2010

Conform raportului anual “i2010 – strategia digitala pentru crestere economica si ocuparea fortei de munca” realizat de Comisia Europeana, doar 18,4% dintre romani folosesc cu regularitate internetul, fata de media europeana de 46,7%, ceea ce situeaza Romania pe locul 29, adica pe ultimul.

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The Boston Globe is the latest US newspaper in the hangman’s noose, with staff told at the start of April that it is likely to lose $89 million in 2009. Its owner, the New York Times, can no longer afford to keep it alive, given the New York paper’s own $57.8 million deficit at the end of 2008. Other city newspapers in the US are lining up on the scaffold. Already hung: the Seattle Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, two of the nation’s oldest papers, both now closed and others such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, filing for bankrupty.

The US debate over the real impact of the Internet on print media

The closings and threatened ones are sparking a lively debate over the need for newspapers and the media in general in an Internet age, and where the news industry is headed. The problem isn’t just the Internet: US newspapers’ advertising revenue fell 16.6 percent in 2008.

Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post jumped in this week over plans announced by Associated Press (which is owned by its member newspapers) for an industry initiative to protect online news. For Huffington, the argument is about whether journalists “embrace and adapt to the radical changes brought about by the Internet or pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can’t be resurrected.”

It’s a debate that is beginning to reach Switzerland but here, for now the discussion appears to be more about media surviving commercially by developing non-news business while still offering journalism. This is not a new debate – think of the media owners in the US who’ve had baseball teams – but in a small country with little competition, the changing role of the media bears examination.

To pay or not to pay, that is one of the questions

A question that keeps cropping up, given the number of failing newspapers and a 16.6 percent decline in ad revenue for US papers in 2008, is the issue of free online news and how media can cover the cost of producing it. In February a Time Magazine article by a former managing editor argued that readers should be willing to pay and not continue to expect free news online. That prompted heated rebuttals from several writers, including Internet watcher Stow Boyd and Matthew Ingram at the Nieman Journalism Lab.

The New York Times, which announced an across-the-board pay cut in March and laid off 100 commercial staff as part of belt-tightening measures, earlier tried a pay-subscription model that was a failure, before returning to offering free Internet access. The company’s path has taken another turn, with the new joint New York Times/International Herald Tribune web site, which once again gives only limited access unless users register – for free, for now. The New York Times has hinted loudly that it will likely charge once again for its content. The media company notes, nevertheless, that the Financial Times web site had a million subscribers when it was free, and that number dropped to 50,000 a year after it began to charge (author’s note: I was one of those they lost). It has since risen, but only to 100,000 or so.

Switzerland’s media: not strong but not in imminent danger

 

In Switzerland the situation is not as dire as in the US, but the media industry is not as healthy as it likes to say it is: 2008 figures released in March by WEMF, the media industry’s research arm, show newspapers losing ground and advertising revenue falling. Free newspaper continue to grow in circulation, although at a slower pace than in the previous two years. The country’s two top intellectual papers, NZZ in Zurich and Le Temps in Geneva, are holding steady, with very small drops in readership (204,598 for NZZ Folio and 45,103 for Le Temps), but all the French language newspapers saw their readership slip, as have regional newspapers.

Advertisers, the main source of revenue, are spending less money: January 2009 figures were down by 8.7 percent compared to a year earlier. Internet advertising is touted as the saviour of the industry, but it accounts for only 1 percent of the CHF5.9 billion Swiss ad market, with print media continuing to take nearly half of the market in 2007. In the US and the UK, arguably hit harder by the global financial crisis, Internet advertising flattened for the first time early in 2009, the New York Times reported.

Two of the three big media companies announced that revenue was down for their international dailies in 2008, a 4.8 percent drop to CHF30.5 million in the case of Lausanne-based Edipresse, which says in its 2008 financial report that its newspaper  segment nevertheless remained profitable thanks to Internet operations – but not Internet news operations. Profits were up by 1.2 percent, thanks to JobsUp, an online employment site and HomeGate, a real estate site.

Tamedia, which is buying out Edipresse’s Swiss operations, 8 April published its results, showing a 30 percent fall in profits, to CHF105.8m, noting that while regional newspapers are losing ground, the commuter paper 20 Minutes contributed to profits.

Ringier’s 2008 report is not yet out.

The impact of the sharp decline in advertising on all three, and smaller media players, will become apparent only later this year.

