Websites

An overview of our ongoing webprojects:




Archived, currently non active projects:

Specials

Short term specfic websites:

 
 
Exit

Media News

A handpicked selection of today’s media-related news. With 24.000 entries, our archives chronicle 15 years of press industry developments. A goldmine for scholars and researchers.

Click here if you would like to subscribe.

 
 
 

  • 20 June 2013 | NBC News

    Google: ‘We’re not in cahoots with the NSA’

    Google’s chief legal officer said Wednesday “we’re not in cahoots with the NSA” as the company stepped up its efforts to reassure customers that their gmail and Internet browsing history are safe from government prying. "There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box," said David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, in a live webchat with The Guardian newspaper. During the chat, Drummond forcefully denied media reports that an NSA surveillance program known as PRISM had given the agency “direct access” to the servers of major Internet companies.

    Original source

  • 20 June 2013 | Mashable

    Twitter buys social discovery startup Spindle

    Twitter has acquired Spindle, a location-based social discovery engine, the two companies announced Wednesday. The terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. Spindle was founded two and a half years ago by former Microsoft engineers with the goal of helping users discover relevant content on social networks based on time and place. The startup raised $2.3 million in funding in late 2012. "Every time we’ve experimented and looked beyond local discovery, we’ve been amazed by the breadth and quality of content shared on Twitter," Spindle said in a blog post. "By joining forces with Twitter, we can do so much more to help you find interesting, timely, and useful information about what’s happening around you."

    Original source

  • 20 June 2013 | Business Spectator

    Wall Street watchdog scrutinises social media use at brokerages

    Wall Street's Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is looking at how brokerage firms supervise their use of communication outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the industry-funded regulator said. FINRA, which conducts periodic "sweeps," or targeted checks on Wall Street brokerages, sent out letters to firms earlier this month requesting information about their use and monitoring of social media communications for the companies and individual employees. The letter, which FINRA posted to its website on Monday, included requests for information such as how firms monitor whether their use of social media complies with industry rules.

    Original source

  • 20 June 2013 | Boston.com

    Boston Globe inks new 10-year agreement to print Boston Herald

    The Boston Globe has reached a new 10-year agreement with the Boston Herald to print the entire press run of the tabloid starting in July. Under an existing agreement, the Globe prints and delivers about one-third of the Herald’s print circulation. Since 2012, the Globe has printed and delivered the Herald’s city edition, Sunday through Friday, as well as the newspaper’s full press run on Saturdays. The Herald stopped printing and delivering its own papers after the company moved out of its long-time South End property and cut print and labor costs. The Globe and the Herald remain separate companies.

    Original source

  • 20 June 2013 | The Herald Sun

    Shares soar in Murdoch’s new News Corporation publishing arm

    Newspapers might be struggling in the online age, but investors still had enough confidence in Rupert Murdoch to send shares in his new publishing arm soaring. In its second day of trading, the hived-off publishing arm, the new News Corp, jumped $2.24, or 15.4 per cent, to $16.79 by 1545 AEST. The non-voting stock rose $2.65, or 18.53 per cent, to $16.95. After the voting stock fell 3 per cent from its $15 opening on Wednesday, shareholders appear to have been more buoyed today by a strong debut on New York's tech-rich Nasdaq index overnight where it gained 3.3 per cent.

    Original source

  • 20 June 2013 | EJC

    The EJC appeals to Greek prime minister on behalf of Greek public broadcaster, ERT

    Following the Greek government’s recent decision to abruptly close the state public broadcaster, ERT, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) has sent out an appeal to the Greek prime minister to reconsider the decision on the grounds that these actions will undermine both media pluralism and news diversity. The EJC’s Director, Wilfried Rütten writes, 'The Board Members and staff of the European Journalism Centre would like to express their deep concern at the decision to close the public broadcaster, ERT. Seeing as public broadcasting is a pillar of modern democracy and plays an essential role in a democratic public sphere, we are highly concerned that the closure of the public broadcaster in the country will undermine both media pluralism and news diversity."

    Original source

  • 19 June 2013 | USA Today

    Turkey vows to attack social media, strengthen police

    Turkey's government is working on legislation to restrict the use of Twitter and other social media, blamed for the worst unrest the country has experienced in decades. The Turkish justice ministry is putting together a bill on Internet crime, which will also include sections on social media, according to local media. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday defended the nation's police and vowed to increase their powers to deal with unrest. Riot police were again deployed in Turkey's two main cities of Istanbul and Ankara. Thousands have flooded the streets nightly, many honking car horns and waving Turkish flags.

