News

I'd like to think the reason so many people have been asking me if I have a blog is because they love my writing so much they just can't get enough. But it's more likely just another sign of how influential the form is becoming, particularly in the environmental world. Still, it has made me wonder if it's time for me to get on the bandwagon and start blogging. "Don't do it, man, it's a time suck,"...

WASHINGTON: An inquiry has found that an American public relations firm did not violate military policy by paying Iraqi news outlets to print positive articles, military officials said. The finding elevates to the Defense Department the decision on whether new rules are needed to govern such activities. The inquiry, which has not yet been made public, was ordered by General George Casey Jr., the...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A retired publisher of both The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News is now a paid consultant for a union-led attempt to buy several newspapers -- some of which are drawing interest from companies tied to Colorado. Bob Hall says a Los Angeles financier working with The Newspaper Guild hired him to represent the union, which includes journalists from newspapers and...

Swedish Foreign Minister Leila Freivalds resigned Tuesday after she was accused of lying about her role in the closing of a far-right Web site that solicited cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Meanwhile, Denmark's ambassador returned to Iran, about five weeks after violent protests over the cartoons forced the closure of the embassy in Teheran. The drawings, published in the Danish newspaper...

A judge has ordered an internet blogger to pay £10,000 in compensation after she accused a Parliamentary candidate of being a 'racist bigot' and 'sex offender' in a landmark case. Tracy Williams, from Oldham, Lancashire (North-West England), used an alias identity on her blog and also a chatroom. The decision was made earlier after the comments were made around April 2004 about a former...

The recent sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchy was one of those events that speak volumes about an entire industry. The newspaper business's long-term, seemingly inexorable decline is an old story that is hardly fodder for stop-the-presses, page-one play anymore. But in the same way that every misstep made by Ford or General Motors prompts a rash of stories and hand-wringing about the U.S. auto...

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- A majority -- 57% -- of teens aged 13-17 now have a cellphone, but that’s far below the 80% of adults 18-plus who own a phone. Still, for a glimpse of the future, look no further than Generation Wireless. Cellphone users aged 13-17 are connected to their phones by ear, eye and touch like no other age group. They are far more likely than other demographic groups to use a...

MARCH 21, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Google Inc. got hit with a lawsuit on Friday by a Web publisher that alleges it has suffered significant financial harm because its site got dropped from the search engine's index. KinderStart.com Inc., which operates a Web site for parents of children under 7 years old, filed its lawsuit as a class action in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of...

NEW YORK: During the recent controversy surrounding Dan Froomkin's blog at The Washington Post, editors not only decided to clearly label his column "opinion" but also to make an effort to hire a conservative blogger to balance his alleged liberal slant. Today, the Post launched the result: A new blog called "Red America," created by Ben Domenech, co-founder of RedState, a popular community blog...

New Delhi, March. 21 (PTI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, today assured journalists and non-journalists employees of newspapers and news agencies that the Government would look into their demand for setting up of new Wage Boards. Singh gave an assurance in this regard to a delegation of Confederation of Newspaper and News Agency Employees Organisations, the umbrella body of apex media trade...