Einar Thorsen

Professor of Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University

Publications | Conferences | Teaching | Projects

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The Independent launches new newspaper title: i

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Evgeny Lebedev, Chairman of Independent Print Ltd:

I am very proud to launch i, which will be the first quality daily paper to have launched in Britain since The Independent itself in 1986. My father and I believe that a free press is a fundamental tool of a democracy, and we believe that newspapers still have a future, and a very important one.

Independent’s Editor-in-Chief Simon Kelner:

With the launch of i, we are again doing something radical and new, creating a paper for today that retains the essential qualities of The Independent. Ever since The Independent launched, the paper has had a reputation for innovation and boldness and now we are creating the first post-modern newspaper, attractive to those who prize intelligence, convenience and desirability.

New title will go on sale nationwide on Tuesday 26 October 2010

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Why (and how) we’re changing commenting on independent.co.uk

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Jack Riley:

what we're trying to achieve with the new comment system is bigger than just the (admittedly excellent) [Disqus] system we're putting in place. It's about first of all letting people authenticate their commenting using systems with which they're already familiar (in Facebook's case, that's 400 million people worldwide and counting), and secondly, it's about restoring your trust in our comments section, so that some of the really great submissions we get on there rise to the top, the bad sink to the bottom, and the ugly – the spam and abuse that are an inevitable adjunct of any commenting system – don't appear at all.

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Environmental news site Grist adds humour to reader donations campaign

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Jennifer MacDonald on Grist's fundraising campaign for environmental journalism:

we have noticed how the economic downturn hit environmental reporting particularly hard, with several eco-columns and publications going under in the last year. So we decided, why not mimic campaigns to save endangered species, which in a way journalists really are? Grist is known for our zany fundraising campaigns. We’d rather err on the side of humour than earnestness. The element of humour is there, painting our staff members as wild animals, but we also hope to strike a chord of urgency, showing our readers that we really do need their support as an independent, non-profit news site.

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