    Original source

  • 19 June 2013 | BBC

    Greece court orders state broadcaster ERT back on air

    A Greek court has ordered that state broadcaster ERT, which was shut down by the government last week, can resume transmissions. However, the court also upheld a plan by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to replace ERT with a smaller broadcaster. The ruling came as Mr Samaras and his coalition partners - furious that they had not been consulted about ERT's closure - held crisis talks. The prime minister's decision triggered mass protests across the country. The leading party in the governing coalition, the conservative New Democracy, said last Tuesday that ERT suffered from chronic mismanagement, lack of transparency and waste.

    Original source

  • 19 June 2013 | The Washington Post

    Award-winning journalist Michael Hastings, 33, dies in car accident in Los Angeles

    Award-winning journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings, whose unflinching reporting ended the career of a top American army general, died early Tuesday in a car accident in Los Angeles, his employer and family said. Hastings, who was 33, was described by many of his colleagues as an unfailingly bright and hard-charging reporter who wrote stories that mattered. Most recently, he wrote about politics for the news website BuzzFeed, where the top editor said colleagues were devastated by the loss.

    Original source

  • 19 June 2013 | US News

    Majority of Americans don’t trust newspapers and television news

    Continuing a decades-long downward trend, fewer than one-fourth of Americans have confidence in newspapers, according to a recent Gallup poll. The percentage of Americans saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dropped to 23 percent this year from 25 percent last year, according to a report on the poll, which was released Monday. American confidence in newspapers reached its peak at 51 percent in 1979, and a low of 22 percent in 2008. But newspapers don't stand alone. Confidence in television news has also been slipping — it's tied with newspapers this year at 23 percent, which is slightly up from last year's all-time low of 21 percent.

    Original source

  • 19 June 2013 | Financial Post

    International privacy officials raise Google Glass concerns in open letter

    Google’s wearable computing project Glass raises significant privacy and data protection concerns, according to an international group of 36 authorities, who have signed a joint letter to Google chief executive officer Larry Page. At issue are the “obvious, and perhaps less obvious, privacy implications of a device that can be worn by an individual and used to film and record audio of other people” – for example, fears of ubiquitous surveillance, and how data collected from the device is stored, shared and used. “Privacy protections are more robust when they’re baked into a design,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) digital rights analyst Rebecca Jeschke said in an interview.

    Original source

  • 19 June 2013 | The New York Times

    Tribune faces potentially big tax bill for Newsday and Cubs deals

    The Tribune Company faces a potential tax bill of more than $500 million over the sales of the Chicago Cubs and Newsday despite efforts to minimize the tax consequences of both deals, the company disclosed on Monday. In the footnotes of its financial report for last year, Tribune said the Internal Revenue Service was seeking $190 million in taxes from the 2008 sale of Newsday to Cablevision as well as a $38 million “accuracy-related penalty” and $17 million in after-tax interest. Tribune also disclosed that the I.R.S. might seek $225 million and unspecified penalties and interest for the company’s 2009 fiscal year, in which it sold the Cubs to the Ricketts family for $845 million.

    Original source

  • 18 June 2013 | CNN

    Google seeks to scrub Web of child porn

    Google says it will spend $5 million on an effort to wipe pictures of child sexual abuse from the Web and another $2 million to research more effective ways to find, report and eradicate the images. "The Internet has been a tremendous force for good -- increasing access to information, improving people's ability to communicate and driving economic growth," Jacqueline Fuller, the director of Google Giving, said in a blog post. "But like the physical world, there are dark corners on the web where criminal behavior exists." Part of the $5 million will go to established child-protection groups that have been partnering with Google to fight the problem. They include the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation.

    Original source

  • 18 June 2013 | NDTV

    Mysterious Steve Jobs emails hang over Apple trial

    The late Steve Jobs took center stage Monday in the latest twist in the Apple antitrust trial on ebooks. A federal court attempted to plumb the meaning of a series of unsent emails Jobs addressed to Eddy Cue, an Apple senior vice president assigned with negotiating ebook contracts with major publishers in late 2009 and early 2010 before the launch of the iPad. Even though the emails were never sent, government prosecutors argue that they help establish a pattern of Apple serving as a "ringleader" in a conspiracy with the publishers to force the retail book industry to adopt higher prices of ebooks.

    Original source

  • 18 June 2013 | Wired

    European roaming charges will end in 2014

    Roaming fees for voice calls, texts and internet access will be a thing of the past across Europe from 2014, after European politicians voted to fast-track reforms of the European telecoms market. The European Commission -- a group of 27 politicians who represent the best interests of Europe as a whole, rather than individual countries, voted in Brussels to push the reforms through before the next European elections, which will happen in May 2014. The resulting legislation will come into force on 1 July 2014.

