Americas

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. newsstands sold fewer magazines in the first half of 2006 compared with a year ago, data showed on Monday, as some markets were saturated with too many offerings while others had to compete with the Web. Newsstand, or “single-copy,” sales of magazines fell more than 4 percent to about 48.7 million copies in the first half of 2006, according to preliminary figures provided...

A Florida newspaper has increased readership 20 percent without spending a dime on printing or distribution. How? By offering the entire paper online for free. Publisher Craig Swill wanted to get more people reading the Boca Raton (Fla.) News — and its ads — yet avoid any increase in the printing and distribution costs which already squeeze newspapers. He found a solution in the PDF sent by the...

One of several journalists sent packing by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo Naval Base last week has come out with her story of what happened when she and others were forced to leave. Carol J. Williams of The Los Angeles Times wrote in Sunday morning’s edition of the newspaper. The reporter complained of what she called “a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an...

More than 1,000 journalists have visited Guantanamo Bay since the U.S. military began locking up suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants there 4 1/2 years ago. But access has been severely restricted: Journalists could not talk to detainees, they had to be accompanied by a military escort and their photos were censored. Now, the Pentagon has shut down access entirely - at least temporarily -...

NEW YORK: Ann Cooper, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, is leaving the organization to run the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s broadcast department, according to a memo from CPJ chair Paul Steiger. The memo, first posted on the Romenesko Web site Wednesday, says Cooper will keep the CPJ post she has held for eight years until the end of June. “CPJ...

MEXICO CITY, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A Mexican governor refused to resign on Wednesday in a scandal over taped conversations in which he and a business magnate appear to discuss jailing and intimidating a journalist for writing a damaging book. Gov. Mario Marin of Puebla state told a news conference the audio tapes implicating him in a plot against Cancun journalist Lydia Cacho were false. “There is...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Mexican federal authorities to take charge of investigating attempts to intimidate crime reporter Claudia Padilla Pacheco of the local daily Correo in Celaya (in the central state of Guanajuato) after she wrote two investigative reports about the alleged implication of local police in criminal activity. AT THE CORREO: Correo's Caludia Padilla exposed a...

The 1960s was the “anything goes” decade; a time when LSD, hippies, rock ‘n’ roll and free love were youth’s reactions to the assassinations of its leaders and a war in Vietnam. It was a time when a few journalists wanted to be hip and cover the cultural revolution from the inside. They believed that the standard method of reporting — “get the facts, get both sides, and keep your opinions to...

Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the corporate media of the United States (US) is covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church, media research organisation Project Censored has said. According to Prof Peter Phillips, director, Project Censored, a press release on these...

More than 60 former journalists of the Knight Ridder group have volunteered to nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board to reassert John Knight’s creed. In a widely-circulated "Open Letter from Knight Ridder Alumni", they said they would not remain silent anymore, and would support and counsel only corporate leadership that restores to Knight Ridder newspapers the resources to do excellent...