Posts tagged norway
Don't Like the News? There's a Button for That
Norway’s second largest tabloid is offering readers a button at the top of its Web site that will remove all articles about Anders Breivik, the man who went on a murder rampage in Norway last July, and now stands trial.
As Journalism.co.uk points out, this is similar to a Guardian experiment last year when they too had a button to remove articles. In that case, the offending media frenzy readers sought refuge from was the royal wedding.
Stephen Colbert on the Norway terror attack: “Some say these false reports of Muslim involvement were a widespread failure of the media, but I say that by going with their guts these journalists were able to get the story they wanted and scoop reality. And even if there was a rush to judgement, we must not repeat that mistake by rushing to accuracy.”
A Grave Decision: Deciding on Death in the News
This article from the Guardian posing a great question that may have otherwise gone undetected. When the media covers a death in the community whether it is celebrity or not, the focus is, of course, on the person who has perished. For example, the recent death of celebrity Amy Winehouse and the killing spree in Oslo. But, this article asks readers to consider how newspapers and media outlets respectively decide whose death is the most important; it’s as if to communicate that even after death, subjectivity still exists. Roy Greenslade, author of the article, justifies this by citing: “Readers who had consumed the media-constructed drama of her life could now identify with the drama of her death. The audience could “identify” with her.”
Does a lack of celebrity make death harder to identify with or is the media trying to rationalize their coverage in a way that conceals the obvious hierarchy of death?
Roy Greensdale, Guardian UK, “Norway or Amy? How editors confront the hierarchy of death”
![On Language: What is a Terrorist Anyway?
Via Glenn Greenwald:
In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know — by definition — that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant — also by definition — that it was an act of Terrorism…
What [this means] is what we’ve seen repeatedly: that Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target. Indeed, in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn’t Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn’t).
That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly. When an airplane was flown into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, it was immediately proclaimed to be Terrorism, until it was revealed that the attacker was a white, non-Muslim, American anti-tax advocate with a series of domestic political grievances… That is why, as NYU’s Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language. Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.
Twitter post: @MazMHussain](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loss4vJ0of1qedj2ho1_400.png)
On Language: What is a Terrorist Anyway?
Via Glenn Greenwald:
In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know — by definition — that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant — also by definition — that it was an act of Terrorism…
What [this means] is what we’ve seen repeatedly: that Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target. Indeed, in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn’t Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn’t).
That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly. When an airplane was flown into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, it was immediately proclaimed to be Terrorism, until it was revealed that the attacker was a white, non-Muslim, American anti-tax advocate with a series of domestic political grievances… That is why, as NYU’s Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language. Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.
Twitter post: @MazMHussain
The translated writings of Anders Breivik from Document.no, a Norwegian Web site he frequently posted comments to.
Breivik is accused of yesterday’s mass killings in Norway.
He writes:
The problem is that Europe lost the Cold War already in 1950, the moment they allowed Marxists / anti-nationalists to ravage freely, without restrictions for the positions they could have and the power positions they had the opportunity to obtain the (teacher / professor positions in particular).
The result, in particular Norway and Sweden is the extreme Marxist attitudes have become acceptable / everyday while the old-established truths of patriotism and cultural conservatism today is branded as extremism.
The Internet works fast.
Via Doug Saunders.
Managing Social Communities
One of the enviable things about working for Google is the 20% policy the company gives its engineers. It basically says they should devote part of each week to work on what they’re most passionate about.
While we don’t see the “failure” produced during that time, we do know that successes such as Gmail, Google News and AdSense were developed with it.
Does this translate to the newsroom?
While not quite the same, Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of Norway’s VG Multimedia, told those at this weekend’s International Symposium on Online Journalism that he expects his journalists to spend 10 percent of their time engaging readers.
The move is smart. Instead of relying on a dedicated community manager or a few self-motivaters to engage across social networks, VG bakes the activity into its overall culture. While not solely responsible for the results, the fact remains that 87% of Norwegians visited the site in February.
These readers also help improve the paper’s quality.
VG has tools that let readers have at typos. In 2010, 17,000 were corrected.
No news on what the site’s copyeditors had to say about that.
Innovative journalism for the future – an example from Norway
Can the story of traffic accidents be told in a new way? Journalists and programmers in the Norwegian media house Bergens Tidendejoined forces to push local journalism to a new level.
