From the deck for David Olive's column in the Sunday Star: "Unprecedented ineptitude and complacency are leading America's paper of record into irrelevance."

It's been five years since a journalistic time bomb named Jayson Blair finally exploded at the New York Times, leading to an article published on the newspaper's website with the following sombre headline: "Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception."

The sometimes media critic writes on his thoughts about the $450 million temple to the news biz that recently opened in Washington, D.C.

Globe and Mail reporter Katherine O'Neill on her first order of business upon arriving in Afghanistan: Buying a burka.

Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade stands up for journalistic tradition.

I think Denton, and others who support his view, are wilfully misunderstanding the digital revolution. They think that "factual news" appears on the net by magic. It's put there by agency journalists and stringers - the downtrodden peasants of the modern journalistic class structure - and then the squirearchy back at base can play with it to astound readers with their interpretative "stories". Finally, the nobility - the high-profile columnists - can employ their dazzling writing skills to give their own spin at £10 a word.

By this time, the readers may have been entertained but will they be properly informed? Will they have had the chance to assess all the facts? It is a fundamental distortion of the digital revolution to wish away the separation of news and comment as some kind of old-fashioned newsprint tradition that is somehow past its sell-by date.

The Denton to which Greenslade refers is Nick Denton of the Gawker Media group. He posted the following at Gawker: Why the (NYT) should abandon the news-opinion divide.

From Globe and Mail Update:

The Globe and Mail's (sic - BD) was recognized with six prizes last night at the 59th National Newspaper Awards in Toronto, more than any other news organization in the country.

The newspaper had 15 nominations among the 21 categories heading into the annual dinner that salutes the best of Canadian print journalism, also the highest number among Canadian news organizations for the ninth year in a row. ...

Among other winners last night were Montreal's La Presse, which won five awards, and the Ottawa Citizen and the Toronto Star, which each won two.

Observe for yourself:

Some editors wait their whole lives for a chance to get away with writing a headline like that. :)

Here's the actual story.

Incidentally, it was the most e-mailed story on BBC as I write this.

Americans' newfound interest in presidential politics has been noticed by the celebrity magazines.

From the World home page of nytimes.com:

A Place to Read and Comment on Times Articles in Arabic

By ROBERT MacKEY

As part of Generation Faithful, our ongoing series examining the lives of young people across the Muslim world, The New York Times has established an Arabic-language blog.

From AP via Google News:

Dan Rather has filed an amended lawsuit against CBS that says other TV networks refused to hire him because of the damage executives at his former company did to his reputation after a disputed 2004 report on President Bush.

From CP via CBC.ca (May 7):

Readers appreciate good content and will always pay for newspapers, but only the strongest brands will survive the decades ahead by adapting with the times and giving people what they want, Thomson Reuters (TSX:TRI) deputy chairman Geoffrey Beattie said Wednesday.

The newspaper industry needn't worry about a future when readers demand free content because people value a good product and the relationship they build with a brand, Beattie told an audience at a joint conference of the Canadian Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspapers Association.

"Everybody in the world doesn't want everything for nothing," Beattie said, adding that readers will pay for the best brands of newspapers known for their reliability and integrity.

"By paying for something and getting something of value, you're differentiating yourself and you're forming a relationship."

Deeper in the story, Beattie paints it as a packaging problem.

"We haven't come up with a way of presenting the content of a newspaper in a way that makes it attractive for people to pick it up and start reading it," he said.

"I don't think people's appetite for expertized, editorialized, high-value added, interesting content ... is actually going to decline."

So then what, exactly, are we seeing happening to newspapers, particularly in the United States?

From IHT.com:

A press rights watchdog condemned on Wednesday the attempted murder of the last woman openly working as a journalist in Somalia's northern Puntland region.

Reporters Without Borders said Bisharo Mohammed Waeys, a talk ...   more »

Note the date of the originating event for this story. Shades of Minority Report, I tell you:

The zany populism of YouTube appears to be under siege by governments and other powerful entities. Case in point? A vid by Jordan's Queen Raina.

From AP via TheStar.com:

Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi reporter on Sunday after pulling her out of a car in northern Mosul, a notoriously violent city where journalists are often targeted and live in fear of their life.

Police said Serwa Abdul-Wahab, in her mid-30s, was on her way to work when gunmen forced her from her taxi in eastern Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad, and shot her once in the head.

A colleague said she had received a text message on her phone three weeks earlier warning her to stop reporting or she would be killed.

Allow me to refer you back to this post.

The BBC's Alan Johnston tells the Globe and Mail's Sarah Hampson he heard a report that he'd been killed.

From AP (May 5):

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — An Al-Jazeera cameraman released from the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention center last week described it Monday as the worst prison mankind has ever seen.

From the May 2 NYT:

Standing in front of a television camera last week, the chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign, Terry McAuliffe, uttered four words that the Fox News Channel would not soon forget.

“Fair and balanced Fox!,” he exclaimed, noting that the network was the first to project Mrs. Clinton’s Pennsylvania primary win.

Fox executives could not have asked for a more rousing endorsement. The next day it showed up in promotions.

All of a sudden, the once-frosty relationship between Fox News and the Democratic candidates seems to have grown warmer. Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama, who steadfastly refused to attend Fox-sponsored debates last year, are now giving plenty of interviews as they court Fox’s viewers, who are largely white, conservative and undecided.

“It’s probably true that we appeal to white working-class voters,” said Brit Hume, the network’s Washington managing editor and the host of “Special Report.” “The candidates are going where the voters are.”

Conversely, Fox seems to have softened its stance toward the Democrats, mindful of the intense viewer interest in the prolonged primary season. Although Fox News remains firmly in first place among news channels, CNN has crept up in the ratings on primary nights. So Fox wants to appeal to people who might otherwise flip the channel in search of more time with the Democrats.

In short, Fox News and the Democrats abruptly find each other useful.

The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin uses the Conservative government's decision to kill the Access to Information database to review the many and creative ways the Harperites attempt to control the information agenda.

The Tories quoted ATI expert Alisdair Roberts in question period today to justify their decision to kill the CAIRS database. Roberts then uncharitably crapped on their talking points.