Redbook Reporter Refuses To Disclose Source Of Recipe – America’s Finest News Source:
Steuber, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for recipe reporting in 1996 and 2001, said that to divulge her source would jeopardize her First Amendment rights, as well as relationships with high-level recipe sources she has worked for years to develop.
In Iran, Journalism Makes Use of Unverified News – NYTimes.com:
“Check the source” may be the first rule of journalism. But in the coverage of the protests in Iran this month, some news organizations have adopted a different stance: publish first, ask questions later. If you still don’t know the answer, ask your readers.
TMZ Was Far Ahead in Reporting Jackson’s Death – NYTimes.com:
For more than an hour, TMZ was essentially the only outlet claiming that Mr. Jackson was dead. Television and newspaper journalists read the TMZ report but largely held off on repeating it, for fear of making a mistake. Still, the bulletin traversed the Web with remarkable speed, creating a stark divide: on the Internet Mr. Jackson was dead, and on TV he was still alive.
Letter From Europe – Is Free News Really Worth the Price? – NYTimes.com, by ALAN COWELL:
It may be tempting, perhaps, to argue that, finally, that oft-reviled beast — the mainstream media — has been left in history’s wake. After the demise of typewriters and Telexes, the time of the tweet has arrived. The view is not universal, even among tech-friendly journalists.
“My zeal for Twitter knows a limit,” wrote Jack Shafer, editor at large of the online publication Slate, saying the welter of messages from the streets of Tehran was “more noise than signal in understanding the Iranian upheaval.”
IAN AUSTEN – NYTimes.com:
The reporter, Maziar Bahari, who holds both Canadian and Iranian citizenship, was picked up Sunday at his mother’s home in Tehran by government security officials who seized videotapes and a laptop computer. Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, estimated that 26 journalists had been arrested in Iran since the presidential election on June 12.
Howard Kurtz – washingtonpost.com:
Still, the unusual arrangement raises questions about whether journalists were giving special treatment to one of their own. “It certainly could appear that way, but it’s more complicated than that when a human life is at stake,” said Phil Bronstein, former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. “It does involve a news organization keeping quiet and asking others to keep quiet. What shocks me is that it was so successful.”
washingtonpost.com:
The reporter, David Rohde, 41, was taken captive Nov. 10 with local reporter Tahir Ludin and their driver, while he was in the early stages of researching a book on Afghanistan. News organizations, including The Washington Post, did not report on the abduction at the request of the Times, which feared that publication of the news could endanger the lives of the men.
Greg Mitchell:
In fact, what I witnessed in the six months after we found out about it was the most amazing press blackout on a major event that I have ever seen: at least in the case of a story involving such a prominent news outlet and a leading reporter. I wonder how strongly, if at all, this non-reporting will be criticized in the weeks to come.
Xark!: The betrayal of the Fourth Estate:
The tarnish on the halo newspaper execs have spent so much time polishing isn’t just their unwillingness to acknowledge their own limitations and failures. It’s how they treat their people. The betrayal of the Fourth Estate contract by newspaper management has played a huge role in their impending doom. It may be the one thing that guarantees their slide into irrelevancy.
Why? Because when the companies need their best and brightest to pull together, to help work smarter and better, they’ve got … nothing. Many of the best and brightest have moved on because they can. Or they were the first out the door in layoffs. Those left feel trapped, bitter and betrayed. No pay raises. Furloughs. “Doing more with less.” Not exactly a prescription for an ailing industry.
BRIAN STELTER – NYTimes.com:
As the journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee complete their third month of detainment in North Korea, it remains rather astonishing that they were there in the first place to report for a fledgling cable channel. But their path there may explain in part why they remain in custody.
Ellen Barry – NYTimes.com:
After the most recent attack on Sergei Kanev — attempted strangulation with a wire, in his apartment’s stairwell here — his editor visited him and delicately suggested that he take a six-month sabbatical from crime reporting, in America.
Mr. Kanev still chortles with delight recalling this story, as if he had been advised to take up tap dancing. He is the kind of reporter who sleeps with a police scanner beside his bed. Without work, “I would die of boredom,” he said.
A. J. Liebling – Surviving Without Newspapers – NYTimes.com:
The only complaints I heard came from commuters who lived at such short distances from the city that it was impractical for them to smoke opium during the trip. Some of these people said that now that they had no newspapers they were compelled to look at the scenery, which revolted them.
Xark!: The newspaper suicide pact:
I think I’ll remember last week as the moment when I finally knew, with a certainty approaching fatigue, that the newspaper industry – the business and passion that both shaped and warped me over the past 20 years – had chosen ritual suicide. The choice appears grimly reached and irrevocable.
Via Boing Boing
washingtonpost.com says:
Facing perhaps 10 years in a labor camp, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, TV reporters accused of illegally entering North Korea and committing unspecified “hostile acts,” go on trial Thursday in Pyongyang in a case that has become part of a nail-biting face-off this spring between North Korea and much of the rest of the world.