Editor's desk: Week of October 16, 2006

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Friday October 20

The stats are in

and here are the most-read stories on nzherald this week:

1.

'Appropriate sendoff' planned for battered Brown

2.

Emergency operator helps woman escape intruder

3.

Authorities on alert for flesh-eating bug

4.

Casino licence suspended after woman loses millions

5.

Police charge woman stranded in crashed car

- - - posted 12.30pm by Neil Sanderson

Murdoch buys into Fairfax.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has bought a

7.5 per cent stake

in Australasian publisher Fairfax. It's the latest in a series of ownership changes made possible by changes this week to

Australian media laws

, and is being described by News Corp as an "investment" rather than a takeover bid.

Fairfax owns the Trade Me and stuff.co.nz websites, and a number of New Zealand newspapers including the

Dominion Post

,

The Press

, and the

Sunday Star-Times

. In Australia its titles include the

Australian Financial Review

, the

Sydney Morning Herald

and

The Age

in Melbourne.

- - - posted 12.15pm by Neil Sanderson

Should criminals be allowed to conceal their past

when facing new charges? Should people under investigation by the police have the right to remain silent?

Retiring barrister Kevin Ryan QC says both of these rights have outlived their usefulness.

As

Elizabeth Binning reported today

:

Today we'd like to hear what you think. Post your opinion on our

Readers' Views page

.

- - - posted 9.25am by Neil Sanderson

Thursday October 19

The crosses that TV news readers bear.

First off, let me confess that I adapted that headline from the CBS News

Public Eye blog

because it was just too good to pass by.

A BBC news reader, Fiona Bruce, has been criticised by some within the Corporation for appearing on camera wearing a necklace with a Christian cross. Those critics say that BBC presenters must not appear partial to any particular belief. Others say it's a freedom of religion issue and presenters should be permitted to wear symbols.

The

Daily Mail

had the story on October 4 but debate continues on BBC editor

Peter Horrocks' blog

.

- - - posted 4.20pm by Neil Sanderson

Searching for video on the web

can be frustrating. Most of the videos I've watched on YouTube, for example, have been thanks to people sending me links rather than as a result of performing a successful search. The problem is due, at least in part, to vagaries of naming and keywording by the kind folks who upload the clips.

But someone is working on a better form of video indexing. Video search engine

Blinkx

is starting to use pattern recognition to identify famous faces in video clips, and speech recognition to provide keywords. Company founder Suranga Chandratillake talks about the new techonology in this

interview on beet.tv

.

I recommend a visit to Blinkx, if for no other reason than to admire their animated front page graphic!

Another video search engine is

Dabble

. But in addition to the search function, Dabble enables you to create an account so you can organise and share links to your favourite videos (sort of like

Flickr

does for photos). The clips remain hosted on the original sites.

- - - posted 3.55pm by Neil Sanderson

Wednesday October 18

Former nzherald.co.nz deputy editor Andrew Austin

has been appointed chief reporter of the

New Zealand Herald

. He has been associate chief reporter since leaving nzherald.co.nz three years ago.

Andrew replaces Eugene Bingham, who will become news editor of the

Weekend Herald

.

- - - posted 4.30pm by Neil Sanderson

If you follow Marketing news on nzherald,

via either the

news subjects

or our

free RSS news feeds

, you'll want to note the following changes:

• The old category Advertising & Marketing has been given the more general name Marketing to reflect the fact that advertising is only one component of modern marketing.
  >> Marketing news page | Marketing news feed
• The topic Advertising remains as a specific branch of Marketing.
  >> Advertising news page | Advertising news feed
• The old topic Marketing has been removed, which means you may need to update your favourites/bookmarks and RSS reader.

- - - posted 4.15pm by Neil Sanderson

Tuesday October 17

News agency Reuters

has opened a bureau in the fantasy world of

Second Life

.

In

a report published today

in the real world, Reuters said it would have journalists "reporting and writing financial and cultural stories within and about Second Life as part of the London-based company's strategy to reach new audiences with the latest digital technologies".

The

Reuters Second Life site

includes real world news, but with an emphasis on stories about Second Life. You can even keep an eye on the exchange rate for your virtual Linden Dollars.

Question: Is a story about an imaginary subject a real story or an imaginary story?

- - - posted 12.40pm by Neil Sanderson

Monday October 16

Reimagining Australia's public broadcaster:

The ABC's Digital Futures blog has commentary on the corporation's staff conference

New Realities: Beyond Broadcasting

which was held October 4-5 in Melbourne.

Here's a list of the ambitious

resolutions

, which one

blogging participant

confessed left him "feeling pessimistically optimistic… or maybe ... optimistically pessimistic!?"

I like this one: "Dedicate 25% of all time and resources to producing creativity and innovation", but wonder who would assess what was sufficiently creative and innovative to qualify.

The session was led by Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin of the Virginia-based

iFOCOS

(Institute for the Connected Society).

Nachison and Peskin

founded iFOCOS

early this month after leaving the

American Press Institute

where they directed the

Media Center

. They also organised the We Media conferences, including one at the BBC in May.

- - - posted 3.30pm by Neil Sanderson

Xtra to partner with Google?

Juha Saarinen, writing in today's

Computerworld

, suggests that Telecom's web portal Xtra may be about to partner with Google.

As reported last month

, Xtra and current partner MSN seem to have reached the end of their relationship, and there has been talk that Xtra would align with either Google or Yahoo.

Saarinen has done some admirable sleuthing, in discovering that the domain names googlextra.co.nz and xtragoogle.co.nz have been registered by patent attorneys, whereas the yahoo equivalents have not.

- - - posted 9.45am by Neil Sanderson

For a historical perspective on NZ political tastes,

visit the nzherald

Political Polls

page which now features an

interactive graphic

of Herald-DigiPoll results.

You can click and drag on the chart to see poll results from as far back as 1999 to as recently as last month. Election results from 1999, 2002 and 2005 are shown too.

Thanks to Fraser Mills, a journalism student at Southern Institute of Technology, who recently spent two weeks with us at nzherald and created the graphic as part of his internship.

Fraser also blogs about the media at

Frasertalk

.

- - - posted 9.10am by Neil Sanderson