How Millennial Are You?:

Take the Pew Research Center’s quiz and find out!

In the debate over native apps versus mobile websites, The Boston Globe is officially hedging its bets. And in the how-much-to-charge paywall debate, it’s going surprisingly low.

Today the newspaper is releasing a new native iPhone app as an extension of the subscription based BostonGlobe.com. Considering that the launch of the well-reviewed BostonGlobe.com two and a half years ago was considered a landmark in responsive design — meaning it reflowed readily from desktop to tablet to smartphone without the need for a native app — it’s an interesting move.

As is the price: A full subscription to the Boston Globe iPhone app will cost just $3.99 a month. That’s $47.88 a year. Compare that to the alternatives: At full freight, a seven-day print-plus-digital subscription runs $727 a year, while a digital-only subscription costs $207 a year. All for the same content.

“A year-and-a-half in, we’ve been able to grow the subscriber base with our own systems and relationship with the customer. But this gives us access to another group of people we think we haven’t been able to get as well,” said Jeff Moriarty, the Globe’s vice president of digital products and general manager of Boston.com.

That audience, Moriarty said, is smartphone users — in this case iOS users who enjoy reading in the app environment, like discovering material through Newsstand, and who take advantage of the simplicity of the app store’s one-click purchasing.

A supplement to responsive design, not a replacement

#bostonglobeapp-slideshow { position: relative; width: 320px; height: 568px; } #bostonglobeapp-slideshow > div { position: absolute; } $(function(){$("#bostonglobeapp-slideshow > div:gt(0)").hide();setInterval(function(){$("#bostonglobeapp-slideshow > div:first").fadeOut(500).next().fadeIn(500).end().appendTo("#bostonglobeapp-slideshow")},4000)})

The Globe is, like other smart news organizations, recognizing that mobile is the future of news consumption. But its big bet was on responsive design — in a sense, a bet on mobile news being consumed in the browser rather than in a dedicated app — even though there were plenty of discussions within the Globe at the time about the wisdom of having a separate iPhone app to supplement its new web strategy.

Moriarty said the core of the newspaper’s two-site strategy remains the same: Boston.com will be the destination for free news, entertainment, and information, while BostonGlobe.com will be the home to the Globe’s reporting. But the new app also acknowledges that there are some things responsive sites and mobile browsers can’t do. As HTML5 evolves, fewer and fewer of those things are about technological constraints. But apps do still have some advantages in discovery and attention — being there to be found in the App Store, having a default position on the user’s home screen, and in the case of Apple’s Newsstand, some advantages in terms of automated issue delivery. (Although some of those advantages are changing.)

But Moriarty said going native shouldn’t be interpreted as a step away from responsive design. Taking the app route opens up users to a familiar set of gestures for reading and navigating, enables push notifications, and allows for a higher degree of customization, Moriarty said, noting that he couldn’t think of anyone “who has been as aggressive with responsive web design as we have and come back to the app market to take advantage of that as a niche play.” And newspapers can use all the niches they can assemble these days.

The Globe app echoes the newspaper typography and general feel of BostonGlobe.com. It offers up all the main sections of the Globe, but also lets readers create a customizable feed of headlines or scan a selection of trending stories. Two additional features, weather and traffic, are likely to add some utility to the app for readers in the Boston metro area.

“We focused on making it feel very mobile-native as opposed to porting an existing presentation over,” said Michael Manning, the Globe’s director for emerging products.

The Globe built the app over several months in conjunction with digital design company Mobiquity. The overall goal, Manning told me, was to create a reading experience that puts efficiency and utility front and center. App users are able to browse sections at will, or just check in on their preferences and the latest trending stories, Manning said. “We picture it as allowing people to pull out sections of the paper,” he said.

It’s the first time the paper has experimented with offering readers a broader degree of control over what they want to read. Personalization is a way of providing additional value to mobile readers, particularly those who may only have a few minutes to read at any time, Manning said. Pulling in that data on readers can also be useful to the Globe. “For us it’s really about what are the right ways to nudge people towards customization and personalization without making it a core requirement to experience the app,” Manning said.

