archive online movie clips. Speaking to a conference in San Francisco, the internet boss said he would upload short visual clips in the next few days to the search site’s existing servers. He said that the experiment into video blogging – or vlogging - invites...

In a move that could spark off another political controversy, the Centre has brought a note before the cabinet seeking to allow 20 per cent foreign direct investment in private radio channels, a market hitherto protected for the domestic industry. The media sector has till now been closely guarded, with political parties divided over the extent to which FDI should be allowed in the print and...

LONDON - A radical revamp of The Independent, less than a year after it went fully tabloid, is set to incur the wrath of media agencies over fears it will lead to hikes in advertising rates. The overhaul, to be unveiled on April 12, will involve a design change from six to seven columns and convert the title into a one-section, compact newspaper. Review content will be folded into the main news...

"There are actually 7 million blogs being watched on this one site called Technorati. And it gives you an idea of what is going on. And there's so much out there. And it's so hard to keep track of it all. But if you take a look at a site like this it will break it down for you." -- Jacki Schechner, CNN's blog reporter, talking on "Inside Politics" Nothing could be weirder than the first time you...

Inaugurating Frames 2005, the annual conference on entertainment organised by industry body Ficci, Union information and broadcasting minister S. Jaipal Reddy made several policy announcements that were welcomed by various segments of the entertainment industry. The best news was for the radio industry, within which the private players are labouring under heavy licence fees. Reddy said the radio...

Diligent Media Corporation, the joint venture company of ZEE and Dainik Bhaskar groups, has sued Bennett, Coleman & Co. for Rs 100 crore in damages. The company has also asked for an unconditional apology for hijacking a teaser ad campaign of the group's yet to be launched English newspaper from Mumbai. Diligent Media Corporation has filed a civil suit in the Bombay High Court claiming that the...