edithhopegardenjournal

Google announced this month that it is ending its ambitious project to digitally archive newspapers. The project to scan the archives of the nation’s newspapers and make them available online as a searchable historical record was announced in 2008 with the level of hubris only found in online enterprises. "Our objective is to bring all the world's historical newspaper information online,” said Adam Smith, director of product management at Google, announcing the project. Those lofty aims were echoed by Punit Soni, manager of the newspaper initiative: “As we work with more and more publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online…."Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as w...

The proposed international treaty on the protection of broadcasters is inching forward after nearly 10 years of consideration and member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization and other stakeholders are moving toward consensus on the central elements of what it is to do and what is the object of the protection. Much of the rhetoric of stakeholders—particularly pay TV channels and sports rights organisations—has led many to believe it is about protecting their business models and revenue. They have done the proposed treaty a disservice. It is about protecting the value creating activities of broadcasters in content selection, packaging and distribution—something that is not protected by copyrights, but can be protected with a neighboring right. What the treaty is intent on doing is protecting the broadcast—in a signal and derivative of the signal—which embodies the broadcasters value creation activities and is the object of the proposed protection. The result may assist ...

Editors matter. The March 28-April 4, 2011, edition of the struggling news magazine Newsweek —which I admittedly have not read in years— provides some of the finest articles I have read in many months, illustrates the limits of online and social media, and shows why editors matter. There is great benefit from both edited and unedited media and I don’t believe they have to be seen in dichotomous choices for the future of media. But I believe those who argue they don’t need to edited media doom themselves to narrowness and ignorance. If I relied only on the links I receive daily from colleagues on Facebook, my news alerts for topics of interest, or digital listings of stories, I would miss the most important contribution of edited media—the service editors provide by reviewing and thinking about the world and putting journalists to work to provide a coordinated understanding of the available information. This week’s Newsweek epitomises that reality. Although I often have my attentio...

Community radio in the U.S. received a large boost in January when President Obama signed a billed that will permit establishment of an estimated 800 to 1200 new local community radio stations About 800 of the non-commercial community stations are already operating and providing music, health, education, and local information, news, and sports. The stations are run by community organizations, churches, and other civic groups, typically staffed by volunteers, and dependent upon donations from organizations and listeners. Community radio operations tend to provide information about community and civic organizations that are overlooked by commercial broadcasting, focus on social issues in communities, and provide services to minority, ethic and immigrant groups. Programming on community radio is distinctively different from commercial radio and tends to be more local than, and providing alternative content to, that of public radio stations. The stations operate on low power,...