TUESDAY'S LINKS: 'NYT' Researcher in China Plans Appeal, 'Boston Herald' Drops Stock Listings, Akron Blues

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, a New York Times researcher in China plans to appeal his conviction for fraud, the Boston Herald is planning to drop its stocks page, and an Akron Beacon Journal veteran's dismay at the paper's recent cuts.


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Researcher in China for 'NY Times' Will Appeal Fraud Conviction
New York Times: A Chinese researcher for The New York Times, sentenced to three years in prison for fraud, decided Monday to appeal his conviction, one of his lawyers said. Zhao Yan, 44, who worked in The Times?s Beijing bureau, won a victory on Aug. 25 when a Beijing court dismissed the more serious charge against him of leaking state secrets to the newspaper. But the court convicted him of a lesser, unrelated fraud charge that dated to 2001, when he worked as a journalist for a Chinese publication.


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'Boston Herald' Drops Stocks Page
Boston Herald: Starting this week, the Boston Herald?s Business Today section will no longer carry a stocks page. Instead, up-to-the-minute stock and mutual fund listings will be available online in the Business Today section at www.bostonherald.com.


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Fewer Beacons of Light in Akron
CJR Daily: Mary Ethridge grew up with Knight Ridder, and with the Akron Beacon Journal, where her father was editor. Her brother was managing editor of Knight Ridder's Charlotte Observer for much of the 1980s. And so when she landed a reporting job at the Beacon in 1988, Ethridge says, "I was thrilled." But the deep cuts in the Beacon Journal's newsroom announced last week -- one-fourth will be laid off between now and October -- have hit Ethridge hard.


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China to Inspect Newspaper Circ
Shanghai Daily: China is planning to bring more honesty and transparency in reporting newspaper circulation data as it launches an inspection on the circulation figures in newspapers from 11 cities, Xinhua news agency reported. These cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Chengdu, said a circular released ahead of the 2007 newspaper circulation season by the General Administration of Press and Publications and another three central departments. The Sino Publication Audit Center, the sole NGO in China's press and publishing field, is entrusted by the government to conduct the inspection.


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Nobody Killed the Newspaper
Alvaro Vargas Llosa in Free Market News: With exceptions such as China and India, the (slow) decline of the newspaper business is a worldwide trend. The big mistake that newspapers in America, Europe and Latin America have made in response to the new environment is to treat this trend as a financial and a technological challenge rather than a cultural phenomenon. The newspaper industry?s response over the past decade-and Knight Ridder is a good example but not the only one-has consisted mainly of two things: restructuring finances and providing online versions of print products. Everything else-including the creation of new businesses under their famed brands or going into cable TV-was intended to salvage the traditional way of providing news. The result is, well, the ?whodunit'' yell.


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Citizen Journalism Not About 'Amateurs' or 'Pros'
OhMyNews: "Part of the concept of 'citizen journalism' is a return to the idea of journalism having a public purpose and responsibility," says Ronda Hauben. "The Internet has made it possible to reinvent the concept of news so that the real-life conditions of more people and their news and views become part of what is recognized as journalism."