Swiss media are playing a game similar to the one played by US media a decade or two earlier, of trying to ensure survival by getting bigger in order to fight off non-Swiss competition. Part of the strategy is to continue expanding outside Switzerland, the source of approximately half their revenues. Curiously, some of which is listed as Swiss business: Edipresse’s Swiss segment includes its operations in France, for example.

A point in the favour of Swiss media for the time being:  they are not taking on the same level of debt as US companies. That implies that debt must lead to failure and profits will help ensure good quality reporting, however, two points that Michael McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace argued against in 2001 in “Russia’s 12 myths about the US media.”

The get-bigger formula has not worked well in the US, nevertheless, largely because companies borrowed too much to expand, and now  falling ad sales make it impossible to pay back their debts.

Swiss media are counting on the Internet for their future success, but their own successful models to date, employment and real estate sites, do not now integrate news and it is hard to find models that make it clear this will work. Their news sites have made attempts, with blogs, polls and comments, to become more interactive and thus compete with social networks, but traffic has not risen dramatically as a result. Martin Kall of Tamedia, one of the Swiss big three media companies, says foreign competition comes from the likes of Facebook and a German real estate company. This is competition for advertising revenue primarily from and for non-news sites.

The shift in focus raises two questions: at what point does a media company cease being a journalism provider? At what point does journalism begin to primarily serve the commercial needs of the larger company?

The Tamedia/Edipresse joint venture will change the landscape

Le Temps 13 April carries a lengthy interview with Kall, CEO of Tamedia, which has agreed to buy Edipresse’s Swiss operation if the competition commission approves the deal. Edipresse publishes three of the four main dailies in French-speaking Switzerland and jointly publishes the fourth, Le Temps, with Ringier. Tamedia’s Kall believes the 10 percent of revenue the company currently earns from Internet ad sales can be increased significantly by improving the quality of the news coverage – and charging more for advertising because advertisers will be convinced by the larger numbers of readers online than for print.

Swiss media, and the advertising industry that relies on media for the bulk of its products, are watching the proposed venture closely because of concerns, for better or worse that it will change the media landscape. Bilan, owned by Edipresse, argued in March that it will clearly change the scene, for several reasons. Among these: the the impact on the advertising market of Switzerland having only two major media companies in the future and the ownership of Le Temps, whose two owners will be based in Zurich even though it is a key French language media.

Not long ago, 24 Heures/ATS reported that the  Swiss have lost their faith in religion and the Swiss Army, but their faith in media ranks even lower, based on an EPFZ (Zurich’s polytechnic institute) poll. It remains to be seen whether or not this faith can be revived by the increasing concentration of Swiss media, their focus on Internet activities that are not journalism and other changes in the media’s traditional role of serving to inform.

RSS (most commonly expanded as "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved from as early as March 1999,[4] it was between 2005 and 2006 when RSS gained widespread use, and the ("") icon was decided upon by several major Web browsers

History

In September 2002, Winer released a major new version of the format, RSS 2.0, that redubbed its initials Really Simple Syndication. RSS 2.0 removed the type attribute added in the RSS 0.94 draft and added support for namespaces. To preserve backward compatibility with RSS 0.92, namespace support applies only to other content included within an RSS 2.0 feed, not the RSS 2.0 elements themselves.[15] (Although other standards such as Atom attempt to correct this limitation, RSS feeds are not aggregated with other content often enough to shift the popularity from RSS to other formats having full namespace support.)

Because neither Winer nor the RSS-DEV Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they could not make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS.

One product of that contentious debate was the creation of an alternative syndication format, Atom, that began in June 2003.[16] The Atom syndication format, whose creation was in part motivated by a desire to get a clean start free of the issues surrounding RSS, has been adopted as IETF Proposed Standard RFC 4287.

In July 2003, Winer and UserLand Software assigned the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he had just begun a term as a visiting fellow.[17] At the same time, Winer launched the RSS Advisory Board with Brent Simmons and Jon Udell, a group whose purpose was to maintain and publish the specification and answer questions about the format.[18]

In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team[19] and Outlook team[20] announced on their blogs that they were adopting the feed icon first used in the Mozilla Firefox browser (). A few months later, Opera Software followed suit.[citation needed] This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data.

In January 2006, Rogers Cadenhead relaunched the RSS Advisory Board without Dave Winer's participation, with a stated desire to continue the development of the RSS format and resolve ambiguities. In June 2007, the board revised their version of the specification to confirm that namespaces may extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft has done in Internet Explorer 7. According to their view, a difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden.

