JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS Blog
Jury rules against U.S. reporter who sued his newspaper after being reassigned beats
A music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who was taken off the beat after a series of negative reviews about the city's orchestra has lost the lawsuit he filed against the newspaper and the Cleveland Orchestra, according to The New York Times. Read more »
Online hyperlocal news site in U.S. takes new approach
TBD.com, a new online, local news website based in Washington, D.C., is following a model that sets it apart from other online news sites: it is producing original content while also using a network of 127 local bloggers, launching with two mobile applications, partnering with two local television stations to provide videos, and focusing on social media like Twitter as news gathering tools, according to Vadim Lavrusik of Mashable.com. Read more »
Threatened Colombian journalist wins Human Rights Watch award
Colombian Carina Solano Padilla received the Hellman/Hammett grant, from the organization Human Rights Watch, for journalists and writers who have faced political persecution, reported the news agency DPA. Read more »
Economic crisis leads to closure of digital, print newspapers in Dominican Republic
After five and four years, respectively, in operation, the electronic daily newspaper Clave Digital and the printed weekly Clave in the Dominican Republic published on Aug. 5 their last editions, reported EFE. Read more »
Argentine congress debates new rules for government ad spending
The Chamber of Deputies is considering a bill to regulate the distribution of official advertising to media outlets, Clarín reports. In June, Clarín accused the executive of using ad spending to manipulate coverage. Read more »
Prosecutors charge ex-officials with kidnapping Brazilian journalists and environmentalists
The Prosecutor’s Office in Mato Grosso state has charged politicians and businessmen from the city of Juína with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and illegal restraint, after allegedly sequestering several reporters and activists who were trying to film a documentary on deforestation and the Enawene Nawe indigenous peoples Read more »
Facing impending countrywide protests, Mexican president promises to support media against violence
As Mexican journalists are finalizing the details of their protest this Saturday against violence and threats against the country’s media workers, President Felipe Calderón met with media owners and editors to pledge federal government support Read more »
Venezuela investigating bomb attack against newspaper
The Prosecutor’s Office has opened a case into this week’s molotov cocktail bomb attack against the offices of the newspaper Las Noticias, El Universal reports.
La Opinión newspaper’s truck was outside the building and was destroyed in the attack, but the building itself was left mostly unharmed. Read more »
Police arrest three suspects in kidnapping of Mexican journalists
Federal police announced the arrest of suspected gang members who allegedly kidnapped three TV journalists in northern Mexico last week, The Associated Press reports. Read more »
Pentagon calls on WikiLeaks to return classified documents
The Pentagon is demanding that the website WikiLeaks, which posted more than 70,000 classified reports about the Afghanistan war, return the documents and another 15,000 records the website might post soon, the Washington Post reported. Also, the FBI and Justice Department are looking into how the documents were leaked, the Post said. Read more »
