Newsworthiness

Ever felt worn down by the modern world? Find yourself fantasising about other lives you could have lived -- as a courtier at Versailles, a geisha, perhaps a pipe-smoking Edwardian gentleman? A vision of the world as a simple place, without bio-terrorism, frankenstein foods, melting ice-caps. Life in serene freedom from latter-day horrors. Except that some people still speak of the bad old days...

One of the nation's top political bloggers purchased the cell phone records of former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark on Thursday to demonstrate the growing privacy concerns highlighted in a Chicago Sun-Times story last week. John Aravosis, publisher of AMERICAblog.com, said he bought Clark's records for $89.95 from celltolls.com. Aravosis said he obtained a list of 100 calls made on...

On Tuesday, the investigative website The Smoking Gun published the six-page report, "A Million Little Lies," exposing a number of fictional events in James Frey's supposedly nonfiction memoir A Million Little Pieces. TSG reported that the confessional, an Oprah Book Club selection and a memoir of Frey's struggle with drug and alcohol abuse and eventual recovery, was riddled with exaggerations...

A citizen journalist video clip from a concerned citizen about a pregnant woman giving birth on a pavement after being denied admission in a government hospital has created a stir in the Andhra Pradesh capital of Hyderabad. CRUEL INTENTION: A pregnant woman had to perforce give birth on the roadside after being denied admission in a government hospital in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. The incident...

Local media reporting on science is too nationalistic and does not focus enough on a discovery's importance and impact on society, a report released Thursday revealed. The report, carried out by the Korean Press Foundation, found that 75.4 percent of news stories on scientific achievements on major television networks were about discoveries by Koreans. The results were based on an analysis of 69...

Of all the statements that officers or representatives of a company should never say to the media, the "No comment" answer tops the list. This, according to Guam Business and Marianas Business Journal publisher Maureen N. Maratita during a brief presentation at the first Saipan Rotary Club meeting for 2006 at the Hyatt Regency Saipan. Maratita provided the Rotarians the Top 10 statements that...

Every New Year, newspapers around the country borrow the old David Letterman routine to produce lists of the 10 "biggest" stories. But more than revealing what was significant about the past year, these summaries offer insight about journalists' news philosophy. The San Francisco Chronicle's Steve Rubenstein and the San Jose Mercury News' Scott Herhold agreed on only one story in their top 10: a...

BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhuanet) — Men still play the dominate role in China’s media industry, and most news stories disregard or reveal insensitive attitude towards gender problems, according to a survey released by China’s Women Reporter Association Saturday. Among China’s broadcasters, 69 percent are female, and among journalists, 54 percent are female. However, about 81 percent news stories are...

In early 2004, Pat Robertson divined the outcome of the presidential election, then ten months away. "I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," he said on a broadcast of "The 700 Club." "I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord it’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004." God – or at least the fervent, all-justifying, "Christian soldier" belief in God, and of course God’s opposite...

Perhaps it's just me, but news seems to be coming our way faster and with a greater fury than ever before. A tsunami of "breaking news " bulletins course through the veins and ganglia of what passes for an information system. A corporate news machine then pumps it out on a plethora of platforms dedicated to "more news in less time" -- in the press, on the web, on TV, on the radio and now on the...