Hoaxing the Tabloids

The new documentary movie Starsuckers exposes the scant regard for facts exhibited by many of the UK's tabloid "newspapers".  Director Chris Atkins and his team managed to dupe most of fleet street, which published a string of fabricated celeb gossip stories phoned in by Atkins and his hoaxters.  Given the lightweight subject matter i.e. did Avril Lavigne really fall asleep at London nightclub Bungalow 8, the revelation that the tabloids aren't in the front running for any Pulitzers this year is hardly a shock.  But this lazy celeb journalism is the thin end of the wedge - let's hope it doesn't infect others in the newsroom working on meatier issues.  Good feature here in the Guardian.  

WSJ v USA Today. Do We Have a New Champion?

There's industry speculation that latest circulation figures to be released on 26 October by the Audit Bureau of Circulations may show that USA Today has relinquished its crown as the most popular print newspaper in the US to the Wall Street Journal. Factors linked to the global financial crisis are at play. While USA Today has suffered through drops in hotel guest numbers (a major USA Today market) and a general drop in consumer spending, the prominence of all news financial, albeit gloomy, has boosted WSJ readership.

More at the New York Time's Media Decoder Blog

... and here at Reuter's Media File

Laid Off from a Newspaper? Buy Your Own!

Nice profile in the New York Times today about a journalist laid off from Denver's Rocky Mountain News earlier in the year who has bounced back to fulfill his ambition to run a small town newspaper. Michael Sprengelmeyer, now publisher of the Guadalupe County Communicator (circulation about 2,000) in Santa Rosa, New Mexico is using his big city newsroom experience (and buddies) to re-energise the town's weekly newspaper.

Click to the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/business/media/12communicator.html?em