the news. the views. the juice.
To drive home the message that global newspaper circulation is on the rise (ergo: newspapers will survive), the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is encouraging its member-newspapers to run the above full-page ad in their publications this month.
Link via Editors’ Weblog
Also read: In some places it’s booming, in some place it’s not
The outsourcing of journalism jobs to India is getting weirder and weirder—and a bit ridiculous. In Bangalore, Reuters gets journalists to rewrite Wall Street press releases. In Mangalore, Press Association gets the British race cards, TV schedules and sports sections upto speed. Now, a website headquartered outside Los Angeles is getting reporters sitting half way around the world to cover streetlight contracts and sewer repairs.
“We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA,” read the ad for Pasadenanow on Craigslist.
It’s cost-effective, yes, but is it necessarily good journalism?
Read the full story: Website outsources reporting
Rupert Murdoch‘s Star television network is already the biggest media house in India. Is his son Lachlan Murdoch likely to enter the scene and fit for a piece of the pie? Business Standard reports that Murdoch Junior is planning to pick up a stake in INX Media floated by Indrani Mukherjea, wife of former Star India head Peter Mukherjea, which is planning to launch a clutch of channels, including a news channel headed by Vir Sanghvi.
Read the full story here: Lachlan to pick up INX stake
“One of the greatest myths of the industry (is) that journalists are essential to producing a newspaper.”
Conrad Black, former owner of The Daily Telegraph, London
Quoted in the Big Black Book, Link via Innovation in Newspapers
The Guardian, quoting Business Standard, reports that Rupert Murdoch may be contemplating launching an Indian edition of The Sun tabloid.
Will it work? N.Ram of The Hindu thinks not: “It would end up in the courts under the obscenity laws.”
Can he get the journalists to make it work? Vinod Mehta of Outlook thinks not: “I just don’t know where he’ll get the snappy writers required for tabloids from. Indian journalism is so damn verbose.”
Link via Editors’ Weblog
Rupert Murdoch‘s audacious bid for the Wall Street Journal has, expectedly, got the American media aflutter. The New York Times has exposed the unusual share movement of Dow Jones in the run-up to the announcement. And, on Slate, Jack Shafer has offered eight reasons why Murdoch must be distrusted.
“I genuinely admire the rotten old bastard for the creative destruction he’s wrought upon the media universe, for starting a fourth network [Fox], for breaking the featherbedding unions in London that were sucking the life out of newspapers, for re-imagining football and baseball coverage, and yes, even for starting the Fox News Channel from scratch, because it gives us a precise picture of what his news values are. But…
1) Rupe kowtows to the Chinese (part I)
2) Rupe kowtows to the Chinese (part II)
3) Rupe kowtows to the Chinese (part III)
4) Rupe kowtows to the Chiense (part IV)
5) The Son also kowtows
6) Rupert, Italian style
7) Small ball
8) Lacking all conviction in his own bad taste
Read the full article: Eight more reasons to distrust Murdoch
John Wood and P. Pederson have been kind enough to send us video evidence of how the BBC’s John Sweeney lost his cool while shooting a Panorama documentary on the Church of Scientology.
