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...
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...
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya will be psthumously awarded the prestigious 2007 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. This is the first time the honour has been bestowed posthumously in its 10-year history. Politkovskaya was killed in Moscow on October 7, 2006. Anna Politkovskaya Kavi Chongkittavorn, President of...
A free web portal to help both citizens and journalists create and responsibly operate community news sites launched Monday with an array of learning and resource modules contributed by a network of participants. The Knight Citizen News Network (KCNN) seeks to help build capacity for citizens who want to start their own news ventures and to open the doors to citizen participation for traditional...
COPENHAGEN: The Danish newspaper editor who chose to publish controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 was on Monday awarded a free press prize for his "determination and courage". The Danish-based Free Press Society awarded Flemming Rose the inaugural international Sappho Prize, which comes with 20,000 kroner ($3,568). The publication of the 12 cartoons in the daily Jyllands-Posten...
The Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism celebrate the best in freelance print journalism and local reporters who show great courage and commitment to reporting on controversial issues. Two $5,000 prizes are awarded each year, one to a local reporter covering local stories in a developing country or nation in transition, and the other to a freelance journalist covering international news...
Local news websites offering user-generated content are securing a valuable place in the media landscape and are likely to continue as important sources of community news, says a new report by US-based J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. The sites that really cook, such as Morris Publishing’s BlufftonToday.com, combine a style of in-town social networking among neighbours who might...
A Muslim man was today found guilty of stirring up racial hatred during a protest against the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. An Old Bailey jury convicted Abdul Saleem, from Poplar, east London, after a four-day trial. The 31-year-old BT engineer was remanded in custody for pre-sentence reports. He had denied using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with...
In a windowless office in central Bangalore, dozens of employees are arriving to work on the night shift. They are journalists employed by the world's biggest news agency, Reuters. Their job is to cover US financial news. And they are working overnight so that they can report company news live as it happens on the New York Stock Exchange - from India. Cost savings But why in the world is Reuters...
LONDON (AFP) - BBC staff are to stage a two-day strike next week in protest over work being outsourced to India. Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) at the BBC's television licensing headquarters in Bristol, southwest England, were to take industrial action on Monday and Tuesday, warning that the outsourcing could lead to hundreds of job losses. More than 100 workers were to strike...
