March 2009

China rejects computer spy claims as "ghost of Cold War"

China on Tuesday rejected a report suggesting it may be involved in using computer networks to spy on exiled Tibetans and foreign governments, accusing its authors of being possessed by "the ghost of the Cold War." China has been repeatedly accused of using the Internet to secretly enter computer networks abroad to carry out sabotage and gather intelligence, and it has repeatedly denied such claims. A report from the Toronto-based Munk Center for International Studies in Toronto said at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries were breached by the spying, which it said was based in China but could not be definitively linked to the government. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry dismissed such claims as rumor and said his government was committed to protecting Internet security.

China web users turn keen eye back on government

Already under pressure to create jobs and growth while clinging to absolute power, China's Communist Party faces a growing headache from Internet users keen to expose its members' sometimes questionable habits.

Spending on Internet Advertising Starts to Cool

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, US online-ad spending grew 10.6% in 2008, its slowest rate since 2002. The data suggest the recession is having a significant impact on one of the few drivers of robust growth in media and advertising. The 2008 figure, $23.4 billion, compares with $21.2 billion in 2007, when online-ad revenue surged 26% from the year before. In the fourth quarter of 2008, growth from a year earlier slowed to a relative trickle, 2.6%, to $6.1 billion. In the same period in 2007, online-ad revenue had jumped 24%. The slowdown has sobering implications for the future. Research firm eMarketer halved its 2009 growth forecast based on the new data, estimating that online-ad spending will grow 4.5%, to $24.5 billion, compared with a previous prediction of 8.9%.

College applications now an open (Face)book

For a generation of students who share every detail of their personal lives in text messages, MySpace pages and other online postings, the college admissions chase is offering a lesson that some things are best kept private. Should you post your good fortune on your home page before learning whether your best friend got in? Or check your iPhone for online decisions, with everyone watching? If you put your college wish list online, will you be humiliated if the rejections come thick and fast?

Foundation Giving in '08 Defied Huge Asset Decline

The nation's foundations lost nearly $150 billion in assets last year, or almost as much as they have given away over the last four years, a new study has found. The study, by the Foundation Center, a chief authority on American philanthropy, determined that foundation giving for the year nonetheless held steady at an estimated $45.6 billion, falling by just 1 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis. Still, without the $2.8 billion given away by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation's largest, the decline would have been almost 3 percent. Moreover, the center cautioned that because the steep loss of asset value happened so late in 2008, giving in the current year was likely to drop much more.

Detroit's Daily Papers Are Now Not So Daily

Maybe once a year, a city has a news day as heavy as the one that just hit Detroit: The White House forced out the chairman of General Motors, word leaked that the administration wanted Chrysler to hitch its fortunes to Fiat, and Michigan State University's men's basketball team reached the Final Four, which will be held in Detroit. All of this news would have landed on hundreds of thousands of Motor City doorsteps and driveways on Monday morning, in the form of The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News. Would have, that is, except that Monday — of all days — was the long-planned first day of the newspapers' new strategy for surviving the economic crisis by ending home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Instead, on those days, they are directing readers to their Web sites and offering a truncated print version at stores, newsstands and street boxes.

Decline of newspapers harming civic engagement, study finds

Political involvement among citizens is adversely affected by the decline of newspapers, according to a new study by Wilson School researchers on how voting patterns are influenced by news coverage. In their study "Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post," economics and public affairs professor Samuel Schulhofer-Wohl and economics concentrator Miguel Garrido '10 examined the decrease in civic participation in suburban counties after The Cincinnati Post published its last edition on Dec. 31, 2007. In the study, conducted in the year following the end of the paper's publication, Schulhofer-Wohl and Garrido found that fewer citizens ran for political office at the municipal level and fewer voters participated in elections. The two said that, based on their results, newspapers "can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life." The study compared voter turnout; the number of candidates for city council, city commission and school board; and incumbency advantage in 48 municipalities before and after the closing of The Cincinnati Post. The research focused on northern Kentucky suburbs, where the Post dominated circulation and provided the most local news.

Democracy's Cheat Sheet? It's time to kill the idea that newspapers are essential for democracy

Adrian Monck rejects the idea that newspapers play an irreplaceable role in the institution's well-being. Indeed, American democracy survived its first century without much in the way of the investigative and accountability journalism we associate with newspapers. That kind of journalism didn't start to spread until the end of the 19th century. When Thomas Jefferson said he preferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers, he wasn't referring to anything we'd recognize as our local paper, says Stephen Bates, professor of journalism at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. The pre-modern press was captive of political parties, and their pages were filled with partisan fodder. What Jefferson was applauding was the newspapers' capacity as a forum for debate (and sometimes slander), not exposé. Monck and Shafer can imagine citizens acquiring sufficient information to vote or poke their legislators with pitchforks even if all the newspapers in the country fell into a bottomless recycling bin tomorrow.

Newspapers' self-inflicted blows

[Commentary] While technological and economic forces certainly battered newspapers, journalism also delivered a one-two punch to its own jaw. First, financially strapped newspapers undermined their comparative advantage by replacing audience-attracting local exclusives with cheaper national content. Then, the providers of that national content diverted resources from tough-to-report investigative journalism that builds loyal readership and into paparazzi-like birdcage liner that unconvincingly portrays politicians, CEOs and their minions as celebrities. The most preventable tragedy was the deterioration of quality. Downsized local publications were all but forced to rely on more national content, but that content didn't have to become so vapid.

Newspapers missed Bingham's warnings

Addressing his classmates at their 25th college reunion, Barry Bingham Jr. predicted that by the time they met for their 50th, "most of what we read will be transmitted into our homes or offices electronically." This was a strange thing to say in 1981, when the revolution in personal computers had scarcely begun and no one had heard the words "World Wide Web." Unlike almost everyone else in the media industry back then, Bingham anticipated the coming era of electronic news, and he was genuinely excited about it. He believed newspapers could save themselves from extinction -- but only if they adapted early and intelligently to new technology. but newspaper people are a crusty lot, and Gutenberg's technology, with a few tweaks over the centuries, had held up well enough for most. Bingham would buttonhole colleagues at meetings, where they grumbled that he was distracting from what they considered their business: getting news onto paper and into a reader's hands.

Benton

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