News

16 October 2006

Chief of Russian state news agency knifed to death

Anatoly Voronin, 55, Tass's business manager, died "from stab and slash wounds", a spokeswoman for the Moscow prosecutor's office said. The business chief of Russian state news agency Itar-Tass was found knifed to death at his flat in central Moscow on Monday, but prosecutors said the killing could be linked to a personal dispute. Anatoly Voronin, 55, Tass's business manager, died "from stab and...

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16 October 2006

Wikipedia founder plans rival

One of the founders of Wikipedia is days away from launching a rival to the collaborative internet encyclopaedia, in an attempt to bring a more orderly approach to organising knowledge online. Wikipedia – which is available to be written and edited by anyone on the internet – is one of the most visible successes of mass collaboration on the web, with many of its 1.4m articles appearing high in...

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16 October 2006

Blogger stays in prison, defying grand jury order

Blogger and anarchist Josh Wolf, spending his 57th day in federal prison today for refusing to surrender video he shot of a violent San Francisco protest, is well on his way to becoming the longest-jailed journalist in U.S. history. To the government, the 24-year-old San Franciscan is hindering a federal grand jury investigation into serious crimes -- an attack on a police officer who suffered a...

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16 October 2006

Military refuses to give more information on AP photog detained in Iraq

The Pentagon is brushing off a request for more information and a decision on an Associated Press photographer held for six months in Iraq without formal charges. In a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, does not provide details about why Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein remains at a U.S. run prison camp. The letter repeats the military’s long...

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15 October 2006

Is 'readership' ready for prime time?

(October 15, 2006) -- Prudential equity research analyst Steven Barlow released his fourth comprehensive study on circulation in mid-September. The report mainly charted the progress in cutting other-paid circulation — a category that has been under intense scrutiny thanks to a renewed focus on so-called "quality circ." But Barlow and his team also weighed in on the subject of readership, a metric...

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15 October 2006

On Advertising: Blogs give PR new job

LONDON: To Steve Rubel, senior vice president at the public relations firm Edelman, there is a "conversation gap" on the Internet between America and the rest of the world. Like Americans, Europeans and Asians have become fervent bloggers. But many of them contribute to U.S.- based sites, or to local-language blogs that are fragmented and obscure. Why should marketers care about this? Corporate...

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15 October 2006

Great Indian Media War gets hotter

New Delhi, Oct 15 (IANS) The 'Great Indian Media War' is set to get hotter and bloodier, with two of the country's biggest players and visceral rivals joining hands to produce a common city-centric newspaper to ward off newer rivals threatening their decades-old dominance. Industry insiders have reacted to the "strange" alliance between The Times of India (TOI) group and The Hindustan Times (HT)...

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15 October 2006

Killing old-media messengers shows the value of reporting

Over the weekend, at almost the same time the world was informed that Google was vying to pay US$1.65 billion for YouTube, a two-year-old video-sharing Web site, famed Russian journalist Asnna Politkovskaya was gunned down in Moscow. Politkovskaya covered human-rights abuses in Chechnya. She was also a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, and Russian authorities consider her death...

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14 October 2006

Afghan gunmen seize Italian journalist

KABUL (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped an Italian photojournalist in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, accusing him of spying, an Afghan news agency reported. The Pajhwok agency named the journalist simply as Gabriele and reported a call to his Cmobile phone had been answered by someone who said: "We are the Taliban and we have abducted the foreigner on charges of spying." The Italian online newspaper...

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13 October 2006

British inquest rules ITN reporter unlawfully killed by US troops

New York, October 13, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the finding of a British inquest that ITN journalist Terry Lloyd was unlawfully killed by U.S. troops in southern Iraq three years ago. CPJ called on the U.S. military to reopen its own investigation into the shooting. A coroner in Oxford ruled today that Lloyd, a veteran correspondent with Britain's Independent...

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