Category: Guardian

March 13, 2014 media notes: Russian editor replaced, Myanmar papers struggle, Pew news site engagement study

3/13/2014

For Thursday, March 13, 2014, here are some media stories of note:

The editor of Lenta.ru, an independent news site, has been replaced with an editor more sympathetic to the Kremlin. The New Yorker's editor-in-chief, David Remnick, has written a between-edition look at Russian president Vladimir Putin's war on information and his movement against the press. Galina Timchenko's site recently ran a profile of a prominent Ukrainian nationalist. The Guardian reports she has been replaced by the former editor of a pro-Kremlin site now serving as the deputy director general of the company that holds Lenta.ru.
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The journalistic struggle in Myanmar is less about freedom than about economics. The Associated Press reports on the challenges for private newspapers to stay afloat. State-owned papers have been garnering the advertising support necessary to fuel the journalism that the independents are striving to produce. The result is closure of some titles after a short period of economic failure.
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A new study from the Pew Research Journalism Project examines the degree of engagement readers have with news sites. Not surprisingly, those who visit directly --- that is, those who aren't referred to a site through social media --- spend more time and read more avidly the content than those who arrive "sideways." The report examines the engagement levels at 26 leading news sites. Andrew Beaujon, writing for Poynter about the findings, says the report points to challenges for sites to convert these occasional and referred readers into loyalists.

March 12, 2014 media notes: the need for a web Magna Carta, Europe's new privacy law, Obama's Funny or Die gamble

3/12/2014

For Wednesday, March 12, 2014, here are some media stories of note:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has called for the creation of an online Magna Carta to protect and enshrine the independence of the medium. His call for a "bill of rights" comes 25 years to the day after the launch of the web. Under his proposal each country would create its own digital bill supported by governments and institutions. He told The Guardian that the web needs to remain free of intrusive governments.
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The European Parliament has passed long-anticipated privacy measures that will make it easier for citizens to have data about them erased and much more challenging for web companies to share data. GigaOm reports that non-European firms will find it more difficult to share personal information about Europeans.
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It takes all sorts of routes to make for effective policy, so it was no grand surprise to see U.S. President Barack Obama hitch on to the wildly viral and edgy Between Two Ferns online "interview" show with actor Zack Galifianakis on the Funny or Die site. What also shouldn't be surprising is that the ObamaCare website traffic grew when the president used the mock interview to tout the importance for young people to sign on to the government health care initiative. The healthcare.gov site had three million visits within an hour of the posting of the segment, Hollywood Reporter says.
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March 6, 2014 media notes: Crimea broadcaster replaced, critique of Andreessen's vision, Getty opens image vault

3/6/2014

For Thursday, March 6, 2014, here are some media stories of note:

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade reports that the self-appointed Crimean prime minister has closed a Ukrainian television station, 1 + 1, and replaced the frequency with a Russian channel, Rossiya. The channel's broadcast has been terminated, although it is available on cable, satellite and online. In recent days armed guards have barred journalists from entering the peninsula and have been detained as Russia wrests control of the local broadcaster.
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It took a few days, but others are weighing in on Marc Andreessen's vision of a wildly larger and more robust news business. Andreessen wrote last week of an exponentially larger news business with a massive audience grasp that would yield a vibrant business model, essentially a giant Twitter stream of benefit for all. But Ryan Chittum, writing for Columbia Journalism Review, and Rick Edmonds, writing for Poynter, do not exactly concur. Chittum says the problem is that the Internet has unbundled advertising from content, and there is no putting them back together. Edmonds says there is too much competition to suggest the news business will grow heavily.
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Getty Images announced Wednesday it is opening its vault of 35 million photos to permit a limited free use of them online. Kristen Hare, writing for Poynter, nots the limits are notable: non-commercial blogs will embed them, Twitter to share them, and Tumblr pages will feature them. In the days ahead it is likely many will test the boundary, but it is a major step forward for amateurs who want better images to augment their posts.