Aiming at price-sensitive readers

Maybe even more interesting is the pricing, which would seem to undercut the substantially higher rates the paper is charging elsewhere. For any digital subscriber who does all their BostonGlobe.com reading on an iPhone, it seems like a no-brainer to get the same product in a native wrapper for 75 percent off. The bet here is that the low pricing will attract more revenue from new iPhone-addicted subscribers than it will chase off from digital and print subscribers downgrading. (As of April 1, the Globe reported roughly 32,000 digital subscribers, which includes replica editions and e-reader subscribers.)

The app even offers something BostonGlobe.com doesn’t — zero advertising for paying customers. (Non-paying app users can read four chosen-by-the-Globe articles a day, with advertising.)

I asked Moriarty about that risk, and he said it was a possibility they’ve considered. He thinks more readers would be reluctant to give up the perks and mobility of the higher-priced bundles. In order for the Globe to succeed, it has to meet readers at different levels, whether it’s for free on Boston.com, within the Boston Globe app, or in print, Moriarty told me. The hope is that the app could be a doorway into a broader connection to the Globe, he said.

“We don’t anticipate a lot of switching there,” Moriarty said. “We hope it’s a place where people will step into the Globe products and appreciate it and want it in other places as well.”

The Globe’s move could be the first of a number of similar shifts to seek out new products at lower price points. The New York Times Co., the Globe’s parent company (for at least a little while longer), announced in April that it would debut new cheaper and more expensive digital products to complement its existing packages.

Those moves come amid some industry-wide concerns that digital paywalls may be proving more effective at keeping some traditional newspaper readers than in attracting younger ones, who might be priced out by higher rates. The Times Co.’s announcements were specifically put in the context of The New York Times itself, not the Globe, but it seems that similar ideas are at work just up I-95.

One of the largest comparative studies of online news habits ever carried out reveals national differences in our online behaviour. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013 is now available to read and download. Most of the Germans and French surveyed said that although they are connected online, they prefer traditional media. Nearly 6 out of 10 (55%) Germans said they read newspapers each week, while most French respondents relied on TV and radio for news. By contrast, the Japanese and Americans were the most likely of the countries studied to use the non-traditional news sites and online aggregators. Meanwhile, Brazilians living in towns and cities favoured social media (47%) as a source of news. This is the second Digital News Report published by Reuters Institute. You Gov online polls commissioned by RISJ were conducted with 11,000 online users in the UK, US, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Japan.   The survey also shows surprising national differences in the rate of online participation. The Spanish (27%), Italians (26%), and Americans (21%) were more than twice as likely to comment on a news story via a social network as the British (10%). Meanwhile urban Brazilians were five times more likely to comment on a news site than the Germans or Japanese surveyed, and nearly half (44%) shared a news story on a weekly basis via a social network, with around one third (32%) doing so by email. Study author Nic Newman, a Research Associate at the Reuters Institute  and digital strategist, said: Our findings suggest that the culture of a country is the main driver for how we engage with online news – playing an even greater part than the technical tools and devices we have to access it. People living in Brazil, Italy and Spain have much higher levels of interaction, both with the news sites and with each other, sharing and commenting about news stories. By contrast, although the Japanese appear to embrace the non traditional news sites, they have the lowest level of online and offline participation, followed by Germany, Denmark and the UK. A recent innovation has been the development of live blogs as a way of covering breaking news and sports stories. More than one third (35%) of the Japanese surveyed used these live pages at least once a week with the French (19%), Italians (16%) and Spanish (16%) also enthusiastic. Only 8% of the Danish and German respondents accessed live blogs, preferring to read longer articles (40% and 47% respectively). The survey also reveals that for many of us, the mobile phone is the main way of accessing news when we are on the move. In Denmark, people using public transport are twice as likely to get the news on their mobile phone (63%) than read a printed newspaper (33%); while in the UK, on public transport almost half (48%) of those surveyed said they used their mobile phones for news, with one third (34%) preferring to read newspapers and 6% using tablets. In contrast, the computer dominates news use in the office and the radio remains king for those travelling by car. The report identifies 25-34 year olds as the age group most willing to pay for online news across all nine countries surveyed. Yet just over one in ten (11%) of online users of all ages who participated in the survey said they had paid for news in the last year – about one third higher than the average in the 2012 survey.  The report says that this rapid increase can be partly explained by the relatively low starting base, but it highlights significant growth in the percentage of consumers who have paid for digital news in countries such as the UK, France, Germany, and US. Of those who are not currently paying, across all the countries more than one in ten (14%), on average, said they were ‘very likely’, or ‘somewhat likely’, to pay for digital news in the future.