    Original source

  • 18 June 2013 | The Huffington Post

    Media coverage of same sex marriage favors supporters: Pew study

    Around the time the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the same-sex marriage issue, news reports had more comments from supporters than opponents, a study released Monday concluded. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at nearly 500 stories on the topic over a two-month period that began just before the court started hearings in March on legalizing same-sex marriage. By a 5-to-1 margin, the stories with statements in support of legalization outweighed those dominated by opponents' views.

    Original source

  • 18 June 2013 | Poynter

    Tribune files post-bankruptcy financial results

    Tribune Co. on Monday filed financial results for 2012, its last year in bankruptcy. In its publishing division, advertising revenues were down 6.7 percent over 2011, and circulation revenues rose 8.75 percent, “driven by subscription price increases and the implementation of digital subscription programs,” Robert Channick writes in The Chicago Tribune. Circulation revenue declined in 2011 “due to a decline in daily (Monday-Friday) net paid print circulation copies at all newspapers, partially offset by an increase in Sunday net paid print circulation copies at all newspapers except Baltimore,” a management analysis says.

    Original source

  • 18 June 2013 | Tech Crunch

    Big brands are growing more quickly on Twitter than Facebook (according to Optimal)

    Here’s a fun comparison from Optimal, a social advertising and analytics startup: If you look at big brands on social networks, their following seems to be growing more quickly on Twitter than on Facebook. Optimal says it looked at the data from 4,330 brands, representing a total of 3.49 billion Facebook Likes and 595 million Twitter followers. Last week, those brands added 18.5 million new Likes and 4.5 million new followers — so on a percentage basis, their following grew 55 percent more quickly on Twitter than it did on Facebook.

    Original source

  • 17 June 2013 | ABC News

    Julian Assange meets with Ecuador’s foreign minister Richard Patino in London

    Ecuador's foreign minister has met with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Richard Patino is in London for talks on the fate of Mr Assange, who has been taking refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy for almost a year. Mr Assange, 41, took refuge at the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations. Ecuador has granted the Australian national asylum, but he is likely to be arrested by British police if he leaves the embassy. Mr Patino's meeting with Mr Assange came as he prepared for a meeting today with his British counterpart William Hague to discuss a possible solution to the year-long diplomatic stand-off over Mr Assange.

    Original source

  • 17 June 2013 | The Guardian

    Apple joins Facebook and Microsoft in revealing US surveillance requests

    The technology firm Apple says it has received 4,000-5,000 surveillance requests from the US government about its customers since December 2012. The company's disclosure comes after the Guardian revealed the existence of a US National Security Agency programme called Prism to tap into data held by Apple, Google, Facebook and other tech companies. Apple's move comes after Facebook and Microsoft revealed on Friday the numbers of requests they had received. A statement released on the company's website on Monday read: "From December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from US law enforcement for customer data.

    Original source

  • 17 June 2013 | The Next Web

    Short-film site Viddsee launches mobile Web app to optimize videos for smaller screens

    Singapore-based video site Viddsee has launched a mobile web app, as the startup seeks to cater to a growing percentage of its audience accessing the site via mobile devices. Viddsee is an online video platform for indie filmmakers across Southeast Asia to showcase their short films where people can watch them for free. The desktop web app was launched in late January, and Viddsee has about 150 short films on its site now, including Chinese films from Singapore, Indonesian shorts and more. The startup says about 40 percent of its audience watch their short films on mobile, and a mobile web app would help to “ensure a good browsing and watching experience for our users.”

    Original source

  • 17 June 2013 | The Huffington Post

    Fox News sued after accidentally airing suicide

    The family of the man whose suicide Fox News accidentally aired is suing the network. Last September, the network was following a high speed car chase in Arizona when driver JoDon Romero got out of his car and shot himself. The broadcast failed to cut away in time, and viewers saw the apparent suicide. Shep Smith, who was anchoring at the time, apologized profusely, saying, "We really messed up. And we're all very sorry." Courthouse News Service reported that Angela Rodriguez, the mother of three of Romero's children, is suing the network and News Corp. in Maricopa County Court. She has claimed "emotional distress" to her kids, saying that the two oldest children heard about the suicide while they were at school, watched the clip when they got home and realized it was their father.

