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Media News - Thursday, July 02, 2009

The EJC offers a daily updated selection of the latest developments in European and international media. The news flashes are stored in our Media News Archive which is searchable on keyword. If you would like to receive our Media News selection every day by email, register now for a free subscription!

Russia: RIA Novosti says improving training key to surviving crisis

Russian news agency RIA Novosti believes that investing in training programs which improve staff skills is the most effective anti-crisis program for media outlets, the agency's editor-in-chief said. This January and June the news agency introduced a series of lectures and seminars to train staff in multimedia technology for video recording and photo imaging, infographics, Internet search engines, 'black PR' and legal risks in the media. The training culminated in two-week multimedia courses held at a summer school in the Moscow Region. The classes, which started on June 20, are being held in the form of business games. 'Without the knowledge and skills of our journalists and editors, we could not provide our clients with a full-fledged multimedia news line, which delivers complicated information in an accessible format,' RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk said. Such multimedia products are the future for journalism Mironyuk said, adding that the agency also plans to provide training courses for its staff in the future. RIA Novosti deputy editor-in-chief Maxim Filimonov, who heads the Integrated News Department, said that around 400 people had already attended training sessions: 'We want our people to think in stories which are told first of all visually.' (Ria Novosti)

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Google drops news comment feature

Google has eliminated an experimental feature that allowed people quoted in articles in Google News to post comments on those articles. People in the news media were intrigued by the idea of giving article subjects the power to comment, and the idea drew considerable coverage. But the feature never got a lot of use -- the company declined to provide numbers -- and it was dropped without an announcement in May. 'We're always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful,' the company said in a statement released on Wednesday, confirming the change. 'Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users.' (New York Times )

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Fledgling website hopes to open journalism to all

A year-old website, inspired by the use of Twitter and Internet media reporting out of Iran, hopes to become the go-to forum for citizen journalists everywhere as traditional media pulls back. Allvoices.com, a fledgling social networking-cum-news aggregator site launched in 2008, uses algorithms to help it sort news from around the world in a manner akin to what Google Inc does. Its twist is that it encourages and enables anyone to be a reporter and uses an in-house system to rate would-be journalists on popularity and credibility. The company says they have 33,000 separate "landing" pages for countries, cities and other special categories -- each with its own following. People can file to the sites from computers, or even by sending text messages from mobile phones. Allvoices, which is operating on USD 4.5m in funding from Vantage Point Venture Partners, has started paying its most popular reporters. They can earn anywhere from USD 0,25 to USD 2 per thousand page views. Contributors are free to post almost anything. Credibility is rated by people who read postings and by the in-house algorithm, which is designed to help measure postings against traditional media and other sources. But throwing the site open to the public has its pitfalls. One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled. Other stories cite no sources, anathema in traditional journalism. (Reuters)

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Gannett to cut about 1,400 newspaper jobs by July 9

Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper owner, will eliminate about 1,400 publishing jobs by July 9 as it copes with declining advertising and circulation. 'We must take these steps because the advertising environment remains challenged,' Bob Dickey, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing unit, said today in a memo to employees. The division has more than 80 dailies and doesn't include USA Today, the largest U.S. newspaper by circulation. The cuts account for about 3.4 percent of Gannett's workforce. The McLean, Virginia-based company has enforced two weeks of unpaid leave for most employees, slashed its dividend and shuttered the Tucson Citizen newspaper to save costs. Publishing ad revenue dwindled 34 percent in the first quarter. Dickey said the company doesn't plan additional unpaid leave this year. Gannett, which publishes the Detroit Free Press, has about 41,500 employees, according to a regulatory filing. (Bloomberg)

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Netherlands: Newspaper group PCM told to sell the NRC

Newspaper publishing group PCM has been told to sell the NRC Handelsblad and NRC.next newspapers by the competition authority NMa. PCM, which owns four of the country's five main daily papers, is about to be taken over by Belgium's Persgroep, which owns Amsterdam paper Het Parool. But if Persgroep takes over PCM as a whole, it will have too-big a share of the Amsterdam regional newspaper market, the NMa said. 'Research shows if Parool readers decide to take another newspaper, they mainly opt for the Volkskrant or NRC,' the organisation said. The biggest circulation newspaper in the country is the Telegraaf. Persgroep director Christian van Thillo has already said he wants to sell the NRC. The money will go to reduce PCM's debts. Investment company HAL, which owns the Financieele Dagblad, and the Telegraaf have been named as potential buyers. (Dutch News)

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AP resurrects lost London video news archive

Associated Press has resurrected 3,500 hours of international news footage from thge early 1960s to the mid 1980s which had been buried in a World War Two-era bunker in central London. The project has unveiled new colour footage of key political figures including a young Yasser Arafat, Libya's Colonel Gadhafi immediately after taking power, Richard Nixon with Nicolae Ceausescu, Fidel Castro meeting Latin American and Eastern European leaders and a young Saddam Hussein in Paris. Some 20,000 film cans have been lying untouched for decades in the central London bunker from which general Eisenhower directed the D-Day landings. The film was rendered inaccessible because the text catalogue was scattered in various locations across the UK and US. AP's footage business, AP Archive, assembled a team of researchers to piece together the scattered paper records to create a new database for the footage. The films themselves are being cleaned and restored by Laboratoires Éclair of Paris and then transferred on to high definition videotape for use by professional producers. AP Archive is also digitising the films so that they can be viewed online via its website www.aparchive.com. This 'lost archive' is the legacy of United Press International Television News (UPITN), which whose archive was bought by AP in 1998 when it acquired World Television News. (Press Gazette)

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