News

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Faced with declining circulation, many U.S. newspapers are trying to engage readers by allowing them to respond to news stories online. But the anonymity of the Internet lets readers post obscenities and racist hate speech that would never be allowed in the printed paper. Consider one reader comment this month on the Web site of Nashville's daily newspaper, The Tennessean...

New York, April 25, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists journalist is gravely concerned about the recent arrest of Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, an award-winning journalist and writer. Thuy was taken into custody Saturday at her residence, where she was already being held under house arrest, according to news reports. She was charged with violating Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code, which...

Kolkata-based media house ABP, which publishes Ananda Bazaar Patrika and The Telegraph, is in talks with Swedish media firm Metro International to launch its free urban newspaper, Metro, in the country. ABP is reported to be in the advanced stage of talks with the group, which is expected to take 26 per cent equity stake in the venture. ABP Managing Director Pramath Raj Sinha refused to comment on...

ISLAMABAD: Strongly condemning the show cause notice issued by Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to Private TV channel, Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) has termed it attack on electronic media. ARD has submitted adjournment motion in the National Assembly to discuss the issue in the House. Parliamentary Secretary of Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarian Azhar...

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. passed Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. to become the owner of the world's most-visited group of Web sites for the first time, a research firm said. Google's sites had 528 million visitors worldwide in March, a 13 percent gain from the same month a year ago, ComScore Inc. said today. Microsoft had 527 million, while Yahoo had 476.3 million, the researcher said...

The world's biggest and best-known online encyclopedia is going offline for its latest offering. The Wikimedia Foundation, the group behind user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia, has announced it intends to produce a CD of about 2,000 of its articles. The CD will bear the moniker "Wikipedia Version 0.5" and cover areas such as the arts and sciences and subjects such as geography. It will come with...

MPA member blogs now stand at 400. Not to be outdone, 75 percent of the nation’s largest newspapers currently blog on business related topics. The Magazine Publishers of America has released an online listing of the approximately 400 blogs established by its publishing members. Although there are 32 publishers—among them Fortune, Forbes, Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics...

New York, April 24, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the brutal attack on Uzeyir Jafarov, an editor and reporter for the Azeri-language daily Gündalik Azarbaycan, in the capital, Baku. Two unidentified men beat Jafarov as he was leaving the newspaper’s office Friday night, according to the journalist and international press reports. Earlier that day, Jafarov had testified in...

Islamabad - As Pakistan weathers its seventh week of crisis over the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, state authorities are tightening the screws on local media during their tenacious coverage of the highly politicized case. Licences for new media projects have been suspiciously withheld, lucrative government advertising contracts pulled in the wake of critical reporting, television...

The Denver Post on Monday extended voluntary-buyout offers to about 90 newsroom workers in a move aimed at trimming costs amid an industrywide downturn. The Post will accept as many as 37 buyouts by early June. The paper currently has about 268 workers in its newsroom. The offers come one year after The Post eliminated more than a dozen newsroom positions, also through voluntary buyouts...