While half (50%) of the global sample, on average, said they had bought a printed newspaper in the last week, only 5% said they had paid for digital news within the same period. This report says that this low percentage paying for online news can be partly explained by the fact that most online newspapers currently do not charge for news, but it notes that the media landscape is changing rapidly with more news providers now starting to erect ‘paywalls’, or sell combined news subscriptions and app-based purchases. Go to the Digital Report Website

On the court, the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat are both powerhouses hungry for a National Basketball Association championship.

But in the political arena, it's a blowout in favor of the Spurs.

Ahead of the 2012 elections, Spurs owner Peter Holt and his wife, Julianna, donated four times as much money to federal politicians and political groups as Miami Heat owner Micky Arison and his wife, Madeleine, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Holts combined to contribute more than $500,000 during the 2012 election cycle. That includes $250,000 given to Restore Our Future, the super PAC that backed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and a $100,000 donation to the Texas Conservatives Fund, the super PAC that supported Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s failed U.S. Senate bid.

The Holts also donated more than $90,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee over the two-year period, and they made more modest contributions to a dozen other federal candidates.

The Arisons, meanwhile, combined to give about $125,000 to federal candidates and committees. But they didn't donate to super PACs, which proliferated in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in 2010.

Super PACs have no limits on the amount of money they may raise or spend to support candidates. They may not, however, coordinate their spending with the candidates they hope to elect, nor may they directly contribute money to candidates' campaigns.

The Arisons split their contributions almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats. But the Holts overwhelmingly favored the GOP, with only 2 percent of their political contributions supporting Democrats ahead of the 2012 elections.

Both Holts donated $2,500 to Sylvia Romo who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. They each gave Joaquin Castro $1,250 during his successful U.S. House bid. And Peter Holt gave $2,500 to Rep. Henry Cuellar, who is now in his fifth term.

By contrast, the political candidates and groups most favored by the Arisons included the National Republican Congressional Committee ($15,000); Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who is now in his 11th term ($10,000); the leadership PAC of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. ($7,000); and the leadership PAC of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. ($5,800).

Micky Arison also contributed $10,000 to the political action committee of the Cruise Lines International Association during the 2012 election cycle. In addition to his basketball exploits, he serves as the chief executive officer of cruise operator Carnival Corp.

The Spurs and Heat tip off Thursday in a championship-deciding Game 7.

 

 

At Grantland, Bryan Curtis writes about the slow decline of The New York Times’ Sports of the Times column. But more than one column in one newspaper, Curtis is really writing about a broader shift in what content is valuable in an online age.

First, [Times sports editor Jason] Stallman surveyed his own stable of feature writers. “John Branch wrote a column when he was in Fresno,” he said. “Jeré Longman has written commentary and could be dynamite. But these are guys we have fallen in love with doing distinctive enterprise stories and other investigative types of work. We’re disinclined to put them in a box of just commentary.”

It shows how the MVP of the section is no longer the columnist but the longform writer. In olden times, Branch’s Pulitzer Prize winner “Snow Fall” would probably have been assigned at 1,200 words. “I don’t believe the hierarchy of the New York Times values sports,” said Roberts. “Or I don’t think they value it on a regular basis. I think they value the big, vigorous investigative approach to sports. But the everyday is an afterthought.” It was as if those elephantine features were a way to get the paper’s top editors to finally pay attention.

It really is remarkable, for those of us who grew up reading sports columnists in our local daily, how much the institution turned out to be an artifact of a temporary news ecosystem. The broad journalistic conceit of objectivity — which made the owner of forceful opinions stand out that much more. The general demotion of regular reporters’ individuality — which turned columnists, whether sports or metro or editorial, into stars. The ways in which newspapers’ organization around geography, particularly metro areas, pushed college and pro sports teams to the fore as subjects of coverage.

