Robert Fisk Offers Advice for War Reporters
Robert Fisk, a Middleastern correspondent for The Independent, recently gave a speech at the Al Jazeera annual forum addressing the power of words and warning other journalists against using what he calls “words of power” in war reporting. He included in this category “power players,” “narratives,” and “peace process.”
European publications question the “savior” status of the iPad
from Editors Weblog – all postings by Carole Wurzelbacher
The BBC Strategy Review: Sky responds, Graham McWilliam
BBC Strategy Review – BSkyB response
The BBC Trust has asked for public responses to proposals put forward by the BBC Executive following the Trust’s decision to ask the Executive to undertake a “major review” of the BBC’s strategy.
While Sky agrees that a comprehensive review of the BBC’s strategy is needed, we have significant reservations about the way in which the Trust has chosen to conduct this process. Consequently, we question whether the proposals put forward by the Executive represent a serious and far reaching review of the BBC’s strategy.
Could public relations be the future of journalism? Maybe.
According to an article published today in The Independent, some are speculating an unexpected source of future journalism: public relation agencies. Such speculation has been sparked by Edelman, an American PR firm, which recently appointed Richard Sambrook, the former head of BBC News, to the position of Chief Content Officer. More speculation has been caused by the company’s hiring of Stefan Stern of the Financial Times as its new head of strategy. While the worlds of PR and journalism frequently overlap, Edelman’s hiring of Sambrook and Stern could indicate a new strategy by PR firms. Sambrook, who claims that “every company has to be a media company in their own right,” suggests that companies should bypass traditional news sources and go directly to the consumer. While Sambrook maintains that the company is “not moving into the news business,” he does assert that the changing landscape of journalism presents valuable opportunities for PR to expand.
Wired goes wireless
“You start asking yourself first-principles questions, like `What is it that we do every month?'” said Wired editor Chris Anderson. The result of all this self-reflection is a innovative publication that allows readers to experience the magazine in interesting new ways. Anderson outlined some of the detailed features of the first issue:
What does Yahoo’s acquisition of Associated Content mean for journalism?
Last week, Yahoo! acquired Associated Content, a company with which Yahoo! had been developing a relationship for several months. Associated Content is a news source that provides localized articles through the contributions of mostly non-journalist individuals with knowledge of local information. Luke Beatty, founder of Associated Content, claims that AC’s personalized style and Yahoo!’s incredible size allow for both news sources to be more effective when working together.
Facebook’s Privacy Settings Present Opportunity for Journalists
Following overwhelming backlash over Facebook’s new not-so-private privacy settings, The Online Journalism Review reports a surprising advantage to the nature of Facebook’s new less private policies. While Facebook’s former policies restricted what could be seen on the networking site, the new policies allow for any Internet user to search information posted by Facebook users. In particular, youropenbook.org is a site specifically devoted to allowing Internet users to freely search postings on Facebook. For journalists, such a site presents an opportunity to acquire instant access to the opinions of the public on any current event. While Facebook’s new settings do seem like a betrayal of trust between the networking site and its users, the use of these new policies for journalistic purposes appears to have even stronger implications. The opinions posted on Facebook are often careless, posted without much thought or serious consideration of consequences. Therefore, by using Facebook to get to the raw opinions of the public, journalists may only be getting half of the story. Postings on Facebook likely only reflect an Individual’s initial reaction to any particular story, therefore only taking into account emotional reactions and leaving out further intellectual considerations.