Newspaperindex - the blog | Newspapers of the world, media and free speech

Nothing is more useless and worthless than yesterday’s news. This is at least the truth in the offline world: If you want news you can buy a newspaper and the old ones are only good for wrapping fish or for the bottom of the bird cage.

Things are quite opposite on the Internet. Here you find the breaking news for free from nearly every newspaper in the world, while the same newspapers archives are charching for access.

Who said the new economy was dead? Just a reflection on a freezing Monday evening…

Adam L. Penenberg from Wired wrote and article about this and more last summer: Searching for The New York Times.

Singapore’s The Straits Times newspaper will begin charging users to access its Web site from the middle of March.

The newspaper’s move comes several months after it began requiring readers to complete a free registration process in order to access the newspaper online. In charging for content it joins a small number of publications around the world that are offering access to the full newspaper online in return for a subscription fee. Other major newspapers doing so include Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

The Straits Times will offer a one-month subscription for S$15 (US$9.20), a six-month subscription for S$72 and an annual subscription for S$120. A subscription will be required from March 15. In contrast a one-year subscription to the printed newspaper in Singapore costs S$276.

“We believe that we have a good and valuable product that users will want to pay for,” the newspaper explained in the message. “It’s also not a tenable business model to charge for the print edition of the newspaper and not for its online edition.”

Four countries with long records of press repression—China, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma—account for more than three-quarters of the journalists imprisoned around the world, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found.

“These four countries operate outside the international mainstream,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “The widespread jailing of journalists is pursued only by those few nations that distrust their own citizens and care little about the opinion of the rest of the world.”

Link

Kathmandu District Administration Office summoned the editors of five weekly newspapers, seeking clarification on why they had left the editorial space on their newspapers blank.
The editors were Rajendra Baidhya, chief editor of Bimarsha; Kabir Rana, chief editor of Deshantar; Gopal Budhathoki, publisher and editor of Sanghu; Nawaraj Timilsina, editor of Prakash; and Shashidhar Bhandari, editor of Hank.
The editors were questioned by officials from the Chief District Office, a powerful body in charge of all security issues in the Kathmandu Valley.

“The press too should act in a disciplined and responsible manner in this time of emergency,” Chief District Officer Baman Prasad Neupane told the media.

After questioning Baidhya and Rana, the authorities told them to present themselves at the DAO whenever asked. Budhathoki, Timilsina and Bhandari were asked to return to the DAO to face questioning on the following day.

A weird hat is better than no hat, but no editorial is worse than a critical one, believes King Gyanendra of Nepal

The move came after a long period of political turmoil in the fight between Nepal’s government and Maoist rebels.
Six journalists have been put in detention since the King’s takeover, including the general secretary of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ), Bishnu Nisthuri.

More about the repressive kingdom of Nepal.

I just came across this site: Filipino Silent Protestors.

We are an association of Filipinos who have decided to express our protest with the current state of affairs in the country such as rampant cronyism, nepotism and favoritism.

And yep - they are really serius about their silent way to protest, the site was last updated 4/09/2000. Go for it filipinos!

http://www.geocities.com/xpoint_2000/

More than a decade after the introduction of democracy in Russia, the media is far from free, says journalist Grigory Pasko. Speaking in Toronto, Canada, at an event co-sponsored by Canadian Journalists For Free Expression (CJFE), PEN Canada and Amnesty International, the visiting journalist warns that Russia under President Vladimir Putin is slipping back to the repressive days when censorship was a hallmark of Communist rule in the Soviet Union.

“You cannot really say there is of freedom of the media in Russia today,” says Pasko. “There are very few newspapers that are independent of the authorities, and outside Moscow, they scarcely exist.” Pasko spent two years in solitary confinement after he blew the whistle on the Russian navy’s practice of dumping nuclear waste into the Sea of Japan. He was released on parole in January 2003, mainly because of international pressure. “I received 30,000 letters in jail,” he says.

“Changes to laws in the past few years have resulted in a rollback for press freedom and democracy in Russia. These include an anti-terrorism law which severely hinders freedom of expression, a law that removes the right to hold referenda and tax laws that give the state more powers to control how non-governmental organisations receive foreign funds,” says Pasko.

Pasko’s visit comes two days before US President George W. Bush arrives in Slovakia to meet with Putin. Earlier this week, Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote to Bush urging him to be tougher with Russia on its press freedom record.