And, of course, the near monopoly that most U.S. newspapers had on opinionated voices in their cities — which made even the hackiest of sports columnists into giant personalities.

The rise of sports radio helped push back on that monopoly, but the Internet finished the job. I don’t believe there is a class of reporter that has seen its value fall in the past 10 years as much as the hack print sports columnist, who (at least in the major pro and college ranks) faces more competition than ever. (Rick Reilly used to be a god.) Grantland’s been running parodies of hack newspaper sports columns lately, and they’re uncomfortably dead on.

Stallman says there’s nothing wrong with a good column, obviously, but that investigative reporting, aggressive beat reporting, and long-form features are where the action’s at.

“Maybe through the Lance Armstrong saga, we’d like to have had a columnist laying in properly. But I look at it that we have Juliet Macur completely setting the agenda on the story, so I’d much rather have that than a columnist.”

One other line worth noting:

Stallman doesn’t believe “Sports of the Times” is anachronistic. Even with a paltry word limit in a web ocean of “longform”; even with its early print deadline while the rest of us work through the night.

Think about that: “a web ocean of ‘longform.’” Remember that whenever someone says that the web is all about short and quick and 140 characters. Who’d have thought five years ago that “there’s too much longform” would even be conceived of as a competitive factor for journalism online? (It’s noteworthy that Grantland was started within ESPN by Bill Simmons, whose shaggy 12,000-word epics are as responsible as any for shifting the center of what writing about sports looks like.)

The Total Audience Certificate will offer the ABC's first "hybrid" model of net audience figures across different platforms    

In a rare criminal prosecution under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Department of Justice scored a double victory this year, winning convictions against a western New York coke manufacturing plant and its former environmental manager.

Next up: sentencing for the company and its manager in July — and hope, in the town of Tonawanda, just upstate from Buffalo, that the prosecution will help end decades of concern over the toxins tainting the community.

The federal case focused on Tonawanda Coke Corp. and environmental manager Mark L. Kamholz, of West Seneca, N.Y.

For years, residents had complained that elevated levels of benzene, a carcinogen, emanated from the plant. Homeowners began taking evidence with their own hands, testing the air with special buckets and pressing authorities to take action. Their contention: The plant had for years underreported its emissions. The community’s struggle for clean air was explored as part of a 2011 series, Poisoned Places, by the Center for Public Integrity and NPR.

In March, a federal jury confirmed the community’s long-standing fears.

Charged in a 19-count indictment, the company and executive were convicted of 14 and 15 felonies, respectively. Each was convicted of five counts of violating the Clean Air Act by emitting coke oven gas from an unpermitted emission source, along with other convictions for operating the plant without required pollution control devices called baffles. Other violations involved the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

They were acquitted of four Clean Air Act counts. Kamholz, but not the company, was convicted of obstruction of justice for instructing an employee to conceal emissions during an inspection.

“Citizens of this community are entitled to breathe clean air and drink clean water,” U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr. said in a prepared statement after the verdict. “From the evidence of this case, where literally hundreds of tons of coke oven gas containing benzene was released into the atmosphere and significant quantities of hazardous waste containing benzene were left out in the open, it would be hard to imagine a more callous disregard for the health and well being of the citizens of this community.”

Tonawanda Coke and Kamholz are scheduled to be sentenced July 15 in federal court in Buffalo, though the defense is asking for a delay. While the convictions could yield prison time and millions in fines, the plant itself still produces worry for the working-class western New York town, where many living near the facility suffer from health problems.

For Joyce Hogenkamp, watching lawyers present evidence in the downtown Buffalo courthouse made her think of her late mother.

Growing up on Hackett Drive about two miles from the plant, Hogenkamp remembers how her mother always slept with the window open, out of a fear of closed spaces, even though winds from the southwest blew in smoke from the coke plant that smelled like burning tires. She, like many in the community, eventually became sick.

When the trial recessed one day, “I cried the entire drive home that day,” Hogenkamp said.

