AVGHI: "The Memorandum is dead".
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: "Who benefits?".
ELEFTHEROS TYPOS: "Alert in police over possibility of new terrorist attack".
ESTIA: "Unwritten laws of politics".
ETHNOS: "Testimony 'rocket' on the attack against New Democracy headquarters in Athens".
IMERISSIA: "Rage over taxes and PPC (electricity) rates".
KATHIMERINI: "Reappearance of guerrilla warfare".
LOGOS: "Political conflict in the 'red'."
NAFTEMPORIKI: "Green light for the 9.2 bln euros tranche".
RIZOSPASTIS: "Exhausting increases up to 25 percent in PPC (electricity) rates".
TA NEA: "Front against terror".
The now pervasive debate on the impact of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, on journalism and how it shapes reporting, dominated a lecture here on Monday by Bill Grueskin, the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Online.
Grueskin, who today holds the prestigious post of academic dean of at the Columbia graduate school of journalism, cited two well-known cases of correspondents who were catapulted onto the international limelight not for their gritty reporting –from the Mideast – but for a private email, in the first instance, and via a controversial Facebook posting in the second instance.
The veteran editor detailed the case of Farnaz Fassihi, the WSJ bureau chief in Baghdad whose private email to friends from war-torn Iraq went viral over the course of several weeks, mainly due her bleak description of the country following the US-led invasion a year earlier and stinging criticism of the then Bush administration amid an election year.
Grueskin said the digitally reproduced and disseminated email acted as an "accelerant" of criticism of the war at the time, while he added that, in hindsight, the private email should have easily found its way onto the op-ed pages of the influential newspaper instead of generating questions over Fassihi's objectivity in covering the conflict.
"Despite (US) President (George W.) Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remain a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come," was one of the more prominent statements in the circulated email.
Conversely, the former WSJ editor pointed to the negative feedback after a FB post by the NY Times chief correspondent in Jerusalem, Jodi Rudoren, who wrote on Palestinians' attitude towards death in the Gaza Strip while attending a funeral of victims killed in an air raid, where she stated: "... I've been surprised that when I talk to people who just lost a relative, or who are gathering belongings from a bombed-out house, they seem a bit ho-hum"
Grueskin said the aftermath resulted in an immediate rebuke of Rudoren and the institution of a policy by the NY Times to vet all social media posts by reporters and correspondents by its New York City-based editors, a policy he said was impractical.
Moreover, he pointed out that while Fassihi's email took weeks to circulate, Rudoren's FB comment last November was transmitted around the world in seconds.
Grueskin also noted that the explosion of social media has brought "webmetrics" into play in the newsroom, with individual media professionals now able to gauge their impact or "following", as well as "take their following with them (to another media outlet)". The down side, he added, is that journalists run the risk of becoming "brands" or emphasizing social media presence more to the detriment of reporting in the "real world".
The lecture, entitled, "Journalism in a New Media Age" was held at the Lambrakis media group's auditorium. A second lecture will be held on Tuesday at the campus of the Deree College in northern Athens.