(From IFEX COMMUNIQUÉ VOL 14 NO 8 | 22 FEBRUARY 2005)

Click to view todays russian newspapers in fulltext:

The Norwegian Newspaper Organization has for years been threatening local search engines that crawls and indexes online newspaper content. A longer discussion has now ended – the newspaper industry gave up.

”Our last point was that if they would not lets us crawl, index and distribute their content we would make our software available under the free license GNU. That means that they overnight would not just have us at Infostill to deal with but thousands of small companies doing media monitoring them selves in Norway and abroad. Everybody would be able to make their own private open source search engine in less than a couple of hours,” says the chief programmer of the Infostill Agent server application Stig Bordensius.

The Norwegian Newspaper Organization now accepts that Infostill crawls, indexes and distribute as long as Infostill does not sell the articles.
Deep linking to newspaper content and indexing by bots have in Scandinavia been compared to theft and bloodsucking and searchtech companies like Newsbooster have been shut down.
The big problem here is that media organizations claim the right to how their content should be published, read and distributed on the Internet.

This idea is just so 1997, where the common understanding of the Internet was about a number of portals with a front page that led to sub pages. –Just like a printed newspaper.

Now this is not the case anymore. The net is interconnected by crawlers, spiders, viewers, readers, active indexes, real-time search engines and a growing number of bloggers making copies and comments.

The established online newspaper industry in Scandinavia wants their users to access their content from the ”front page” of their site, because here is the most expensive ads, and this is partly the reason for the conflict.
Infostill is a Norwegian company, but it also has a Danish service. In Denmark things are still rough for the search engine industry. Still today the newspaper lobby claim that deep-linking and indexing is illegal. – Just what search engines like Google does is actually illegal in Denmark! And there are several examples of bloggers that have been harassed for making deep links to stories in the major newspapers.

VenturaCountyStar.com
Every morning at 9 a.m., the editors of the Ventura County Star get together to talk about what is going to be in tomorrow’s newspaper. At the end of that meeting, tentative plans are made about what stories, photos and graphics will go on Page One. Of course, news happens during the day; and news doesn’t happen (stories will fall through). -And they invite the readers to participate in those decisions. This is a new way of using blogs in traditional newsmaking, good luck from here.

The Page One decisions are finalized at 3 o’clock every afternoon, subject to change before the presses roll. Join the editors meetings in the pressroom online: VenturaCountyStar.com

Legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson shot himself in his home in Woody Creek near Aspen ski resort in Colorado sunday 20. february.
Almost always writing in the first person, Thompson flirted with the border between fiction and fact and threw out any attempt at objectivity. His style became known as ‘gonzo’ journalism and made him a cult figure.

He shot to fame in 1966 after the publication of his book Hell’s Angels, the story of his relationship with the then-feared motorcycle gang. But the stories of his heady experiences earned him a popular reputation as a wild-living, hard-drinking, LSD-crazed writer bent on self-destruction.Thompson became such an icon that cartoonist Garry Trudeau based the wild character of Duke in his “Doonesbury” comic strip on him.
From “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”:

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . . .” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

Yesterday I was holding newspaper history in my hands. The first omnibus newspaper ever published in Scandinavia from January 1749. The owner - a gentleman who had in it in his family’s possession since it was published - let me scan it on his flatbed. The newspaper is in very good condition since it was not printed on paper made from wood but from flax and cotton that can last for much longer time. It is kept inside a book in a privately owned historic library in the countryside in the snow covered hilly in East Jutland in Denmark. Only a handful of other copies are held in The Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen, but this is the first time the publication has been scanned and made public in the digital world. The newspaper has the title “Kjøbenhavnske Danske Post Tidender”, a few years after it changed name to Berlingske Tidende. This first edition had 8 pages and it was since printed twice a week.

Translation of the front page from gothic Danish:

Monarch of the Nordic twin kingdom (Denmark and Norway) allow, and all your servants, the public to see with what is truthfully the hearts joy, you your highness King to step into another unified year, that great luck and happiness foresees. What else could it foresee than happiness, when we have you, our brave and pretty, with royal house and heir.

And it goes on like this till the middle of page two. The newspaper was controlled by strict censorship by the King and not only did the editor have to accept this, he also felt obliged to praise the King all over the front page.

Here starts the international reporting.

Wiena: Russian troops has left for Poland, more will leave soon.
Hanover: Several people killed and about 40 injured when lightning hit a church in Diepholz.
Paris: Speculations about where Prince Edward might be. In Avignon? Maybe in Switzerland?
London: The House of Commons decided to raise the number of men in the navy to 17.000 during 1749.

We also get to hear news about the Russian queen and there is a page only with ads - not clickable..

