ACRC

The perils of reporting have been highlighted in recent news:

• The most high profile case by far has been the two American reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling who were detained by North Korea along the border with China in March for engaging in “hostile acts”.  They were finally released after Bill Clinton visited North Korea and secured their release.  Since then, they have released a statement about their experience in captivity.
• The recent rescue of New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell from the Taliban has thrown up questions about the rescue priorities of international forces as his Afghan colleague Sultan Munadi died in the same rescue mission.  Concerns were also raised about the risks that Farrell and his translator Munadi undertook by venturing into a Taliban-controlled zone without any military escort.
• At least 17 journalists have been murdered in Russia in the past decade.  The one thing they had in common? They had “engaged in critical reporting that upset powerful interests – whether in government, business, law enforcement or organised crime”. CJP (Committee to Protect Journalists) has released a special report titled ‘Anatomy of Injustice – The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia’. Read it here.

The Reuters Handbook of Journalism is now available online. Sections include:

1. Standards & Values
2. Guide to Operations
3. General Style Guide
4. Sports Style Guide
5. Specialised Guidance
6. Links

According to Dean Wright, this handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by. Head on over there to see what the “professionals” rely on.

According to The Economist, China’s government is taking steps to stop subsidies to publishers who are hemorrhaging in red ink. It had disabled the rights of 10,000-odd publishing houses to publish books and forced them to merge with only 600 private companies. Only these private companies, which have state-ties, will be allocated a quota of serial numbers that can be legally printed. This means that the final decision whether or not to publish a particular title lie on them.

The article seems to imply that this is another method used by the government to impose stringent control over information that is available to the citizens. These private companies are usually profit-driven and favour the production of bestsellers or popular textbook titles, rather than intellectual books that do not guarantee high sales. Even if the publishing house wants to publish a definite bestselling book but has controversial political views, few of these companies would allow this to happen because they risk being fined or suffer a reduction in book quotas .

A new binding; Publishing mergers in China: The Economist article

To read The Economist article in full,

1. Log into LexisNexis Academic under NTU database page
2. Under Search Terms, type in“A new binding; Publishing mergers in China”,
3. Select “Major U.S. and World Publications” under the Search Within field.
4. Determine the date range , e.g. Date is between May 23 2009 and May 29 2009.

Run the search and you will be able to retrieve all the articles in full text!

Another Final Year Project is in the spotlight!

Adeline Ong and Lim Chin Ping are holding a photo exhibition of their FYP, titled “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”, which is a photo documentary conducted over a 5 month period to capture the lives of mental health patients living in rehabilitation homes.

Venue: National Library Basement 1, 100 Victoria Street
Duration: 4 – 16 July 2009, 10am to 9pm daily

For more information, do visit their website or exhibition at NLB!

Another FYP of our recent graduates – David Lee, Tan Wei Xin & Muhd Nurluqman Suratman was also repackaged as a Saturday Special Report in The Straits Times on 13th June. The FYP was about the growing surrogacy industry in India and the group spent ten days in Gujarat and nine days in Mumbai, Maharashtra to file this report.

To read the Saturday Special Report in full,

1. Log into Factiva under NTU database page
2. Under Search Builder, run a search for Straits Times under “Source” and click on the little blue arrow next to it.
3. In the Free Text box, type “Saturday Special Report”.
4. Determine the date range , e.g. 06/13/2009.
5. Run the search and you will be able to retrieve all the articles in full text!

Congratulations to our recent graduates – Wong Jing Han, Lim Wei Yang, Alex Teh and Lim Rong Shan whose final year project was repackaged as a Saturday Special Report in The Straits Times! The FYP was about one-room rental housing in Singapore, focusing on Block 2 at Jalan Kukoh.

The new “homeless” in S’pore by Alex Teh: A ST blog entry

To read the Saturday Special Report in full,

1. Log into Factiva under NTU database page
2. Under Search Builder, run a search for Straits Times under “Source” and click on the little blue arrow next to it.
3. In the Free Text box, type “Saturday Special Report”.
4. Determine the date range , e.g. 06/20/2009.
5. Run the search and you will be able to retrieve all the articles in full text!

Started in 2002, Month of Photography Asia is an annual exhibition presenting works by international and Singaporean photographers in accordance to the theme for the year.  The theme for this year is “Engaging Asia”, with talks and workshops given by lensman Steve McCurry who is world-renowned for his picture “Afghan Girl”:

The exhibitions will run from 18 June to 18 July at the following places: Asian Civilisations Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art at the Lasalle-College of the Arts , SMU Gallery, SG Private Banking Gallery at the Alliance Francaise de Singapour and The Cathay Gallery.

