Dr. John Horgan has been announced (14.AUG.2007) as Ireland’s first Press Ombudsman.

The Press Council’s press release statement can be viewed here.

“The key function of the new Press Ombudsman will be to investigate and adjudicate complaints made by members of the public against newspapers and magazines. A new Code of Practice has been agreed by the press industry,and this code will be the framework against which all complaints are considered.”

The Irish Times reference the appointment here (subscription rqd).
Breaking News.ie have a note here as does the Irish Independent, the Belfast Telegraph and RTÉ.ie.

John is a co-editor of a newly published book Mapping Irish Media: Critical Explorations. He has also authored Broadcasting and Public Life:RTE News and Current Affairs, 1926-1997(2004) and Irish Media: A Critical History Since 1922 (2001).

John’s other publishing career can be viewed on wikipedia.org.

John’s academic biographical profile from DCU can still be viewed here (John has retired from DCU since 2006).

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London council to ban free newspapers if they don’t recycle

Westminster City Council - which controls much of central London - has voted itself new powers last night which could ban the capital’s two free newspapers from being distributed in the borough. According to the council - around 20 tonnes of free papers end up as street waste every week in Westminster, and it costs the borough £111,000 (EUR 164,065) a year to deal with rubbish.

The publishers have been given one month to agree to ‘a voluntary scheme where they run their own cleaning operation to ensure their waste does not deface the streets’. If an agreement can’t be reached within the next month the council has said it will bring in new rules requiring the publishers to acquire a permit to distribute. (Press Gazette UK, via EJC)

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Some of the documents you’d need to access about the Defamation Bill 2006

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The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media soared 88% last year, according to a study by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, up to 17809 layoffs, from the 9,453 that were announced in 2005. The trend is to continue, and ‘old media’ must effectively renew themselves.

Importantly, the study focuses on planned layoffs, not actual number of job cuts.

“Already this year we have seen job cuts announced by Time Inc and the New York Times Company,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “These organizations will continue to make adjustments as their focus shifts from print to electronic.”

As readers spend more time online than reading print, advertisers are readjusting their own focus, thus providing less revenue for print, thus pushing newspapers to focus even more on online, and so on.

Newspapers are in tough competition with other media and news organizations, but also with the increased number of alternative news sources and information platforms (blogs, gossip sites, consultants and analysts), according to Challenger.

“This dilutes their audience and dilutes the amount of money they can charge advertisers, which currently is the primary source of revenue for online news sites, since most are not charging subscriber fees to access their content,” Challenger said.

There is only one solution for traditional media including newspapers: transition quickly and smoothly to online and multimedia. For those who can’t embrace the change, or who don’t have the resources to sustain print while transitioning, they will continue to be forced to cut jobs.

“Until they can figure out a way to make as much money from their online services as they are losing from the print side, it is going to be an uphill battle,” said Challenger of planned cuts across the media sector.

Source: CNN, via EditorsWeblog.org

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David Barstow, Investigation Unit, The New York Times, 2004 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Public Service.

I think we are at a defining generational moment in journalism: a moment when we must earn again the freedoms that give us the vital space to work.

I think we, as a profession, are at a point where we must step up and pay the butcher’s price. We must step up and earn the right to report the news, without fear or favour. We must earn the right to tell the difficult stories that comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. We must earn the right — in the immortal words of “Deep Throat” — to follow the money, especially when it leads to the highest of high. And we must earn the right to question authority, challenge concentrated power and reveal uncomfortable, unpopular, even unwanted truths about the world we live in.

Past generations of journalists have paid this price in spades. In my country, I’m thinking about reporters in the 1950s who suffered brutal beatings by racist mobs to cover the Civil Rights movement. I’m thinking of reporters who gave their lives to describe our long national nightmare, Vietnam. I’m thinking about Myron Farber, another New York Times reporter who went to jail to protect a source in the 1970s. Their sacrifice and their example cleared the way for us.

It created that vital space in our culture and in our politics for tough, honest investigating reporting. Now it is our turn.
(more…)

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Monday’s Muse

There is a wide variety of flavours of Press Councils which have been operating around the world, each with their own paticular codes and structures.

What flavour will the Irish Press Council take?

Irish Press Council, Ombudsman revealed as defamation bill debated in the Seanad

Press Councils

• Australia
• Azerbaidjan
• Belgium (Flemish)
• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• (more…)
  January 15th 2007 Posted to Print, Press Freedom, General Media, journalism

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Noel Doran, Editor of the Irish News, contemplates the risks and responsibilities of the editor’s desk - excerpt IV (The GAA and the Police).

…. see extract I, extract II, and extract III.

However, the greatest difficulty we faced over policing came not from any political party but through our relationship with an organisation for which is very special to me as an individual and to the Irish News as a paper, namely the GAA.

From partition onwards, the GAA had an official sanction, known as rule 21, which prevented any of its members from joining either the British army or the northern police force.

It was widely regarded as an anachronism, but, although there were a considerable number of people in the GAA who wanted to get rid of it, there were some others for whom the time never seemed to be quite right for movement. (more…)

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Noel Doran, Editor of the Irish News, contemplates the risks and responsibilities of the editors desk - excerpt III (The Patton Report and the Police).

…. see extract I and extract II.

The other side of the coin followed shortly afterward with the publication of the Patten report in September 1999 with its proposals for new policing structures.

Policing is the issue which absolutely goes to the heart of the matter in the north and there is never going to be a proper, fair and lasting settlement until it is resolved once and for all.

The nationalist relationship with the police force in the north, from the foundation of the state and due to a number of factors, some compelling and others quite debatable, ranged from the decidedly cool to the openly hostile. (more…)

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Noel Doran, Editor of the Irish News, contemplates the risks and responsibilities of the editors desk - excerpt II

…. see extract I

When the conflict was at its height in 1972, we had over 500 people murdered in the space of a single year, thousands more were injured or left homeless and further thousands were either imprisoned or interned without trial.

The big achievement for the Irish News was to produce a newspaper every night in the heart of Belfast with all this mayhem taking place, but, incredibly enough, the paper, together with the other titles in the city, also broke all existing circulation
records at the same time.

This was because the broadcasting structures of the day were not exactly sophisticated and people in all parts of the north needed their newspapers to provide even the most basic information about what going on.

As the troubles wore on, the full impact of the relentless expansion of radio and television services began to be felt, the level of violence decreased and people did not want to read about it in the same depth in any case.

The result was a sharp decline for all the papers, which in the case of the Irish News, which had suffered from a long-term lack of investment, could easily have proved terminal. (more…)

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Noel Doran, Editor of the Irish News, contemplates the risks and responsibilities of the editors desk - excerpt I (Intro and Presidential Election).

The Irish News, I’m pleased to say, is an all Ireland paper, available in every part of the island on the morning of publication, and we flatter ourselves that, in percentage terms, we have a larger audience in the Republic than the likes of the Irish Times and the Irish Independent do in the north.

Essentially though, we are and we always have been the voice of constitutional northern nationalism. We regard ourselves as being politically independent, we do not tell our readers who they should vote for, and, as we are older than any Irish political
party, north or south, we by tradition avoid endorsing any individual group, while reserving the right to highlight particular issues and to have our say in the course of any referendum.

What we do promote is the cause of peace and reconciliation. We do not believe that progress can be achieved either through coercion in any form or by asking unionists to be less unionist or nationalists to be less nationalist. We basically want to extend the hand of friendship in all directions and move forward in an inclusive way. (more…)

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