Download the entire newspaper as pdf. here.

This very early and very rare newspaper was way ahead of its time. It has many of the elements we know from modern newspapers: The short notice, facts and figures about power, war and economics, the commentary, the gossip and the editorial.

The first newspaper in the New World, titled Publick Occurrences, was published in Boston, Massachusetts on September 25, 1690. (It was only published once so it is doubtfull if it can be called a newspaper.) Intended as a monthly publication for the general public, it was published without a license from the authorities. Its contents greatly offended those in power and caused such a public uproar that it was immediately discontinued after the one issue. Publick Occurrences was the forerunner of a new time, however, and in the 1700s, newspapers began to spring up in the American colonies.

While Berlingske Tidende is still in print, and is one of the 3 largest daily newspapers in Denmark, the oldest continually published newspaper in the World is Berrow’s Worcester Journal. It has appeared each week with unfailing regularity for more than 300 years.

Update 22/02/05
The newspaper has now been downloaded 2715 times. This number must be a lot higher than the numbers of readers it had when it published first time… Due to the interest in the publication, I am willing to translate the entire text if there is a need for it.

Newspaper Index now has its own #1 keywords!

It is hard to optimize a sparetime site to compete with gigantic sites that has been around for years and has thousands of backwards links and +6 pageranks. This morning I was both very happy and suprised to see that Newspaper Index has got a NUMBER ONE placement on Google when using the exact keyword phrase: “newspapers in tahiti”

Radio French Polynesian president refuses to step down

French Polynesia’s embattled President, Gaston Flosse, is refusing to step down, despite numerous calls for him to keep his promise to do so.

He has offered to form a government of national unity, pending fresh elections, and a possible all-party round-table that would attempt to find a consensus on the French Pacific territory’s current political deadlock.

Mr Flosse’s announcement came after an executive meeting of his anti-independence Tahoeraa Huiraatira party.

The president says he will not resign, because his party “almost unanimously” asked him to stay in office.
Last week, Mr Flosse promised to step down if his party did badly in the weekend by-elections.

A dozen members of French Polynesia’s assembly, including pro-independence party leader Oscar Temaru, have put forward a vote of no confidence in President Gaston Flosse.

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Journalist group calls US to account over Iraq
The US government was today accused of hiding behind a “culture of denial” over the deaths of at least 12 journalists who are alleged to have perished at the hands of the US military in Iraq.

Re-igniting the debate that US soldiers deliberately “targeted” journalists during the Iraqi occupation, a press freedom body called on the US to take “responsibility” for its actions in the country.

Responding to what it said was the “hounding out” of the CNN news chief, Eason Jordan, the International Federation of Journalists called on the US administration to come clean over its “mistakes” in the region.

Since US, British and other soldiers first began Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, more than 70 journalists have been killed in the country.

The IFJ said that at least 12 journalists had met their deaths at the “hands of US soldiers”, including the killings of Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and Jose Couso of Spain’s Telecinco after US tanks opened fire on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

Read newspapers from Iraq here

Portugal’s opposition Socialist Party, led by Jose Socrates, will win a majority in parliament in elections Feb. 20, ousting Social Democratic Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes after seven months in power, three polls showed.

One poll, by Publico newspaper and the state-owned RTP television network of 5,051 voting-age Portuguese, showed the Socialists taking 46 percent of the vote and winning between 118 and 124 seats in the 230-seat assembly.

Follow the portuguese election here:
Newspapers in Portugal

Revealed: John Ehrlichman Believed Henry Kissinger was Deep Throat
NEW YORK In three decades of speculation about the identity of legendary Watergate source “Deep Throat,” few prominent members of the Nixon administration swept up in the scandal have endorsed a likely suspect. Even John Dean has hedged and offered multiple guesses. But now E&P (Editor & Publisher) has learned that former top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, who went to prison for his role in Watergate, felt strongly that he knew the identity of Deep Throat.

His candidate: Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser from 1969 to 1973.

CPJ News Alert 2005
Guinean security forces arrested the editor of one of the nation’s leading private weeklies at his home in the capital, Conakry, on Wednesday night. Authorities did not disclose charges against Mohamed Lamine Diallo, known by his pen name Benn Pépito, but local journalists believe the arrest could be linked to his journalism.

Security forces also searched Pépito’s home, but nothing was confiscated, local sources told the Committee to Protect Journalists. The journalist was being held at the headquarters of Conakry’s security services, local media groups said in a joint statement today.

“We call on Guinean authorities to explain why they are holding Benn Pépito and to make public any charges against him,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said today.

