Uncategorised

Paris-based press freedom organisation Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has been named one of the three joint winners of this year's Sakharov Prize for the freedom of thought. RSF shares the award with the Ladies in White, a group of wives of jailed Cuban dissidents, and Nigerian human rights lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim, who represents women who face being stoned to death for adultery and people facing...

It’s 1997 all over again out on the West Coast–or at least it seemed that way to me the other day at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. At the Web 2.0 Conference, the new "It" shindig for the new generation of wannabe golden geeks, all the signs were in evidence of a bubble in the making. There’s the army of khaki-clad venture capitalists, chasing after postpubescent entrepreneurs, begging to...

The Indian Newspaper Society (INS), the apex body of the newspaper industry in the country, has described the Union government's proposal to apply service tax on sale of advertising space as "alarming" and "retrograde". The society's newly-elected president, Jacob Mathew, said the move had no legislative sanction and could have a "disastrous effect" on the newspaper industry. In a statement here...

TWO months ago Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, told the 1200 or so journalists, photographers, graphic artists and editors on the paper, and the 50 or so staff of the Times online site Nyt.com, that they were to become one merged newsroom. The New York Times, with a circulation of just over 1.1 million, has the largest newsroom of any paper in the US, producing a newspaper...

Chennai, India: If you are reading this article in the newspaper, and not on the internet, you're apparently part of a dying breed. There is broad consensus in the West that newspapers are in terminal decline. It's not that we're facing a future without reading, just that we'll be getting out news delivered via personalised, electronic platforms. The leading American media analyst Philip Meyer...

The government has allowed foreign institution investors (FII) to invest up to 26 per cent in news and current affairs channels. It has also given a green signal to television channels and teleports to uplink in Ku-Band through Indian satellites with the condition that this permission will not be used to run or operate DTH service without proper license. LAWS OF CRICKET: The mandatory sharing of...

Press freedom is being eroded in parts of the Western world, failing to advance in Iraq, but making progress in states emerging from repression, the watchdog Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. North Korea once again comes bottom of the RSF fourth annual World Press Freedom Index. It is closely followed in the 167-country list by Eritrea (166th) and Turkmenistan (165th), which are other...

The American Magazine Conference, which concluded yesterday in Puerto Rico, featured speaker after speaker presenting a positive and optimistic outlook for magazines centered on a new embrace of electronic media technologies. Meredith's Jack Griffin announced a new video-on-demand relationship between Comcast and American Baby magazine; Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia CEO Susan Lyne, joined...

Last Thursday morning, Apple Computer Inc. started selling an episode of the hit television series "Lost" through its iTunes Music Store for $1.99 after the show aired the night before on ABC. It marked the first time a popular show was made available for legal downloading over the Internet so quickly after its original airing. With that, Apple may have helped open a Pandora's box for the media...

The mainstream media–or MSM as the bloggers call it–has a big problem. Innovative software is going to become an essential component for distributing media on the web, but the MSM has little software competence. I agree with Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who said last week at the Web 2.0 Internet conference in San Francisco: "To be a media company…tech is what you must excel at." Media companies have to...