Variants

The RSS formats were preceded by several attempts at web syndication that did not achieve widespread popularity. The basic idea of restructuring information about websites goes back to as early as 1995, when Ramanathan V. Guha and others in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group developed the Meta Content Framework.[6] For a more detailed discussion of these early developments, see the history of web syndication technology.

RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Guha at Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My.Netscape.Com portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9.[4] In July 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape produced a new version, RSS 0.91,[2] which simplified the format by removing RDF elements and incorporating elements from Dave Winer's scriptingNews syndication format.[7] Libby also renamed RSS "Rich Site Summary" and outlined further development of the format in a "futures document".[8]

This would be Netscape's last participation in RSS development for eight years. As RSS was being embraced by web publishers who wanted their feeds to be used on My.Netscape.Com and other early RSS portals, Netscape dropped RSS support from My.Netscape.Com in April 2001 during new owner AOL's restructuring of the company, also removing documentation and tools that supported the format.[9]

Two entities emerged to fill the void, with neither Netscape's help nor approval: The RSS-DEV Working Group and Winer, whose UserLand Software had published some of the first publishing tools outside of Netscape that could read and write RSS.

Winer published a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification on the UserLand website, covering how it was being used in his company's products, and claimed copyright to the document.[10] A few months later, UserLand filed a U.S. trademark registration for RSS, but failed to respond to a USPTO trademark examiner's request and the request was rejected in December 2001.[11]

The RSS-DEV Working Group, a project whose members included Guha and representatives of O'Reilly Media and Moreover, produced RSS 1.0 in December 2000.[12] This new version, which reclaimed the name RDF Site Summary from RSS 0.9, reintroduced support for RDF and added XML namespaces support, adopting elements from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core.

In December 2000, Winer released RSS 0.92[13] a minor set of changes aside from the introduction of the enclosure element, which permitted audio files to be carried in RSS feeds and helped spark podcasting. He also released drafts of RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 that were subsequently withdrawn.[14]
There are several different versions of RSS, falling into two major branches (RDF and 2.*).

The RDF (or RSS 1.*) branch includes the following versions:

RSS 0.90 was the original Netscape RSS version. This RSS was called RDF Site Summary, but was based on an early working draft of the RDF standard, and was not compatible with the final RDF Recommendation.
RSS 1.0 is an open format by the RSS-DEV Working Group, again standing for RDF Site Summary. RSS 1.0 is an RDF format like RSS 0.90, but not fully compatible with it, since 1.0 is based on the final RDF 1.0 Recommendation.
RSS 1.1 is also an open format and is intended to update and replace RSS 1.0. The specification is an independent draft not supported or endorsed in any way by the RSS-Dev Working Group or any other organization.
The RSS 2.* branch (initially UserLand, now Harvard) includes the following versions:

RSS 0.91 is the simplified RSS version released by Netscape, and also the version number of the simplified version originally championed by Dave Winer from Userland Software. The Netscape version was now called Rich Site Summary; this was no longer an RDF format, but was relatively easy to use.
RSS 0.92 through 0.94 are expansions of the RSS 0.91 format, which are mostly compatible with each other and with Winer's version of RSS 0.91, but are not compatible with RSS 0.90.
RSS 2.0.1 has the internal version number 2.0. RSS 2.0.1 was proclaimed to be "frozen", but still updated shortly after release without changing the version number. RSS now stood for Really Simple Syndication. The major change in this version is an explicit extension mechanism using XML namespaces.[21]
For the most part, later versions in each branch are backward-compatible with earlier versions (aside from non-conformant RDF syntax in 0.90), and both versions include properly documented extension mechanisms using XML Namespaces, either directly (in the 2.* branch) or through RDF (in the 1.* branch). Most syndication software supports both branches. "The Myth of RSS Compatibility", an article written in 2004 by RSS critic and Atom advocate Mark Pilgrim, discusses RSS version compatibility issues in more detail.

The extension mechanisms make it possible for each branch to track innovations in the other. For example, the RSS 2.* branch was the first to support enclosures, making it the current leading choice for podcasting, and as of 2005[update] is the format supported for that use by iTunes and other podcasting software; however, an enclosure extension is now available for the RSS 1.* branch, mod_enclosure. Likewise, the RSS 2.* core specification does not support providing full-text in addition to a synopsis, but the RSS 1.* markup can be (and often is) used as an extension. There are also several common outside extension packages available, including a new proposal from Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer 7.

