Media
That most newspapers fail to use the web to its full potential is hardly a riveting insight, but I particularly liked two quotes from Washingtonpost.com editor James Brady's talk to the Associated Press Managing Editors conference in New Orleans this week (report via Editor and Publisher). The
Freesheets
They have been accused of everything from depleting Finnish forests to draining the budgets of European renovation departments. Now free papers are being blamed for causing subway track flooding in New York. The New York Sun reports that a recent investigation task force from the Metropolitan Transport Authority has found
Free speech
A court ruled on Thursday that Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten did not libel Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that unleashed a storm of protests in the Islamic world. Seven Danish Muslim organisations brought the case, saying the paper had libelled them with the images, which included one depicting
Media
Today's onlinepressgazette carries a though-provoking report from a talk given by Olaf Wiig, the Fox News cameraman kidnapped in Gaza earlier this year: "Wiig said that from the outset his kidnappers wanted to make a hostage video and the biggest motivation for their involvement in the kidnapping,
Food and Drink
Tell you what: try having a coke in a bar here. Norway's most expensive pint of coke adds up to £7,60 with today's currency rate. Having 0,4 litre beer in the same place costs £4,90. All according to today's print edition
Marketing and PR
The weird and wonderful world of marketing: do check out "Top 10 ad-tricks in Tokyo's train stations", an interesting article "about how advertisers in the Japanese capital have thought up new ways to saturate train stations with their messages. Not content with traditional billboards and
Free speech
Denmark has dropped from first to nineteenth place in Reporters Without Borders’ annual ’Worldwide Press Freedom Index' due to serious threats against the authors of the Mohammed cartoons (link via Börsen, in Danish). It is the first time in recent years journalists in a country that is very observant
Media
The company has just forced a Swedish freesheet war and is mere steps away from completing a merger between its own paper Aftenposten and four of Norway's biggest regional papers - a merger that has been branded an acquisition by its British rival Mecom. Yesterday Schibsted, one of
Media
The debate over biased public service broadcasting is hardly confined to any one country, and resurfaces with regular intervals across the Western hemisphere. This weekend, The Mail on Sunday carried a rather damaging report from a recent BBC impartiality summit: "At the secret meeting in London last month, which
Blogging
... they might even let their professional mannerisms slip and, heaven forbid, end up telling the truth: CBS News reports that the Sudan government has ordered chief U.N. envoy Jan Pronk of the Netherlands to leave the country for writing in his blog that the Sudanese army had suffered heavy
Freesheets
To show how it feels not to be able to read, the United Nation's development program, UNDP, will hand out an unintelligible freesheet in Stockholm today, according to Dagens Media. Not sure I'm too convinced by the effectiveness of this campaign, developed by ad agency Futurniture.
Freesheets
The ongoing Danish freesheet war may be a tumultuous and costly war for newspaper proprietors, but it has created scores of new journalism jobs. Due to an avalanche of new freesheets, as well as new magazines, radio- and TV channels and internet expansion, unemployment among the country's journalists