News

When Time Inc. killed off Teen People last July but decided to continue publishing it online, the move made sense to some observers, given teen media usage habits. Nearly a year later, though, the site's audience size has dwindled to 218,000 uniques, according to comScore Media Metrics, and by the end of this month, TeenPeople.com will be absorbed by People.com. Other magazines, however, continue...

April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Readers were the first to abandon U.S. newspapers. Then advertisers and investors. Now analysts are joining the exodus. Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Lauren Rich Fine left this month after 19 years covering the newspaper industry. Last month, Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Christa Sober Quarles dropped coverage of newspaper stocks. John Morton has stopped writing his industry...

Reporters Without Borders expressed shock today at the “brutal murder” of the correspondent of the weekly paper Haïti Progrès, Johnson Edouard, in the northwestern city of Gonaïves on 12 April. “He may have been killed because of his work, the press freedom organisation said, noting that “Haiti is still one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the Americas.” Edouard was also a local...

The kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC's Gaza reporter, has shocked the community of foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also having a devastating impact on the coverage of the story. In the month since he was abducted from the street outside his office, I have not been to Gaza once. The same is true for many of my colleagues who are members of the Foreign Press...

A US soldier facing trial in absentia next week in Italy for shooting dead an Italian hostage negotiator and wounding a journalist at a road block in Baghdad has justified the shooting. Mario Lozano of the US Army’s 69th Infantry Regiment told the New York Post in his first major interview since the 2005 incident that when confronted with the vehicle moving at speed towards his checkpoint he did...

The Afghanistan government has ordered a TV station to suspend broadcasts of Al-Jazeera’s English-language programmes, the station’s director said Tuesday. A statement from Lemar TV said the Ministry of Information and Culture, which oversees media in Afghanistan, did not provide reasons for the order. The station complied, but contested the order before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the...

Reporters Without Borders condemned a hand-grenade attack early today on the Belgrade home of journalist Dejan Anastasijevic, who covers war crimes and underworld activity for the independent weekly paper Vreme. The journalist and his wife, who were sleeping in the house, were not hurt but windows were smashed and cars parked outside were damaged. “He and his family could have been harmed,” the...

Carlos Sanchez and his newsroom at the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald faced an interesting challenge: how to sell the paper in three seconds or less. That was how Publisher Dan Savage's call to push single-copy sales evolved, said Sanchez, editor of the 39,000-circulation daily. Savage originally challenged the staff to pretend a row of newsboxes stood across the street from the newspaper office. How...

April 12, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese authorities has expelled the BBC Correspondent from the country. The ministry of interior accused him of hostile reporting, described as part of the western media propaganda against Khartoum. The BBC correspondent in Sudan, Jonah Fisher, was served with an expulsion letter from the Sudan’s ministry of interior on March 25 indicating that he should leave the...

April 13, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Prominent Iranian journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi has challenged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in an open letter in which he questioned why criticism of the supreme leader's actions and decisions is banned in Iran. Zeidabadi also asked Khamenei why Iranians should share his view on the nuclear issue. The journalist also expressed regret that those who favor flexibility on that...