News

(PPF/IFEX) - Cable networks in major cities of Pakistan's southern Sindh province suspended the transmissions of three leading television news channels for six hours on 5 May 2007. The transmissions of Geo, ARY and Aaj television networks were suspended in Karachi, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Sukkur and Mirpurkhas. Despite its denials, it is widely believed that transmissions were suspended at the...

While most newspapers are trying to stake bigger claims online, one new publication is pulling material off the Internet to be printed in ink. John Wilpers, editor in chief of BostonNow, a free weekday daily introduced last month, said he wanted to fill the paper with items that local bloggers submitted to the BostonNow Web site. Last week, editors began culling posts and running excerpts next to...

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) is today protesting over the arrest of Radio Reporter in Afgoye district of Lower Shabelle region by local authorities. Journalist Hassan Mayow Hassan of Radio Shabelle was arrested Monday morning, 7 May 2007, by the police in Afgoye after the district commissioner ordered the police's action. The motivation behind the arrest was not officially...

New York, May 7, 2007—Brazilian journalist Luiz Carlos Barbon Filho, known for investigative reporting that exposed political corruption, was gunned down on Saturday evening in the southern state of São Paulo. The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Brazilian authorities today to thoroughly investigate the murder and bring those responsible to justice. “We offer our deepest condolences to...

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...