Do visit the official Month of Photography website for more information.

When French composer Maurice Jarre passed away on 28th March, sociology student Shane Fitzgerald took the opportunity to test “how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news”. He amended the composer’s Wikipedia page with a fake quote which was used by many newspapers and new blogs all over the world. No one called his bluff till he announced it a month later, showing that media outlets are often reliant on Internet sources to produce news stories quickly under pressure.

Read more about it here. A lesson for aspiring journalists to always double check their sources!

In America, most major cities usually have a few local newspapers to supply the local news. The New York Times recently reported that more and more of these local newspapers have been closing down due to the declining ad revenue and the onset of the recession:

“Nearly every large paper in the country prints fewer pages and fewer articles, and many have eliminated entire sections. Bureaus in foreign capitals and even Washington have closed, and papers have jettisoned film criticism, book reviews and coverage of local news outside their home markets.”

Even the New York Times is not spared. In a recent Bloomberg article, the NYT Chairman has suggested that they may revisit charging fees to web users for access to online content to “combat the “grim” economic outlook”.

“The immediate future looks, at a minimum, grim,” Sulzberger, 57, said at the event. “Traditional revenue streams are anemic and getting worse.”

With the current economic climate, there is a pressing need for newspapers now to explore ways of generating alternative revenue streams.

Is all hope lost? Some writers/bloggers have suggested ways in which newspapers must evolve to survie. Read: How Newspapers Must Change to Survive and 10 Ways Newspapers are using Social Media to Save the Industry

As seen on the Photojojo website about getting into photojournalism:

Like any other job field, establishing a career in photojournalism takes time and effort. It’s a competitive business, controlled by editors who are often over-worked and involving a certain amount of subjectivity. In other words, even if you think highly of your photographs, others might not agree.

We’ve got nine tips to help you get your news photos out of your camera and into the public eye. Next stop: Pulitzer Prize!

The nine tips are: 

1. Get schooled
2. Focus on people
3. Foot patrol
4. It’s ok to be a copycat
5. Hey, Hemingway!
6. Create a website
7. Start a blog
8. Get your work seen
9. Be persistent

For more details about what each tip means, visit photojojo.

In a recent post on Journalism.sg, Prof Cherian George writes about the future of journalism in a post-newspaper world and describes how the content in newspapers may be replaced and by who. What impact does this have on the profession or industry? Read more about it here.

Not sure where to start your research?

You may like to check the newly updated subject guides for Communication Research and Journalism for some ideas.

Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University has started a project called Media Re:public which “examines the current and potential impact of participatory news media”:

Consisting of an overview paper, seven issue papers and four case studies, Media Re:public looks at how the new media landscape has presented ongoing challenges and successes. To download these papers, click here.

LIFE and Google recently paired up to host the LIFE photo archive which has been newly digitized.  Taken by famous photographers, the collection stretches all the way back to the 1750s and most have never been published before. You can now view them for free at the LIFE photo archive online.

More info on this service is available at The Official Google Blog.

Forbes, 29 October 2008

A start-up called Helium is licensing a software widget to allow newspapers to solicit stories from their readers for a fee. Submissions are ranked by 150,000 Helium users who evaluate them as a way to ensure newspapers only pay for the story they like best for their sites or print editions.

An interesting article on how some publishers are tapping into the idea of “social publishing” and turning to online communities like Helium or forming their own content-sharing cooperatives to outsource their work.

 Reporters Without Borders, 22nd January 2007

A court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif today passed the death sentence on a young journalist, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, for alleged blasphemy. 

Journalism.co.uk, 17 January 2008

Agence France Presse (AFP) has banned its journalists from using Facebook and Wikipedia as sources, the agency’s London bureau chief told a Lord’s Committee yesterday.

According to Newsknife, New York Times and Reuters are the top sites for news in 2007.

The Guardian, 14 November 2007

The internet giant Yahoo settled a lawsuit yesterday in relation to allegations that it helped China in a crackdown on two journalists.

Yahoo’s decision to settle came a week after the company was criticised in Congress, with one congressman accusing the company of being moral pygmies.

Ars Technica, 31 October 2007

No US court has yet weighed in with authority on the debate about whether bloggers count as journalists, but the recent federal decision from South Carolina does indicate that at least some bloggers are journalists.