Companies

Welcome to corporate America, journos! Reporters at The Washington Post will now be ranked with a multiple-choice job-performance assessment each year. Accompanying an annual written evaluation, each reporter will be described as: “frequently exceeds expectations,” “sometimes exceeds expectations,” “meets expectations,” “sometimes fails to meet expectations,” or “frequently does not meet...

Interesting things are happening in the world of Indian media. Unknown to newspaper readers and television viewers, ownership of media houses is stealthily passing into the hands of big corporate houses. Traditionally, newspaper groups had been owned by big companies like the Birlas, Sahu Jains and Dalmias, but the latest trend involves a quiet takeover of some established media companies through...

At the far end of Rafi Marg in New Delhi is located the United News of India (UNI) office. Surrounded by government offices, UNI, inconspicuously works from a colonial style bungalow. To the chagrin of its employees, UNI is known more for its canteen that serves inexpensive south Indian food and snacks, than for what it is – a national news agency. Here, everyone knows, legendary writers...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The largest union at Philadelphia's two biggest daily newspapers is planning to launch an online newspaper to compete with the company Web site if workers go on strike after midnight on Thursday. Employees from The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News would contribute local content that will be edited and posted online, said Stu Bykofsky, a Daily News columnist...

Brian Tierney, a onetime critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer who wound up buying the paper, is determined to take his new property in a different direction. "We don't need a Jerusalem bureau," he says. "What we need are more people in the South Jersey bureau." But six months after this advertising and public relations executive gained control of a once-proud newspaper that routinely ranked among...

WASHINGTON — It has been a week since Al Jazeera English went on the air and Dave Marash, the news channel’s Washington-based anchor, is feeling like the “belle of the ball.” Everyone he meets is curious about his new job and everyone wants to hear what it is like to work for an outfit that has revolutionized television news and that is shunned by many Americans as a mouthpiece for anti-US...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The publishing stock sector is likely to end 2006 with little or no growth as newspaper companies weigh down the industry due to weak advertising revenue and circulation declines. The Dow Jones U.S. Publishing Index is up a slim 1.39 percent over the past 12 months. The index comprises 90 stocks, including heavyweights such as Gannett Co., McClatchy Co., Meredith Corp. and Readers...

PARIS: The rush of job recruiting ads on MonsterIndia.com tells the story of the latest class of workers to watch their trade start migrating to another continent. "Urgent requirement for business writers," reads one ad looking for journalists to locate in Mumbai. "Should be willing to work in night shifts (UK shift)." Another casts for English-speaking journalists in Bangalore with "experience in...

The newsroom at Al-Jazeera International on K Street is newer than most — everything is digital — but producers and editors monitor events around the globe via computer just as they do at CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS. Competitors, however, “are owned by conglomerates that determine what they do and don’t do,” while AJI is bankrolled by the emir of Qatar, says producer Sol Levine, who once ran CNN’s...

The resignations of Ross Levinsohn at News Corp. and Jonathan Miller at AOL this week took industry watchers by surprise because the two executives had spearheaded turnarounds at their companies and led them into the digital age. More notable was the fact that the successors to the two New Media titans are regarded by some as Old Media managers who lack a strong understanding of Internet...