The February 16 edition of Pépito’s newspaper, the private weekly La Lance, carried an editorial titled, “The situation in Lomé seen from Conakry,” which compared the political situation in Guinea, where President Lansana Conté has ruled since 1984, to that of Togo, where the army moved to install long-time ruler Gnassingbé Eyadema’s son as president following Eyadema’s death on February 5.

Newspapers in Guinea

In a country where free speech has price, Iranian bloggers are having a bonanza - and the hardliners have begun to take notice.

The blogging phenomenon has exploded in the Islamic Republic. Today an estimated 75,000 Iranians maintain blogs that engage in a brisk virtual dialogue despite an Orwellian government that has a monopoly on public news media. They are an ever-enlarging faction of the 5 million Internet users in Iran, who have taken the protest for greater social freedom from streets and newsstands to cyberspace.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, president of Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting, said that in the absence of other mediums, “Iranian bloggers are testing the waters right now, gauging levels of tolerance to see just how far they can push the envelope.”

WashingtonPost.com relaunches home page
WashingtonPost.com launched an upgraded version of its homepage Tuesday, complete with a top navigation bar and roll-down menus. The upgrade, which also allows for more news and multimedia content, was implemented in response to a survey that indicated users prefer a single nav bar.

“The new design gives us the flexibility to provide more information upfront in a cleaner, more streamlined interface,”

Jim Brady, the site’s executive editor, said in a statement.

The Global Media Monitoring Project, which is monitoring the representation of women and men in the media worldwide one day this month, has just gone live on the web. Visit: http://www.globalmediamonitoring.org
- Yes thay are actually counting the numbers of times women and men are mentioned in the news worldwide…

Right now I am doing a major update of the newspapers in newspaperindex.comAll links are being revised I am deleting a lot of newspapers. Most of them because people convince me that they should not be in the index, some because they are too narrow in coverage or are biased. One of my ideas with this update was to place an icon after every newspaper that offer RSS-feeds. - Well, in fact it was suggested by Robin Good www.masternewmedia.com, but I could not find the time for it now. Today I found this site www.sidewaltheory.com that have listed american newspapers that offers RSS. Nice work by Jackie Rejfek and Kevin Reynen.

We created this database as part of Jackie’s thesis, but decided to open it up as wiki-style community tool. Currently you can only suggest RSS feeds, but eventually we are going to track advertising programs and archive access as well. This will be something of a combination of Columbia Journalism Review’s Who Owns What?, the US Newspaper List, iBibilo’s U.S. News Archives on the Web, and the work Tom Biro of The Media Drop did compiling a list of newspapers with RSS feeds in December of 2004

http://www.sidewalktheory.com/newspapers/

From: International Journalists´ Network
The new Kiev Media Law Institute (MLI) officially opened this month with plans to strengthen media legislation and promote free speech in Ukraine.

Newspapers in Ukraine

From: Going Global

The US Department of Defense is launching local “news” sites in an effort to counter what it believes is “misinformation” about the United States in the foreign media.

One Web site is aimed at the Balkans and the other, shown below, at the Maghreb region of northwest Africa, which includes Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Magharebia supports English, French and Arabic languages.

Magharebia represents a signficant investment of time and taxpayer dollars, requiring 50 freelance writers and additional translators. I must admit that the site does do a good job of providing seamless navigation between languages. What the site fails at doing is making it clear exactly who or what is behind the Web site. The only way a visitor will find out the Department of Defense is behind this project is if he or she clicks on the “disclaimer” link; this is hardly the way one goes about building trust around the world.

What I’d also like to know is what a Web site that reports soccer scores in Tunisia has to do with placing the US in a more positive light. Do the powers at be at the Pentagon truly believe that the best way to get your message out to the world is to dress it up in localized faux news portals?

Naturally, many in Washington are questioning the wisdom of this initiative.
According to this CNN article many are wondering if these Web sites violate President Bush’s recent mandate against sponsoring journalism.

Web globalization, when used wisely, is a wonderful way to educate the world and expand your business around the world. But Web globalization can just as easily be used unwisely, and this is one vivid example.

Frontpage headlines like “Boring story about a fury dog in Katmandu” is what readers will find at newsstands in Nepal these days. The hard censorship under King Gyanenda makes it impossible for the local newspapers to report anything of interest to their reader. Instead they have decided to show the absurdness in the situation by only reporting trivial and boring news, writes correspondent Terry Friel from Katmandu.

http://www.thehimalayantimes.com

HansHenrik