From The Blog Herald: Reuters will host a panel discussion the evening of April 5 called “Blogs and the Media Debate” in New York. The panel of seven from all walks of media life will consider the validity of blogs in journalism. The media experts include Paul Holmes, Reuters global editor of general and political news, Stephen Baker, senior writer at IT Group/BusinessWeek, Jay Rosen, author/blogger/NYU associate professor, Bryan Keefer, assistant managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review Daily , Garrett Graff, first White House accredited blogger, Dave Winer, editor of Scripting News and John Fund, columnist at OpinionJournal.com. They will raise and answer questions such as “Should (bloggers) be afforded the same rights as journalists?,” and “Are (bloggers) seeking the truth and exposing poor journalism or are they being used as campaigning tools to advance paticular causes or points of view?”.
CBS site posts Schiavo obit early
From American Daily: CBS prematurely announced Terri Schiavo’s death on its news site March 28th. The article, written by Christine Lagorio, was pulled within a day. However, Glen Beck, talk radio show host of “The Glenn Beck Program” in Philadelphia, caught the story before it became a disappearing act. Beck published it on his site and made it available in PDF format . The article predicted, “Surrounded by stuffed animals and medical equipment in her small hospice room in Pinellas Park, Fla., Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo died TK.”
Major newspaper publishers buy a piece of online news site
From Pittsburg Post-Gazette: Three newspaper publishers each bought a quarter share of Topix.net, a technology company that caters to 1.4 million monthly users as of last month by compiling and sorting news articles according to topic and location from different Internet sources. Its founders will keep the remaining 25% stake. Gannett Co., Knight Ridder Inc. and Tribune Co. will link to Topix on the Web sites belonging to the local newspapers that they own nationwide as part of the deal. Although users of Topix, which started just more than a year ago, are not as many as the 5.9 million users Google News had last month, it still proved to be lucrative this past December. The company grossed around $1 million in annual revenues, primarily from advertising. The new investors will likewise “allow Topix to sell online advertising from their (news) sites.”