February 18, 2014 media notes: newspapers and civic engagement, NSA and Assange, trial of Al Jazeera journalist

2/18/2014

For Tuesday, February 18, 2014, here are some media stories of note:

Andrew Beaujon, writing for Poynter, reviews a study by a Portland State University professor on the impact of two newspaper closings on civic engagement. Not surprisingly, the study found declines in civic engagement in Seattle and Denver that may be "plausibly" linked to the loss of one of their newspapers. While several outlets can serve that engagement, the impact of a paper can often only be understood once it is lost, the report suggests.
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The early efforts of First Look Media involve The Intercept, the digital magazine overseen by Glenn Greenwald, who has leaked surveillance documents from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. A new batch of documents indicates the NSA was conducting surveillance on WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange and pressuring supporters of WikiLeaks. Meantime, Guardian media columnist Roy Greenslade notes press freedom groups are urging the British prime minister to call off an investigation into The Guardian's conduct in publishing the earlier leaks.
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For nearly two months now, Al Jazeera journalists have been held in Egypt and sent to trial, the first of which is imminent. Such leading media organizations as BBC, NBC and Reuters have written a statement of support for Peter Greste and are calling on Egyptian authorities to abandon the legal chase and release him and his colleagues.

January 28, 2014 media notes: CPJ on Sochi suppression, Guardian on ProPublica, WSJ on the crowded digital field

1/28/2014

Here are some media stories of note for Tuesday, January 28, 2014:

The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a report in advance of the Sochi Winter Games that focuses on Russia's efforts to suppress the chronicling of corruption, environmental problems and human rights abuses. The report cites "official repression and self-censorship" in the run-up to the Games on such issues as migrant worker exploitation, forced evictions and environmental degradation.

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The Guardian profiles Richard Tofel, the head of ProPublica, the investigative journalism non-profit underwritten by philanthropy. In it Tofel notes the mission of the organization is to end abuses of power, to change and reform. He acknowledges it is difficult to measure the impact of journalism to satisfy some donors who want a clear result of their contributions. That being said, he wants to demonstrate the need for journalism to be financially assisted in the digital age of business model change.

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The Wall Street Journal examines the stretch on digital advertising dollars and the effort by organizations to diversify their offerings to capture revenue. Several new outlets have been launched in recent months to further crowd the field, and some have started to stage conferences to build new sources of funds.

January 22, 2014 media notes: Guardian blocked in China, Rosen on Grantland, what makes a story go viral

1/22/2014

Here are some media stories of note for Wednesday, January 22, 2014:

The Guardian is the latest media organization to find itself in collision with the Chinese government. The Guardian's site has been blocked following its story on the offshore wealth of the government leadership.

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Jay Rosen, the NYU scholar recently hired by the new Pierre Omidyar news organization, offers some thoughts on the controversy this week involving the Grantland site. It published an investigative story on a golf club inventor; in the process of its research, it revealed the inventor's trans history, and she killed herself.

Rosen says the episode is the best argument for diversity in a newsroom. More than a dozen employees saw the story before it was published, but none had an understanding of the transgender community.

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Maria Konnikova, writing for The New Yorker, looks at a book that identifies the six elements that contribute to the viral nature of a story.

Not surprisingly, emotion and arousal top the list. But social currency is also a key (it makes people feel they're smart). A memory-inducing trigger helps, as do lists, as does the quality of the story itself.

January 13 media notes: restraint in Turkey, censorship in China, fears in Thailand.

1/13/2014

Here are some media notes for Monday, January 13, 2014:

Last year the political protests grew in Turkey and media in many cases restrained their coverage so as not to displease the government. Criticism of this restraint cost a prominent ombudsman his job, among others, and government has routinely curtailed access and threatened legal action to thwart journalism.

But The New York Times notes that the political scandals have continued and that the government might be losing its grip on media along the way. More and more reporters are defiant, using social media particularly, and the government cannot wrangle the challenges.

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China, meanwhile, continues to exercise its control on reporters in the country. While it has recently granted visas for foreign journalists to continue to work there, it has imposed a new program of retraining for domestic reporters and placed them on tighter leashes.

The Washington Post notes local reporters are being jailed and fired and that the government's grip is tighter than ever.

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Protests in Thailand are intensifying, and the International Federation of Journalists has asked the government to permit journalists to import and use body armour. It has petitioned the prime minister to waive the law forbidding journalists from possessing vests and helmets to protect themselves. Roy Greenslade, the media columnist for The Guardian, reports on the risks to journalists in the country.

January 9 media notes: Bangladesh editor jailed, radio still strong, Ipso criticized

1/9/2014

Some media stories of note for Thursday, January 9, 2014:

Context is everything. Where press freedom fights in the West are about access to information, in many countries press freedom is about actual freedom.

Take, for instance, the court ruling Thursday to send a Bangladesh editor to jail for seven years for attempting to travel to Israel a decade ago to speak about the rise of Muslim militancy. Salahuddin Shaoib Choudhury was trying to bring CDs and deliver a speech when he was arrested in Dakka in 2003. Bangladesh does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and travel there is forbidden.

