International

Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of Egypt’s Al-Dustour newspaper, has been awarded the 2008 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) that honours an editor or publisher in the Arab region. The prize, which is made in memory of Gebran Tueni, the Lebanese publisher and WAN Board Member who was killed by a car bomb in Beirut on December 12, 2005, was presented...

The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) has created an annual award for press freedom champions, the Dana Bullen Press Freedom Advocacy Prize, in honour of the organisation's first Executive Director. The committee also announced that the first prize would be bestowed on veteran free press activist Leonard R Sussman, Senior Scholar of Freedom House and its Executive Director for 21 years (1967-88...

Cuban journalist Ricardo González Alfonso has been chosen by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) as “2008 Journalist of the Year” for helping an independent press to survive in Cuba. After challenging the state’s monopoly of news and information, González was arrested on March 18, 2003 along with 26 other dissident journalists during the crackdown known as the “Black Spring.” Accused of being “in the...

More Internet journalists are jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, released Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that 45 per cent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Online journalists represent the largest professional category for the first time

Google Inc has opened an online photo gallery that will feature millions of images from LIFE magazine's archives that have never been seen by the public before. The new service at http://images.google.com/hosted/life debuted Tuesday with about 2 million photos. Google plans to scan all 10 million photos from LIFE's library so they can be viewed on any computer with an Internet connection. About 97...

The Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) has launched a Justice Denied Campaign website which will carry stories meant to sound the alarm, and encourage those with the power to take action to do so. The campaign highlights the cases of 10 journalists from different regions of the world who have been silenced by imprisonment or physical attack, including murder. For them, justice has...

The year 2009 will be one of disruption, displacement, and disaggregation for newsmedia companies. Structural trends that have been building for the past decade will be accelerated in an economic downturn whose precise magnitude is still unknown as of this writing, says a report from the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA). The year 2009 will hinge on the economy, the migration of

Morocco has banned an issue of French magazine L'Express International, claiming it insults Islam in articles exploring the relationship between that religion and Christianity. Algerian and Tunisian authorities followed suit three days after the October 31 Moroccan decision. Moroccan Information Minister Khalid Naciri said Sunday that he had no choice but to ban the current issue because of the...

Sami al-Haj of Sudan and Shakeman Mugari of Zimbabwe have been awarded the 2008 International Press Freedom Awards for extraordinary courage and overcoming tremendous odds to report the news. The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), which gives away these awards, has also decided to acknowledge Jim Poling of Canada with the Vox Libera Award for his long-standing commitment to freedom...

Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and US freelancer Nicholas Schmidle have been named the winners of the 7th annual Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. Anas and Schmidle beat dozens of other reporters around the world with their entries selected by a panel of international judges which included Ben Brown BBC TV Special Correspondent, Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times, Roy...