Crisis Reporting

The New York Times: "America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq. - - Iraq has been, according to some executives, the most expensive war ever for TV news organizations."

New Business Models

Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation starts to fund international health reporting.

The NYT: Gates Foundation Gives Millions for Coverage of World Health

Foreign Correspondents

Two American news companies start sharing the work of their foreign correspondents.

AP: McClatchy, Christian Science Monitor to share copy

Crisis Reporting/Mumbai

The role of citizen journalism was important in reporting the terrorist attack inMumbai according to the NYT: "The attacks in India served as another case study in how technology is transforming people into potential reporters, adding a new dimension to the news media".

The New York Times: Citizen Journalists Provided Glimpses of Mumbai Attacks

Crisis Reporting/Mumbai

The newest test for the global news media was the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. According the first news media analysis the traditional news media was beaten by social media, Twitter.

The New York Observer: Twitter Grows Up

Ethics

"When it comes to foreign news journalism, you can earn a lot of points by going to a dangerous place."

Sending reporters to dangerous places is a difficult procedure, and can cause a lot of pressures among journalists and their families. The Guardian just reported this sad example, which should rise ethical talks within the BBC News, and elsewhere in foreign news business.

BBC journalist shot dead in Somalia felt under pressure to go, family say

Citizen Media

AllVoices, the newest online-try to use non-journalists as main contributors for creating a new international news media. Innovative, indeed.

See also the review by EJC.

Crisis reporting

We all know that there is nothing as expensive in journalism as producing foreign news. Therefore, in these economically turbulent times, this model by Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting can been as a model for future of international reporting.

Innovations in Foreign Reporting

A new foreign news media is to be born January 2009, which tries to fill the holes of the struggling American news media. According to MarketWatch GlobalPost, based in Boston, "will be the first Web-based news organization to provide daily international news coverage by its own team of experienced correspondents from every corner of the world."

Watch the video

PR and War Reporting

Peter Wilby (The Guardian): Georgia has won the PR war

The Role of Bloggers: War in Georgia

CNN: Bloggers weigh in on Georgia

Global Voices (Harvard): Georgia, Russia: Tbilisi Reports

New Global News Media - Twitter

Twitter is possible able to challenge the old news media behemoths. Read more from Wired.

Images/Iraq War

Without images the war stories lack of authenticity needed to tell the big picture of the world. Controlling, that is censoring, the flow of pictures, the military and political leaders can prevent "emotional shocks" created by graphic images. This is the outcome of the lessons of Vietnam war coverage, when the flow of images were not controlled, and caused massive reactions among the audience in the U.S. Since then wars have transformed mainly into numbers of casualties. The War in Iraq is the latest example as The New York Times summarized 4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images.

Foreign Reporting/CBS News

In times, when the U.S. news media is still diminishing its foreign reporting, journalists like Lara Logan, the CBS News chief foreign correspondent is really needed. Last week she criticized the war coverage of the U.S. media in the Daily Show with Jon Steward, and now she was promoted to be as chief foreign affairs correspondent, says The New York Times.

China/Censorship Practices Under Pressure

The New York Times: Earthquake Opens Gap in Controls on Media

"One of the biggest challenges, though, is to the country’s sometimes sophisticated, sometimes heavy-handed propaganda system. China’s censors found themselves uncharacteristically hamstrung when they tried to micromanage news coverage of the earthquake, as they do most major news stories in China. By Wednesday, so many reporters had ignored the government’s instructions that the Propaganda Department rescinded its original order, replacing it with another, more realistic one, reflecting its temporary loss of control."

Crisis Reporting/Tibet

WSJ: Journalists Begin Tibet Tour Under Close Watch of Chinese

War Reporting/Iraq

War reporting is always reporting from the borders of journalism. The question is, how is it possible to make good journalism in extreme working conditions. Almost impossible, see especially the situation in Iraq.

The New York Times: The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?

Freedom of Speech/Internet Filtering

Four world-class schools, Harvard, Toronto, Cambridge, and Oxford have put their efforts together in order to monitor state-based Internet filtering. And, they have published the results of their observations in a joint-blog called OpenNet Iniative Blog, already since 2004.

A great model for other scholars, educators to follow.

1) Pick up your important topic,

2) Gather a team of schools, or research institutions around you,

3) Start posting your observations in recular basis in a news, and commentary blog, and

4) Finally do a summary, organize a seminar, or a conference, and do a research paper, or even a book based on your blog postings, feed-backs, and visitor data as a starting point.

Latest postings by OpenNet Iniative Blog:

* Tibet, China and the information gaps between

* YouTube and the rise og geolocational filtering

* Armenia imposes Internet censorship as unrest breaks out following disputed Presidential elections

Press Freedom/Russia

"Russia has witnessed a steady rollback of post-Soviet media and political freedoms during President Vladimir Putin's eight-year presidency," says CNN.com, and it showed the newest sad evidence.

Global News

New web only international news publication, yes, Global News, is scheduled to launch next year based in the U.S., Boston, but promised to have correspondents in about 70 countries. In addition, the venture has succeeded to collect more than $ 7 million, so far. It is run by veteran journalist Phillip S. Balboni. In times of diminishing original foreign reporting, new international news sources are really needed. Especially, in the U.S.

Boston Globe: NECN founder starting news site

Foreign Reporting

E & P (AP): 87 Journalists Killed on the Job in 2007, China Leads in Jailing Them

Iraqi journalists have made great sacrifices during last years in their work in order to cover news for foreign media.

Citizen News Video

Finally, Reuters has told that CNN will enter YouTube territory with its citizen journalism site iReport.com.

Video clips are among the main drivers in the Internet´s multimedia world just now, and the trend seems to continue. The main actor is Google with its YouTube. According to MediaPost and new comScore data, just recently, Google sites saw substantial growth and extended their video market share gains. All together, U.S. Web users watched more than 10 billion videos online in December. As predicted, the Writers Guild of America three-month-long strike appears to be contributing to a surge in online video viewing activity. The loosing side - broadcast and cable-tv.

This kind of "strike-effect on media consumption" has happened several times before in the history of the media. For example, during 1960´s, when newspaper journalist went on strike in the U.S. and elsewhere for several months, network TV-news ratings were boosted. Actually, for the very first time TV-news became more important source for the people than newspapers. Something similar can happen now with video sharing sites.

That´s why CNN launched its counter-strike, and most likely, later, all other major media news producers as well has to follow its model.

However, another solution for the MSM to survive with the disruptive Internet-effects, is to ship quality content to existing popular video sharing sites. British news behemoth BBC News and its commercial rival ITN News has done this already some time ago with YouTube.

Business of News

When the price of the news has dropped almost into zero because of the Internet, how is it possible to sustain any news business anymore. This is exceptionally vital question for foreign news, which is the most expensive sports of the news business. Here is one of the first academic scholars, who has explored the question. His name is James T. Hamilton, and he is Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Political Science at Duke University.

Here is a good opportunity to hear and watch the man himself:

UC Berkeley/Graduate School of Journalism: "The Economics of News" with James T. Hamilton. (approx. 1hour)

And here is a link to his book: All the News That's Fit to Sell:How the Market Transforms Information into News (2004)

Images

NYT: Getty Images Up for Sale, Could Fetch $1.5 Billion

"The world’s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media and advertising companies, has put itself on the auction block. - - Getty, founded in 1995 in Seattle, has grown through a series of acquisitions into a go-to source for visual media, claiming an average service of 3.2 billion images and 4 million unique visitors at its Web site each month."