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While we should always wonder about who finances a poll, an interesting one has emerged that suggests traditional radio remains the most popular way to listen to music. The poll was commissioned by the Clear Channel radio company and conducted by the MediaVest media agency, so it has an inherent self-serving possibility. But it suggests that the growth of streaming music hasn't necessarily come at radio's expense.

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Roy Greenslade, the media columnist for The Guardian, updates the state of the new Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso), a creature of the publishing companies in response to calls for stern measures from the Leveson inquiry into press conduct. Greenslade's take: Ipso is a new version of the mightily discredited Press Complaints Commission, with publishers pulling the strings and holding the purse strings. Several news firms have steered clear of provisions under the royal charter and formed Ipso as a form of self-regulation.

January 3, 2014 media notes: Al Jazeera Egypt arrest, Netflix movie algorithm, Times Snowden editorial

1/3/2014

Here are some media notes for Friday, January 3, 2014:

An arrest of a journalist is typically followed by calls for release, including organizational outrage at the detention and wider concerns of the treatment individually and of the press generally. But what happens when the organization is itself delicately positioned in a country and itself the target of public complaint?

The Wall Street Journal examines the cautious campaign to free Al Jazeera English journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and three colleagues, held in Egypt since Sunday. Al Jazeera's Arabic network has been criticized for its coverage of the country in the months since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi for what is perceived to be sympathetic coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood. The legal endeavour to free Fahmy involves "tip-toeing around his affiliation," the WSJ says. Any criticism of the military would move Fahmy from a detainee to a criminally charged journalist.

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Alexis C. Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, has a fascinating piece that helps explain how an algorithm can recommend content for the consumer. He focuses on Netflix and what he concluded are the 76,897 specific genres of movies it has identified in order to create an engine that leads consumers to the most relevant choices.

Madrigal goes another step: He spent weeks pulling apart what Netflix calls "altgenres" that help retain consumers, including the attributes of actors and details of plots, and concludes it is an enormous competitive advantage. To get there Netflix employ a small army of movie-watchers, gave them a 36-page guide to rate the films, and produced its metadata. The engine is affirmed by consumer patterns.

Madrigal speculates that while the algorithm couldn't necessarily make a film, it would be instrumental in helping someone determine what to make.

Felix Salmon of Reuters, meanwhile, takes a contrarian perspective. He says Netflix is losing access to big movies since it moved to streaming from DVDs and that its "dumbed-down" algorithm is largely shifting consumers to second-rate material because it cannot afford to buy the best content from Hollywood.

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When The New York Times published its editorial Thursday calling for clemency for former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, it likely expected strong reaction from both sides. Snowden, the source of information on U.S. surveillance programs, has been living in Russia. The Obama Administration has not indicated he can return home without facing prosecution, but the Times and the Guardian each wrote Thursday that his efforts should not be sending him to jail and that a deal should be sought to permit him to come back to America.

The Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan, looks at the decision-making behind the editorial (she declares her agreement with it). The Times' editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, says that every so often an editorial goes beyond what is realistic to discuss what "should happen."

January 2, 2014 media notes: transparency, surrender, leniency

1/2/2014

Here, in a new year, are some media notes for Thursday, January 2, 2014:

It has long been a truism that media do not hold themselves to the same account as they do the institutions they cover. Their need for transparency and public accountability is the subject of Erik Wemple's latest media column for the Washington Post. He surmises that, for all their criticism of the U.S. government's information-control approach, media might be even less open and would benefit from practicing what they preach.

Andrew Sullivan summons outrage and intemperate language to note the "surrender" by media to advertisers, specifically in the decision by Time Inc. to reorganize its operation and have its editors report to the business executives. The New York Times noted the move earlier this week as part of a story on Time's plan to spin off its publishing company. Sullivan concludes: "This is the way the press ends. Not with a bang, but a 'revenue opportunity.'"

The New York Times, in an editorial that describes Edward Snowden as a worthy whistleblower, urges the Obama Administration to end his vilification and find a way to encourage him to come home. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has been the source of several major stories in the last year on surveillance at home and abroad, has been living in Russia after he fled the U.S. A criminal count has been placed against him, but the Times suggests none of his disclosures has harmed U.S. intelligence. "When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government," the Times editorial board wrote. The Guardian, whose former columnist Glenn Greenwald worked with Snowden to divulge the surveillance secrets, has also written about the need for leniency. It said the government can exercise "moral courage" in providing clemency.

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