Americas

The New York Times Co is closing its quarterly sports magazine, Play, to cut costs and focus on other Sunday insert magazines such as its weekly travel publication, T, in a falling ad market. The New York Times reported: [ Link] Mark Bryant, the editor of Play since its inception, said he was told last week that the issue published last month would be the final one, “and I started letting the...

The Jornal Atual newspaper, based in the inland town of Itaguaí in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state, has suffered a significant reduction in its distribution. According to the newspaper's owner, Marcelo Godinho, 15 street newsstand vendors have refused since November 6 to put the newspaper out for sale to their customers. All of the newsstands in question belong to the same owner, known as "Rodolfo"...

The Argentine Journalism Forum (Foro de Periodismo Argentino, FOPEA) has condemned the assault on journalist Fabricio Glibota on November 14. The incident took place while Glibota was carrying out his work in the city of Resistencia, the capital of the northern province of Chaco, and is one of the worst attacks against the press to occur in Argentina this year. Glibota, a journalist for Radio...

A group of soldiers, accompanied by police agents, a prosecutor and a representative from the transport and communications ministry burst into the headquarters of a Peruvian radio station, cancelled its broadcasting signal and seized all of its equipment. The incident took place on November 12 in Tacna, southern Peru, which was declared to be in a state of emergency on November 4 after the region...

Cost pressures and plunging share prices have forced Canadian publisher and broadcaster CanWest Global Communications Corp. to slash 560 jobs—about five per cent of its workforce—as the company faces a rougher economy and more competition, Canadian Press has reported. The company, which employs about 10,500 people in Canada, said the cuts would save $61 million a year. Some details: [ Link] "We...

Journalists from various media outlets in Ecuador have protested the new security measures that have been implemented since October 22 by the National Assembly's Legislative and Auditing Commission, better known as the "Congresillo". According to the new regulations, journalists may only occupy the press room and cannot access the offices of the General Secretariat, the Presidency or any upper...

Veteran Mexican crime reporter Armando Rodríguez was shot to death Thursday morning while in his car in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. An unidentified assailant shot Rodríguez, 40, a reporter for the local daily El Diario, at least eight times with a 9mm weapon, according to Mexican news reports and CPJ interviews. Rodríguez was sitting...

Judicial authorities in Argentina have ordered the release of Gregorios Ríos, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting the murder of José Luiz Cabezas, a photographer killed in January 1997, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reported. "We shall never forget Cabezas," said Celso Schroeder, president of the Federation of Latin America and Caribbean Journalists (FEPALC)...

A magazine editor in Colombia is facing a prison term after a judge reviewing a complaint against the magazine deemed two published corrections as insufficient, according to the Bogotá-based Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). In spite of the fact that "Semana" magazine has issued two corrections concerning information it published on allegations about the influence a particular...

Media giant EW Scripps Co is laying off around 400 employees at its newspapers. The company has not yet elaborated on where jobs would be cut, but the Knoxville News Sentinel has announced that about 50 jobs, including 13 in the newsroom, would be cut at properties of the KNS Media Group subsidiary of Cincinnati-based Scripps. The move affects about 10 per cent of the KNS work force, according to...