media

Music industry allies against Baidu

Music industry groups have called the popular Chinese search engine Baidu “the largest and most incorrigible purveyor of pirated music in China.” Other organizations backing the initiative include the China Audio-Video Copyright Assn. and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, along with local and international record labels including EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music, Sony

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Feeding the news appetite with RSS

Every day, Alex Dai, one of my full time employees, spends about an hour an a half looking for stories for the next day’s news feeds. He needs to find about 14 to 15 potential story ideas, based on local newspapers, press releases, government announcements, and similar sources. Then he sends them to Chicago for

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War journalism

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Journalism and the World” blog. Click here to see the original post. I’ll write more on this topic later, but right now I’d like to point everyone to a fantastic post by Michael Yon about how he started as a war correspondent. It’s

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How to become a foreign correspondent

I’ve answered it a lot as well (one of these answers is posted here:  http://maria.trombly.com/FAQ.htm#correspondent). But my perspective on this has changed over time as I gained more experience in the field, and as the industry has changed. Traditionally, there have been two main ways to become a foreign correspondent: Wait for the newspaper to

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Greetings from Shanghai, China

Dan Kubiske, chair of the SPJ’s International Journalism Committee, suggested that I blog about my experiences running a bureau out here in Shanghai, so this is it. Some background — I came to China three years ago, to run the China bureau for Securities Industry News (a weekly New York City financial newspaper). The work

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News Sites Experiment With ‘Dayparting’ by Tailoring Content

Online news sites have long noticed a troubling drop-off in  visitors during the evening hours. Last year, several newspapers  got together with Minneapolis-based  Minnesota Opinion Research Inc. (MORI) to find out exactly  what was going on. There was good news and there was bad news. In a study  released in January, Rusty Coats, MORI’s director

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‘I’m addicted to war’

A former war buff embarks on her own 12 step program My name is Maria, and I’m addicted to war. I had my first taste of combat shortly after I turned 23, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. From then on, war was my constant companion, friend and spiritual adviser. Whenever I returned from

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Looking for Online Dollars

News providers are finding ways to make their Web sites profitable The Internet boom brought with it a set of buzzwords for the online news industry — “page views,” “eyeballs,” “site visitors.” Back in those heady days of the year 2000, the goal was to get as many visitors as possible. Those publishers who thought

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Avoiding the Spin Cycle

For many journalists, public relations agents are the used car salesmen of the communications industry. They will do what it takes to get you to buy a story pitch — supply you with experts, find case studies, put you in touch with the company’s CEO. They’re friendly and kind, and some of them want to

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Ethics and war

Critics claim journalists go too far — and, sometimes, not far enough. Since Sept. 11, American journalists have been walking a fine ethical line. On the one hand, there are grim warnings about spilling military secrets, undermining national security and consorting with the enemy. Not to mention the fact that it’s pretty hard to criticize

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Tips for that job hunt

When jobs are more scare, you might have to change your expectations According to Gary Green, looking for a new job has been harder than any photo assignment he’s ever had. But experts say that looking at a job hunt as just that — a journalistic exercise — may make the process easier to handle.

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The Bottom Line

Layoffs in the Newspaper Industry What’s ahead in the job market? As the U.S. economy slows down, journalists find their work – and sometimes their jobs — being sacrificed in the name of greater profits. Why are things so bad now — and what toll has bottom-line thinking already taken? Gary Green was laid off

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