    Original source

  • 17 June 2013 | 9 News World

    Internet heralds ‘death of photo album’

    The growing trend of sharing photographs online heralds the "death" of the traditional photo album, according to a new study. It found two-thirds of Britons now catalogue their pictures on computers, tablets or smartphones. Around one in five people take photos with the intention of posting them on sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, it revealed. Meanwhile the so-called "selfie" - a snap taken by the photographer holding a camera at arm's length - has become the most popular image captured by young people. These account for 30 per cent of the pictures shot by those aged 18-24 and, according to the study, men take more pictures of themselves than women.

    Original source

  • 17 June 2013 | The Washington Post

    China detains journalist who documented labor camp abuses, Tiananmen crackdown accounts

    Chinese state security officials have detained a journalist who recently disappeared after completing a documentary on labor camp abuses, the photographer’s sister and close friend said Thursday. The detention of Beijing-based video and photojournalist Du Bin, 41, is likely related to his work, said democracy activist Hu Jia, who said he’s been a close friend of Du’s for more than a decade. Du had recently completed a documentary exposing torture allegedly inflicted on detainees at a notorious labor camp in northeastern China as well as a 600-page book about the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, published in Hong Kong.

    Original source

  • 14 June 2013 | Reuters

    Pandora sued by Broadcast Music Inc over license fees

    Broadcast Music Inc, a songwriters rights organization, is suing Pandora Media after the Internet radio company rejected a higher license fee for playing songs across various devices including mobile phones. In a lawsuit filed with the Manhattan federal court on Thursday, BMI said it had proposed an increase in Pandora's fees "consistent with market rates to reflect the explosive growth of the Internet music streaming marketplace." Broadcast Music Inc collects license fees on behalf of over 600,000 affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.

    Original source

  • 14 June 2013 | The LA Times

    Gannett’s TV deal for Belo worries media watchdogs

    Gannett Co.'s proposed acquisition of Belo Corp. is the latest in a slew of deals in the television industry. Last week, Media General acquired Young Broadcasting to create a company that will own 30 TV stations in 27 markets. In April, Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired Fisher Communications for $373 million. Gannett's $2.2-billion deal -- $1.5 billion in cash and the assumption of about $700 million in debt -- will give it 43 stations in markets reaching about one-third of the country. Gannett, already one of the larger owners of TV stations, will now become the biggest independent owner of stations that carry CBS and NBC content.

    Original source

  • 14 June 2013 | TIME

    At trial, Apple exec Eddy Cue says company didn’t fix e-book prices

    A top Apple Inc. executive described as Steve Jobs’ right-hand man took the witness stand at a Manhattan price-fixing trial and denied scheming with major book publishers to drive up the cost of electronic books. Eddy Cue was questioned about meetings he had in 2009 with chief executives of publishing houses about what they called their “Amazon problem” – the discounted $9.99 price that Amazon.com set for e-books. “They expressed to us that they wanted higher prices,” he said.

    Original source

  • 14 June 2013 | The Guardian

    ERT: BBC director calls on Greek government to reopen broadcaster

    The BBC's director general, Tony Hall, has called on the Greek government to reopen the state broadcaster immediately condemning its sudden closure as "undemocratic and unprofessional". In a petition to the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, the directors general of 50 European TV and radio broadcasters including the BBC urged him to see sense pointing out that "public service media and their independence from government lie at the heart of democratic societies". The other signatories included the heads of German, French, Swiss, Danish, Spanish and Italian TV.

    Original source

  • 14 June 2013 | The New York Times

    Condé Nast faces suit from interns over wages

    Two former interns filed a lawsuit against Condé Nast on Thursday, saying the company failed to pay them minimum wage at their summer jobs at W Magazine and The New Yorker, and asked that it be approved as a class-action suit. Lauren Ballinger, who worked as an intern at W Magazine in 2009, and Matthew Leib, an intern at The New Yorker in 2009 and 2010, said in the suit that Condé Nast, which owns the magazines, paid them less than $1 an hour. According to court papers filed Thursday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Leib was paid $300 to $500 for each summer he worked.

    Original source

  • 14 June 2013 | Dividend

    News Corporation CFO to retire

    News Corp announced yesterday that its veteran Chief Financial Officer, David De Voe, will retire at the end of the fiscal year. DeVoe, however, will remain on the company’s Board of Directors. DeVoe, who has served as CFO for over 20 years, will be replaced by John Nallen. In addition to CFO, Nallen will also serve as the Senior Executive Vice President of the company, which will be re-named 21st Century Fox. Nallen’s appointment is effective July 1, 2013.

    Original source

    • Page 1 of 792 pages

    Next Page

    1| 2| 3|