Newsworthiness

A start-up in Colorado lets readers pick which articles they want in their magazine and then print it themselves, says a New York Times report. The company, Printcasting, has a website www.printcasting.com on which anyone can put together a magazine featuring their own blog posts or articles and items from blogs and newspapers that have registered with the site. Advertisers can place ads in the...

The Madras High Court has dismissed Union Minister A Raja’s plea for extension of stay restraining Tamil magazine Junior Vikatan from publishing articles relating to him and his family over allegations of irregularities in allocation of spectrum to telecom players, according to news reports. The Hindu had details on the case: [ Link] Dismissing an application in a civil suit, with costs of Rs.10...

The media has been criticised by the Delhi High Court, which asked it to remain within the “Lakshman Rekha” or limits while reporting on criminal trials and not “go overboard”. While ruling on the infamous BMW hit-and-run case, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported, Justice Kailash Gambhir said: “No doubt the media has an important role in disseminating information, creating public opinion...

Google has eliminated an experimental feature that allowed people quoted in articles in Google News to post comments on those articles, the New York Times has reported. [ Link] People in the news media were intrigued by the idea of giving article subjects the power to comment, and the idea drew considerable coverage. But the feature never got a lot of use — the company declined to provide numbers...

Six of the world’s leading newspapers dedicated to sports have come together to form the International Association of Sports Newspapers (IASN), to defend and promote the interests and freedom of the sports press. The founding members of the IASN are the Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, El Mundo Deportivo and Marca in Spain, L’Equipe in France, Olé in Argentina, and Lance in Brazil...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned that a call by the United Nations Special Envoy in Somalia, Ahmed Ould Abdallh, to suspend news reporting from Somalia was an "ill-thought out and counter-productive" response to the media crisis in the country. "We oppose this move because it will not work and could make the situation even worse for journalists," said Aidan White, IFJ...

It was about 40 months ago a number of newspaper launches in Mumbai appeared to pose a stiff challenge to the then 167-year dominance of the Times of India. With well thought out marketing campaigns and high production values, two big names— Hindustan Times and Daily News & analysis (DNA)—followed by many others stormed the city. This growing number of dailies has led to remarkable changes in the

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has denied claims from political leaders in Gaza that it was biased in its claims of Hamas interference and intimidation of journalists. In a statement issued on January 25, Hamas accused IFJ of "baseless statements" and "unacceptable partiality" following its comments after a two-day mission of international journalists' leaders to Gaza last week...

Bolivian President Evo Morales launched a state-run daily newspaper on Thursday, hoping to strike back against what he calls media bias three days before the country votes on his new constitution, Reuters reported. The paper, published with color photos on high-quality newsprint, is called Cambio, or "Change." Its slogan is "The truth will liberate us." The first issue hit newsstands on the three...

Trust in the media apparently promotes health. A study of people from 29 Asian countries has shown that individuals with high levels of trust in the mass media tend to be healthier. A team of researchers led by Yasuharu Tokuda from St. Luke's International Hospital and Takashi Inoguchi from Chuo University, both in Tokyo, used data from a survey of 39,000 people to investigate the relationships...