According to a site comparison for the month of September on Compete.com, Huffington Post has surpassed both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post in unique online visitors. Continue reading »
Oct 152009
Sep 022009
The Committee to Protect Journalists has put together a useful guide to safety in conflict zones. The comprehensive handbook, produced in association with Gannett Foundation, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and CNN, covers everything from protective gear to insurance and training. Continue reading »
Jun 052009
The National Press Photographers Association’s annual Convergence conference, which includes the Multimedia Immersion workshop, Women in Photojournalism seminars and the Visual Journalism seminars, starts early Saturday morning at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Continue reading »
As newspapers struggle to figure out the future of the industry, there will be some good ideas and some bad ones. This is the time for everyone to innovate and be bold. Everyone should be trying new ideas. But this idea, even on the surface, seems a bit still-born.
Feb 272009
Since 1859, the Rocky Mountain News newspaper in Denver, Colorado has published an edition…until now. As a number of newspapers across the country stand on the brink of failure, it is difficult to accept the demise of such an institution. My own paper, The Los Angeles Times, is in Chapter 11 proceedings. Other papers such as the Seattle PI and the San Francisco Chronicle have threatened to shutter their doors. The end is near for many.
The most frightening thing about the loss of such news organizations is the silence from the public. Do people not understand the role of newspaper journalism in America’s democratic society? Maybe not. Or maybe they know the time has come for something new and better to rise in place of these publications.
Regardless of what you think about individual newspapers or the industry as a whole, the losses will be felt far and wide.
The funeral for the Rocky will be short but emotional. Others will follow. Now, it is up to the journalists remaining in the business to figure out where we go from here.
Below is a video produced by the staff of the Rocky Mountain News that documents the paper’s final days. It’s worth a watch.
The videojournalism staff of the Los Angeles Times has produced some really cool stories in the past few weeks.
The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement asking the government of Pakistan to better protect journalists covering the growing war against militancy in the South Asian nation.
“There is growing concern for the safety of journalists in Pakistan amid a surge in attacks apparently by militant groups who cannot abide critical reporting. President Asif Ali Zardari must act swiftly to assert the government’s authority and reverse this trend,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator.
The statement from CPJ comes a day after Imtiaz Alam, the secretary general of the South Asia Free Media Association (SAMFA), a regional press freedom group, was attacked by four men wielding hockey sticks late last night near his home in the eastern city of Lahore.
Earlier in the week, Musa Khan Khel, a journalist with Geo TV, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Swat Valley in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Khan Khel was in the valley covering celebrations by supporters of a local Taliban leader and cleric two days after Islamabad allowed the Taliban to impose Shariat (Islamic law) in the area.
The CPJ reports that in 2008, journalist killings went largely uninvestigated. The watchdog group says at least 10 slayings since 1998 have gone unsolved, which put Pakistan 12th on CPJ’s Impunity Index. Compiled for the first time in 2008, the index calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. The higher a nation’s ranking, the more dangerous it is for the press.
A high-level government investigation into the 2006 slaying of reporter Hayatullah Khan still remains secret. Khan was abducted in December 2005 after reporting evidence that the U.S. was responsible for an attack on a house along the Afghan border that killed an al-Qaeda leader and several villagers.
Khan was a contributer to the documentary program FRONTLINE on PBS. A story about his work and the circumstances surrounding his death can be found HERE on the FRONTLINE website.
- Scott