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RICHARD WATERS had a piece yesterday in the Financial Times looking at Demand Media and other firms that produce search engine-optimised journalism. The model involves mining search data, doing a quick web search to pull the necessary "news" information from secondary sources, and creating quickie news stories that pack the top search terms in as tightly as possible, thus leaping to the top of Google News's search indexes. A couple of quotes leapt out at me. First this:

“If there is an information gap out there and someone fills that gap, it’s good for the world,” says Amit Singhal, the Google engineer responsible for its ranking algorithm. And then this:  “What they’re doing isn’t wrong,” says Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University law school. “The fault is Google’s, which hasn’t come up with an algorithm that screens out all this junk content.”

Well, no, that's not correct. To the extent that these articles are in fact junk, what companies like Demand Media are doing is wrong. Creating cheap, crappy products that fool people into thinking they're good, useful products is ethically wrong, even when it is not illegal. I would actually go so far as to say that the needless creation of lousy stuff is ethically wrong as such. This is doubly so when good stuff is available at the same price (viz, on the internet, $0.00).

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Journalism Online received some good news last month when News Corp. invested in the startup, which aims to help newspaper and other media companies generate additional revenue from paid content. Financial terms of News Corp.'s investment were not disclosed.

Jon Miller, News Corp.'s chief digital officer, said in a statement that the move underscored the company's “ongoing commitment to create strong business models that support journalism at a time of great change in our industry.”

In the next several weeks Journalism Online media customers will begin using the company's Press+ e-commerce platform, enabling them to charge for content online. Newspapers will lead the way, but other media companies—including business media outlets—are planning to use Journalism Online's platform.

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Like many journalists, I have a bulletin board in my office on which I have pinned dozens of media passes accumulated over years of working for CBC Radio. I have accreditation for political meetings, sporting events, concerts, conferences, even a press pass for the West Edmonton Mall.

One of my prize possessions is my media pass for Canadian Country Music Week from the early 1980s. It was the first story I ever covered and, even though I was just a freelancer, it was pretty exciting to see my name and CBC Radio on the same piece of paper.

I was "the press." I felt as if I had joined a pretty exclusive club. Back then, it was a pretty exclusive club. If you were writing stories or taking pictures for a newspaper or magazine, or shooting video for a TV station or collecting audio for a radio station, you could call yourself a journalist.

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I never wanted to do a nine to five office job and was keen to do something exciting in life. And besides that, news has always fascinated me. Instead of just reading a newspaper, I wanted to write for one. All these reasons made me study.

BA (honours) journalism which I did from Kalindi College. Later, I realised that journalism should be studied only at the postgraduate level while graduate studies should be focused only on getting a specialisation such as political science, history or social sciences, economics or any subject wherein you want to gain expertise.

Graduation studies The BA journalism programme of Delhi University is quite comprehensive and an inter disciplinary approach is followed to make students acquainted with an assortment of subjects such as international studies, history and political science.

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When people think of giving back to the community, they think sandwich lines, clean-up service, and financial charity. Though all of these are great and important, there is no better way to give back to your community than with the very talents you are practicing for your career. Give back with what you do best.

I spent my first week of summer at the Oregon State University campus being journalistically revived by 24 bright-eyed, teenaged writers. For the past three years, I’ve dedicated June 19th through the 27th to the High School Journalism Institute, a joint effort between the Oregonian and Oregon State to promote newsroom diversity. It is, without question, the most cultural journalistic experience possible in Oregon — students in the program are all from underrepresented backgrounds.

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When I was editor-in-chief of Spare Change News from 2003 to 2007, one of my reporters made a phone call that, in ret­ro­spect, proved to be quite inter­est­ing. But more on that soon.

Our writer emer­i­tus Jeff Guevin for­warded me this Salon arti­cle in which Glenn Green­wald com­ments on the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing a recent arti­cle that led to U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama fir­ing the gen­eral in charge of the war in Afghanistan:

With his Rolling Stone arti­cle on Gen. [Stan­ley] McChrys­tal, Michael Hast­ings has become both the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of, and spokesper­son for, Real Jour­nal­ism, and as a result, has pro­voked intense ani­mos­ity from establishment-serving “reporters” every­where.

He appar­ently com­mit­ted the gravest sin:  he exposed and embar­rassed rather than flat­tered and pro­tected a pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment offi­cial, and in our upside-down media cul­ture, doing that is a sign of irre­spon­si­bil­ity rather than ful­fill­ment of the basic jour­nal­is­tic function.

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Azola Maliti is part of a group of young South Africans from the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town taking part in the Siyakhona project, which combines media training and soccer in programs for young people in Africa.

Soccer's international governing body, FIFA, and Sony International collaborated to create Siyakhona in 2009 as part of Football for Hope -- a 5-year-old movement that seeks to harness the power of soccer for social development (soccer is called football in most of the world).

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An academic critic of New Zealand media says journalism is "heading for hell in a handbasket". But Joe Atkinson says there is no point in asking media companies about the new direction or consulting them for a six-part Winter Lecture series he is organising.

"This is a timely series in a period of extreme upheaval for traditional media and the lectures will be of wide general interest," he said. The six lectures at Auckland University from July 20 to August 24 will include appearances by academics and Gavin Ellis, a former editor-in-chief of the Herald.

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I thought that the rise of social media and quick, easy access to information would render our politics more transparent, but it appears as though the opposite is true.  Social media has enabled politicians to bypass the traditional channels to create their own narratives and directly reach their audience. Sadly, it appears as though this arrangement suits most journalists.

They seem more than happy to summarize Facebook posts or write articles about incoherent tweets.  If they put an edgy headline and enable comments they can increase the number of hits on their website without having to invest any real time in holding politicians and candidates accountable.  As we have seen, even nationally televised "debates" don't require candidates to answer questions anymore. I fear that the "Palin model.

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It’s been a week since Rolling Stone published its article on General Stanley McChrystal that eventually led to him being fired by President Obama.

Since the article came out, Rolling Stone and the reporter who broke the story, Michael Hastings, have come under attack in the mainstream media for violating the so-called "ground rules" of journalism.

But the investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger says Hastings was simply doing what all true journalists need to do.AMY GOODMAN:

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