Connecticut's Journal Register newspaper company has experienced its second round of plagiarism accusations in less then three months, reported Poynter. On Tuesday, Jan. 10, editor Matt DeRienzo revealed that a Jan. 5 front-page sports story in the Fairfield Minuteman plagiarized verbatim articles from two competing newspapers.
A Florida man was arrested last month for operating an illegal community radio station, according to NBC-2. Al Knighten, who faces a felony charge for unauthorized radio transmission and up to five years in prison, skipped his arraignment Monday, Jan. 9, to share the radio station's story at the Civil Rights on the Airwaves forum in Washington, D.C., reported the Ft. Myers News-Press.
One-third of U.S. owners of smartphones or tablet computers said they had downloaded news apps in the previous 30 days, according to newly released results from a Nielson survey. Still, news apps came in fifth, behind games, maps/navigation, music, and social networking apps.
One year after the Jan. 8 shooting in Arizona that prompted NPR and other media outlets to incorrectly report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been killed, Poynter looks back at how so many journalists got it wrong. Poynter even named the false reports of Giffords' death the worst error of 2011.
Tired of bloggers and aggregators profiting from their work and investments, the Associated Press, The New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., and 26 other U.S. news organizations have launched a company aimed at tracking the online, unauthorized use of copyrighted content, reported the Associated Press.
The Online News Association (ONA) announced that it is joining mounting opposition to the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), arguing that the bill "would inappropriately shut down websites, disrupt the free flow of legitimate information and limit Americans from fully exercising their First Amendment rights," not to mention put at risk the future of social media and user-generated content, ONA said in a letter from its president dated Thursday, Jan. 5.
A reporter for a conservative group's online news service was fired allegedly for making racist comments, reported the Associated Press. Leif Parsell, the State House reporter for the Maine Heritage Policy Center's news service, "The Maine Wire," had a history of making racist comments online, according to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, which added that Parsell denied he was a racist.
The Inter American Press Association's annual review of press freedom found 2011 to be one of the most "challenging and tragic years" for the region's journalists, the association (IAPA) said in a statement.
Campaign trail coverage of the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday, Jan. 3, is in full swing. By the end of December, the campaign was the most-covered story in U.S. media for the fifth time in seven weeks, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
At the start of 2012, media organizations and news sites are looking back at the top stories of 2011 (see this CNN list for a good run-down), suggesting new year's resolutions for newsrooms, and even offering a few trends that will "reshape digital news in 2012," as Poynter did.