The most serious compatibility problem is with HTML markup. Userland's RSS reader—generally considered as the reference implementation—did not originally filter out HTML markup from feeds. As a result, publishers began placing HTML markup into the titles and descriptions of items in their RSS feeds. This behavior has become expected of readers, to the point of becoming a de facto standard, though there is still some inconsistency in how software handles this markup, particularly in titles. The RSS 2.0 specification was later updated to include examples of entity-encoded HTML; however, all prior plain text usages remain valid.

As of January 2007[update], tracking data from www.syndic8.com indicates that the three main versions of RSS in current use are 0.91, 1.0, and 2.0. Of these, RSS 0.91 accounts for 13 percent of worldwide RSS usage and RSS 2.0 for 67 percent, while RSS 1.0 has a 17 percent share.[22] These figures, however, do not include usage of the rival web feed format Atom. As of August 2008[update], the syndic8.com website is indexing 546,069 total feeds, of which 86,496 were some dialect of Atom and 438,102 were some dialect of RSS.[23]

For the last 10 years, I have worked as a freelance print journalist, and now I have found that I have to reinvent myself.  I was an early adapter to online journalism; I have been blogging for over six years, and Twitter has recently become my new best friend. This summer I started writing for the new African American-centered online news site TheGrio.com.  But I never thought in a million years I would have to shoot and edit video for work, but for the last year I have been doing it with little chagrin.

I am still in the “trial and error” process, but I am having fun with my self training, mostly from watching other online videos and playing with my video editing system. My digital efforts have paid off so far.  In addition to vlogging (a form of blogging using primarily video) for WGBH, the PBS affiliate in Boston, I was also hired recently to do short video interviews with authors at my local black bookstore, Jamaicaway Books & Gifts.  So, yes, I guess you can say I am an entrepreneurial journalist taking advantage of the new online frontier.

She emphasized that the transition to total Afghan power will be gradual and responsible.

"I want to make clear to the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan that we're looking for a long-term partnership," said Clinton, speaking with CNN's John Roberts in a wide-ranging interview about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When President Obama announced sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he said he intended "to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011" in a responsible transition that considers "conditions on the ground."

Questions were raised about whether such a time frame was long enough to get the job done.

lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean mattis malesuada tempus. Fusce bibendum felis a diam imperdiet quis malesuada nisi eleifend. Quisque tempor, dolor id consequat mattis, sem lacus tincidunt arcu, at semper urna ante a dui. Quisque interdum, justo sed fermentum commodo, quam purus feugiat augue, ut viverra arcu ligula id purus. In vitae nulla arcu, vel auctor nisi. Vivamus accumsan, massa sit amet cursus laoreet, nunc turpis molestie purus, eu iaculis metus ipsum nec ipsum. Vestibulum quis magna non libero pellentesque lobortis. Donec et elit ut ante rutrum tempus. Nunc aliquam nisi id mauris luctus non rhoncus neque lobortis. Nam cursus mi sit amet dolor porttitor vestibulum et eu erat. Cras sed neque dolor. Phasellus luctus auctor risus. Donec mauris sem, vulputate ac ultricies nec, gravida vitae felis. Donec fermentum velit metus, a imperdiet libero. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin laoreet, nibh id venenatis euismod, nibh justo aliquam ipsum, in feugiat velit orci id dolor. Maecenas tellus ipsum, bibendum nec congue sit amet, feugiat et dui. Maecenas ultricies diam id dolor luctus laoreet.

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Sed et magna sapien. Nunc dapibus eros in enim semper nec sodales eros suscipit. Pellentesque euismod hendrerit est fermentum ultrices. Aenean scelerisque purus sed leo laoreet ultrices. Nullam ullamcorper felis a nisi dignissim tristique sollicitudin et augue. Praesent tristique fermentum elit quis malesuada. Etiam varius ullamcorper leo, eu venenatis enim cursus ut. Nullam euismod mattis neque, at convallis nisl congue vitae. Aenean urna nisl, auctor sit amet vulputate at, viverra non enim. Ut porta tincidunt nulla. Donec bibendum magna eu neque tristique bibendum. Curabitur rutrum ligula dapibus nulla hendrerit placerat. Nulla ultrices commodo nisl sed facilisis. Suspendisse porttitor bibendum urna, ac vestibulum erat sagittis id. Nulla facilisi. Suspendisse potenti. Aliquam pellentesque, tortor sed elementum condimentum, lacus nunc gravida orci, ac facilisis massa lectus nec metus. Nulla justo dui, vestibulum et adipiscing ultricies, blandit non justo. Donec iaculis, enim eget sodales vestibulum, ipsum massa laoreet orci, sit amet laoreet risus tellus sit amet lacus

Forty-eight percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national survey released Friday said they approve of the job Obama is doing as president -- a drop of 7 percentage points from a survey last month.

