Newsworthiness

By any measure American journalism is in a state of crisis. Media scams and scandals abound, embroiling journalists and their news outlets – from Jayson Blair and The New York Times to Dan Rather and CBS News – in controversy. Plagiarism, errors and outright hoaxes proliferate, along with corrections, extensive "Editor’s Notes" and eventual apologies. Partisan political operatives masquerade as...

One question I ask my students in an introductory journalism class is to define "newsworthy." After a little prodding, they usually say that a newsworthy event has an impact on the community, society or world. They might mention the war in Iraq, the Supreme Court nominee and the recent bombings in London. From there, I launch into a lecture on news values and the social-responsibility role of the...

The Editors Guild of India has in a resolution expressed deep concern at the way the basic question of woman’s honour and dignity has been affected in the Imrana case. "As a citizen of India, Imrana’s basic constitutional rights to justice and equal treatment are at stake. We have to ensure that a woman’s self respect is not sacrificed at the altar of parochial and regressive interests. We must...

The Financial Times topped a list of the world's best newspapers, according to a survey of executives, politicians, university lecturers, journalists and advertising professionals conducted by a Swiss-based consultant. Among 1,000 respondents from 50 countries, 19.4 percent chose the FT as the best paper, according to the survey by Zurich-based Internationale Medienhilfe... The New York Times...

Independent, aggressive and critical media are essential to an informed democracy. But mainstream media are increasingly cozy with the economic and political powers they should be watchdogging. Mergers in the news industry have accelerated, further limiting the spectrum of viewpoints that have access to mass media. With U.S. media outlets overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates and...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – A newspaper investigation of a former columnist for The Sacramento Bee could not verify 43 sources she used in a sampling of 12 years of her work. Diana Griego Erwin resigned May 11 as she came under scrutiny about the existence of people she quoted. She has denied making up information, but Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez said the Bee should have been able to locate the...

A survey of global reading habits has come up with an amazing result – India has come out on top. Researchers from the National Opinion Poll contacted 30,000 people in 30 countries and compared how much time they spent watching television as against reading. The West is starting to realise that India has become an intellectual powerhouse churning out hundreds of thousands of graduates, especially...

"Citizen journalism." It's one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days. Many news executives are probably thinking about implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative; a small but growing number have already done so. But there's plenty of confusion about citizen journalism. What exactly is it? Is this something that's going to be essential to the future prosperity of...

NEW YORK (AP) – Editors at about one in four newspapers who responded to a survey say they never allow reporters to quote anonymous sources, and most others have policies designed to limit the practice. One editor said his paper's rules are so strict they would have disqualified Deep Throat as a source. The use of anonymous sources – people who give reporters information only on condition that...

Madhya Pradesh is going to undertake a research project on journalism in post-Independence India. It will lay special focus on Hindi and vernacular journalism. Announcing the project here on Monday, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Babulal Gaur said Asia’s lone national university in media studies, Bhopal-based Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism, had been entrusted the task of...