Newsworthiness

NEW YORK: In his final column for The Washington Post on Sunday, with his five-year tenure as ombudsman up, Michael Getler took the opportunity to once again criticize the paper, and some others, for not being skeptical enough about Bush administration claims in the run-up to the Iraq war. Getler will soon serve as ombudsman at the Public Broadcasting System. He noted that, despite certain...

The Times of India, by any means, is not the largest circulated daily in the country. Yet, if one sifts through all media criticism in various media, one would see that most of it is de facto criticism of this newspaper alone. Not without reason, though. And we will go into these reasons in good time. It was not surprising that the newspaper's brazen declaration that it would be hawking its...

NEW YORK (AP) - MSNBC invited viewers to share photos of their interactions with the late Pope John Paul II, while The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., anointed eight readers with the power to publicly criticize the newspaper's coverage on its very Web site. Newspapers in Greensboro, N.C., and Boulder, Colo., are even letting citizens write their own news stories -- on weddings, awards, even a...

Journalists have enough worries: cutbacks, bloggers, a geriatric audience. But here's one more: They should worry that bright young people who might once have been heading into newsrooms are going into public relations instead. Worse, these people aren't going just for the money. Journalism – assailed by self-doubt and public mistrust – is in danger of losing its next generation of idealists to PR...

Everything about teenage tennis sensation Sania Mirza makes news nowadays. All with good reason. So, the one about the 18-year-old Hyderbad lass being featured on the cover of Time magazine made a splash well. Newspapers very faithfully gave the item prominence, some even on their front pages. Sorry, but one must be a party pooper this time and take the fizz out of the champagne that has been...

LOS ANGELES -- Is Marilyn Monroe the answer to the hard times at the Los Angeles Times? After five years of sagging circulation and advertising, new managers at the Times are pushing for more coverage of Hollywood and celebrities. They want shorter stories and more regional reporting in the intensely competitive bedroom communities around Los Angeles. And there is a campaign for more combination...

The Washington Post is a bloated newspaper that should cut its voluminous and often dull output by a third to attract more readers, some say. The Washington Post's rich offerings have attracted an incredibly loyal core of readers who would be alienated by a drastic personality change, others say. The people who hold these divergent views all work for the capital's biggest paper, and they are...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party. In a blistering report, the investigators, from the...

Sharing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's concerns about the professional responsibilities of journalists, the Editors Guild of India has constituted a committee to address the issue. The committee, headed by veteran journalist Ajit Bhattacharjea, will submit its report in eight weeks, an Editor Guild's statement said yesterday. The committee is mandated to propose specific measures to enhance the...

The Delhi High Court has issued notices to weeklies India Today and Outlook for publishing "obscene" articles and sex surveys in their recent editions. A division bench also issued notices to the information and broadcasting ministry and the Press Council of India (PCI) asking them to file their replies by December 7, the next date of hearing. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by one...