Fifty percent said they do not approve. The difference of 2 percentage points between approval and disapproval falls within the range of the poll's sampling error.

"The poll indicates that the biggest drop in approval comes from noncollege-educated white voters," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. "That's one indication among many that Obama's growing unpopularity may be more related to unemployment and the poor economy" than to factors such as his strategy for Afghanistan.

Six in 10 of those questioned said they favor Obama's move to send 30,000 more troops to that country. Two-thirds also support his plan to start removing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2011 -- although the poll indicates most Americans think that announcing such a date in advance was a bad idea, and they are skeptical about whether conditions then will allow the United States to meet that goal.

And support for Obama's policies does not translate into backing for the war; a majority still said they oppose U.S. action in that country.

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As the Los Angeles City Council race between Assemblyman Paul Krekorian and former film executive Christine Essel drew to a close, outside groups shattered the record for independent spending in a non-citywide election since ethics officials began tracking those figures two decades ago.

By Sunday evening, independent groups, including some of the city's most powerful unions, had poured nearly $1 million into the contest for the San Fernando Valley seat formerly held by Wendy Greuel. More than 90% of that money has been devoted to boosting Essel's bid. Heading into Tuesday's runoff, Essel's campaign outspent Krekorian by nearly two to one.

So-called independent expenditure committees are not subject to the same city contribution limits as individual candidates, but they cannot coordinate with the candidates they support.

Faced with a constant stream of mailings and commercials on Essel's behalf by the political committees of the Police Protective League ($403,733) and unions representing the construction trade and electric workers, Krekorian has tried to turn Essel's financial advantage into a vulnerability in the final weeks.

In one of his mailings, Krekorian portrayed Essel as a puppet of the union representing employees of the Department of Water and Power, which spent more than $244,000 supporting her.

Though Essel has described herself as "the jobs candidate in the race," Krekorian has cited union spending on Essel's behalf and her contributions from construction firms and developers to argue "there's one candidate who is going to listen to the money and the power, and one candidate who listens to the community and the neighbors."

The assemblyman has enlisted neighborhood leaders to send letters tailored to individual communities like Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Sunland-Tujunga, where many voters are especially concerned about development and the strains on city water and sewer systems.

Essel has also said she wants to give neighborhood groups a greater voice. And her supporters say that her three decades at Paramount Pictures Corp., where she worked on the expansion of the studio's lot, as well as her leadership of the city's Community Redevelopment Agency board in the 1990s, made her the obvious choice for business leaders and unions who hope to see an uptick in construction jobs as the economy recovers.

Krekorian's "a professional politician," said Bob Cherry, a consultant for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18. "We don't have the confidence in him to deliver that we do in Chris Essel."

As Krekorian has decried Essel's contributions from what he calls "downtown interests," he drew much of his campaign cash from outside the council district. Contributors listing Glendale addresses gave Krekorian $61,500; those in Burbank, where he lived until May, gave him $25,050, and $8,450 came from Sacramento, according to city Ethics Commission campaign reporting records.

Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn. where Essel was a former board chairwoman, said Krekorian "has been pandering to the NIMBYs."

The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the United States, Barack Obama, met in Prague this morning, before the summit between the European Union and the United States, the first official meeting between the two. At the beginning of the meeting and also the presence of a group of journalists, Barack Obama returned to launch a series warnings against the launch by North Korea of a long-range missile. President of the United States urged North Korea not to isolate itself and return to a path of peace, according to the line taken by the international community.

Earlier, in a public speech delivered at a historic square in Prague in the presence of 30 thousand people Barack Obama had advocated a "strong international response" after the launch by North Korea of a long-range missile. The meeting between President Barroso and Obama leading up to the summit between the European Union and the United States that began late in the morning, where he will attend the Heads of State and Government of 27, including José Sócrates.

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