News

Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell won the bidding for newspaper publisher and broadcaster Tribune Co. Tribune, owner of leading US newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Ch icago Tribune, Newsday and the Baltimore Sun, had been pushing Zell to raise his bid, which had been close to $34 a share, Reuters reported. Zell is supporting the transaction with a $315 million investment. Tribune...

The Newspaper Associaiton of America (NAA) has launched a trade campaign with the simultaneous publication of print and online ads that communicate to advertisers the value of the engaged audience delivered by today’s newspapers in all their forms. With the tagline, “Newspaper: The Multi-Medium,” the campaign communicates to media planners and buyers that the brand power, content and credibility...

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats made against Dinko Gruhonjic, head of the Vojvodina branch of the independent news agency BETA and chairman of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, by a local neo-Nazi group. The threats, which were posted on a neo-Nazi Web site this week, stem from Gruhonjic’s coverage of National Formation, a neo-Nazi group based...

The 60-day prison sentence passed by the high court of the central province of Cotopaxi on Nelson Fueltala, the correspondent of the La Gaceta daily newspaper and Radio Latacunga, for insulting the mayor of Pujilí was disproportionate and liable to encourage self-censorship, Reporters Without Borders said today. “This court’s ruling is both grossly unjust and dangerous,” the press freedom...

Reporters Without Borders expressed outrage today at the arrest of a journalist working for a privately-owned Zimbabwean daily published outside the country and the hospitalisation of the former editor of the now-closed paper The Daily News, after he was beaten in prison, and called for an international campaign to stop the government’s violence. “The government is stepping up its years-long...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. newspaper industry is pressing hard to show advertisers that its products are worth every dollar despite bleak financial forecasts, with data released on Monday showing a rise in Web site visitors. The number of unique visitors per month to U.S. newspaper Web sites rose 15 percent to 57.3 million, or a third of all Internet users, in the second half of 2006, the...

NEW YORK: Eight former staffers of the Santa Barbara News-Press, who claim they were illegally fired in the latest dispute at the embattled paper, have launched a new Web site of their own, where they plan to cover local stories until they get their jobs back. Dubbed "Santa Barbara Newsroom," the ad-free site, at www.santabarbaranewsroom.com, launched Monday with stories about local issues such as...

Web news search site Topix, owned by three top US newspaper publishers Monday began recruiting users to report local news that traditional outlets do not sufficiently cover. Topix’s platform addresses the pent-up demand for local news in towns and cities across the country where traditional news media alone cannot cover enough of the hyper-local events and issues that matter most to neighbours. As...

Dakar, Senegal 04/02 - The France-based Panafrican Press Association (APPA) will on 9 April launch a new service called `APPA-ECO` to dispatch economic news from companies and institutions on Africa. "APPA-ECO will help African journalists and journalists in charge of Africa in the Western media to receive free of charge information of enterprises operating in Africa. This service will be run...

(CMFR/IFEX) - For failing to defend himself in court because he could not afford a lawyer, a radio broadcaster from Davao has been convicted of libel and is now serving time in jail. Davao is a province located south of Manila. Libel is a criminal offence in the Philippines. Alex Adonis, who used to be a commentator of the radio station dxMF Bombo Radyo (Booming Radio), was convicted of libel by...