Media News - Friday, April 17, 2009

Italy state TV fires cartoonist for quake drawing

One of Italy's most popular cartoonists has been fired by state television company RAI for an anti-government drawing deemed offensive to victims of last week's earthquake. Vauro Senese's dismissal on Wednesday sparked an angry reaction from the center-left opposition which branded it censorship underscoring the grip that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has over Italy's media. The cartoon appeared on current affairs program Annozero, whose coverage of the authorities' handling of the earthquake has been attacked by ruling politicians since it was aired last Thursday. As well as firing Senese, RAI Director General Mauro Masi, who was recently appointed by Berlusconi'a parliamentary majority, ordered the program's anchorman Michele Santoro to 're-balance' his coverage in this Thursday's program. The cartoon, aimed at government plans to ease restrictions on home extensions to boost the economy, featured an exhausted grave digger standing over a line of coffins under the caption 'Increasing the cubic meters ...of the cemeteries.' Santoro, a left-winger who has clashed with media tycoon Berlusconi in the past, interviewed people who said rescue plans in the quake-prone area could have been better and criticized some aspects of the relief effort. Berlusconi, who owns Italy's main private television network Mediaset and as prime minister has indirect control over RAI, has shown increasing annoyance with the press in recent weeks. (Reuters)

‘NYT’ cuts sections, trims freelance budget

The New York Times is cutting sections and trimming its budget for freelance contributions in another round of belt tightening aimed at coping with a steep decline in ad revenue. The newspaper's executive editor, Bill Keller, announced the cuts in a staff memo Thursday. The Times currently produces zoned Sunday sections with different mixes of local news for New York City, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester County, N.Y., and Connecticut. Now those will be reduced to zoned pages within a single regional section. Keller said the newspaper was still working on a prototype and hoped to launch the new section on May 24. Keller also said the standalone Escapes travel section will disappear after April 24, with some content folded into the Friday Weekend section. The New York Times Magazine will end its weekly fashion spreads after May 3. Fashion coverage will primarily appear instead in the Times' T Magazine and the newspaper's Thursday and Sunday Style sections. Beginning Tuesday, the Times will condense its three-page daily index of stories into one page. Keller said the newspaper will begin trimming its freelance budgets within weeks, though he did not elaborate. 'Taken together, these moves will save millions of dollars - savings that would otherwise have to come out of payroll,' he wrote. (Editor and Publisher)

Time Inc. owns up to goofed ‘mine’ magazine

Time Inc.'s experimental made-to-order magazine, 'mine,' shipped out this week, but many subscribers got a version that looked like it belonged to someone else. Subscribers to the free publication were allowed to select five of eight magazine titles, and content from each would make it into their personalized copy. Many readers got versions that didn't match their picks. Time Inc. Media Group President Wayne Powers apologized for the problem in an e-mail Wednesday to the group that may have been affected, blaming a 'computer error' and promising a sixth free issue, instead of the five originally planned. The print run was limited to the first 31,000 respondents who signed up online at http://www.timeinc.com/mine while an online version was available for another 200,000. Neither maximum was reached and signups are still possible. Readers can select from titles published by subsidiaries of Time Warner Inc. and American Express Co.: Time, Sports Illustrated, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Money, In Style, Golf, and Travel + Leisure. Editors preselect the stories that make it into each biweekly issue. Several of the stories picked by editors from each title were up to two years old, and some could be found on the Internet. One Sports Illustrated story about soccer fans, for instance, refers to a World Cup qualifier match 'two weeks from now.' That game wrapped up last June. (AP)

Time magazine wins appeal in Indonesia

Time magazine won an appeal in Indonesia's Supreme Court on Thursday against USD 93m in libel damages awarded to late dictator Suharto. The court overturned its earlier ruling that Time had defamed Suharto in a May 1999 article alleging he had amassed a vast fortune through corruption. Suharto sought more than USD 27bn in the defamation suit filed against the Asian edition of US-based Time. The court awarded him IDR 1tr in damages in September, 2007 and ordered the US-based magazine to apologise for the article. In February last year the publication submitted a demand for a review of the Supreme Court ruling, saying it had been based on a 'manifest error.' The article said a four-month investigation in 11 countries had traced some 15 billion dollars in wealth accumulated by Suharto and his six children. The dictator died aged 86 in January last year, having never been brought to trial for corruption during his 32-year rule. The Time case has been closely watched as a benchmark for press freedom in democratic Indonesia. (AFP)

Netherlands: Utrecht mayor apologises for press blunder

The mayor of Utrecht Aleid Wolfsen has apologised to the city council for his part in preventing the publication of an article in a local freesheet which reflected badly on him. The freesheet planned to place an article on expenses submitted by the mayor for accommodation costs. In the piece, local government expert Twan Tak says that the mayor was not entitled to the expenses. The publishing house decided to withdraw the piece after pressure from the mayor. The paper's editor told various media earlier that Mr Wolfsen had also threatened the paper with huge consequences if the publication of the piece went ahead. The freesheet relies heavily on advertising revenue from the council. The mayor admits that he should not have interfered with the publication of the piece and said press freedom was one of the core values of democracy. In spite of strong criticism by Utrecht's councillors they rejected a motion to investigate the issue further. The National Union of Journalists however says it will take steps against the publishing house as it removed the article without the knowledge of the editor who is responsible for the paper's content. (Radio Netherlands)

Facebook now accounts for one third of all online social networking time

The latest comScore data is good news for Facebook, ranking the site as the sixth most popular website in the world with 275 million unique users each month. That exceeds the 200 million user mark that Facebook recently made public, but regardless of different metrics the trends are interesting here. Facebook now accounts for 4.1 minutes of every 100 minutes we spend online, which is a sign that we are using the site more deeply - or just getting lost because of that new design. The site accounts for more than 30 percent of all time spend on social networking sites, up from just over 12 percent a year earlier. Facebook has seen very strong growth in Europe over the past 12 months, ranked as the most popular social networking site in 11 of the 17 countries comScore monitors. The UK is the biggest of those, rising from 12.96 million unique users in February last year to 22.66 million in February 2009. Italy saw the biggest growth, up 2,721 percent year on year to 10.77 million users, while Spain grew 999 percent to 5.66 million. Facebook noticeably lags behind in Russia, where it ranks seventh among the most visited social networking sites and where clone sites including VKontakte, Moikrug and Odnoklassniki are very established. Facebook Russia launched in June last year but, as has been the experience of western companies trying to break into the Chinese market, the sector is dominated by established domestic firms. (The Guardian)

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