Jackie James-Creedon, who founded a local group that used buckets and hand-held vacuums to test the air near the plant, watched nearly every day of the four-week trial. For years, she and her neighbors pressed state regulators to act. It took five years before New York regulators formally blamed Tonawanda Coke for the town’s air pollution; it took another four years for the criminal trial to begin.

Still, James-Creedon said she had been “concerned” that the jury wouldn’t see the evidence as she did.

“I literally was shaking, just with anticipation,” James-Creedon said.

Uncommon Criminal Case

Yet Tonawanda’s case proved to be nearly unique: A rare criminal prosecution of the federal Clean Air Act.

Prosecutors say the complexity of Clean Air Act cases makes them difficult to prove — one reason prosecutions are so rare, the Center for Public Integrity reported in Poisoned Places. Since 1990, fewer than 800 Clean Air Act cases had led to fines or prison time — the fewest of any of the three major environmental laws designed to protect air, water and land, the Center found.

Instead of criminal prosecution, the federal government is far more likely to pursue civil cases, which typically result in corporate fines and agreements to curtail emissions. Companies would surely prefer to settle cases with civil fines — than face criminal prosecution.

"Usually it doesn't get to this point," said Richard Lippes, an environmental attorney representing about 400 personal injury cases against Tonawanda Coke. “Usually once a company’s hands are found in the cookie jar, they’ve got to put the cookies back and maybe have to beg for more cookies.”

The EPA says that fewer criminal cases were initiated in part because of personnel cuts, and as part of a strategy to focus on the worst polluters. According to agency data, the EPA initiated 320 criminal investigations overall in 2012 and charged 231 defendants — both down from 2011. The agency says asbestos prosecutions made up 41.5 percent of cases — still the most common, but down from previous years. Cases involving false statements, tampering with equipment or permit violations were 23.6 percent of all cases opened, the agency said.

“The criminal enforcement program identifies and investigates cases with significant environmental, human health, and deterrence impacts while balancing its overall case load across all pollution statutes,” the EPA said in a statement.

The EPA closed 28 criminal cases involving the Clean Air Act in fiscal year 2012 and so far in 2013, the Center found, yet few involved air pollution from industrial plants. Instead, more than 60 percent involved asbestos disposal violations. About 10 percent covered violations of ozone rules, two prosecutions targeted scammers who sold biofuel credits for fuel they didn’t produce, and two cases targeted vehicle inspectors who accepted payoffs to falsely pass cars that didn’t meet pollution standards.

Four cases concerned industrial polluters like Tonawanda Coke that reported false information to the EPA as part of Clean Air Act-mandated permits.

Prosecutions don’t always lead to prison time. Belvan Corporation, which operates a natural gas processing plant in Crockett County, Texas, and three of its executives pleaded guilty in 2012 to a Clean Air Act violation for failing to correct malfunctioning equipment that diverted acid gas into the plant’s flare system, releasing hydrogen sulfide, sulphur dioxide and other pollutants. The company waited years to report the emissions, “and thus placed people in imminent danger of death and serious bodily injury,” the EPA said.

The company was fined $500,000. The executives paid $50,000, $22,000 and $15,000 fines — and were ordered to spend eight hours completing an environmental awareness training program.

In the Tonawanda Coke case, jurors took five and a half hours to reach a verdict. At trial, prosecutors said the plant released coke oven gas, containing benzene, through an unreported pressure relief valve. The company skirted other anti-pollution laws through its “practice of mixing its coal tar sludge, a listed hazardous waste that is toxic for benzene, on the ground in violation of hazardous waste regulations,” according to prosecutors.

Just before a 2009 EPA inspection, Kamholz told a fellow employee “to conceal the fact that the unreported pressure relief valve, during normal operations, emitted coke oven gas directly into the air, in violation of the TCC’s operating permit,” the DOJ said.

Attorneys for Kamholz and Tonawanda Coke did not respond to interview requests. In court papers, the lawyers are asking the judge to dismiss most of the convictions.

In theory, the convictions could bring significant sentences: Tonawanda Coke faces a $200 million maximum fine, and Kamholz could be sentenced to prison for as long as 75 years. But few expect maximum sentences to be handed out.

A fine of $8 million to $10 million, and a year or two of jail time might be more realistic, said Erin Heaney, the executive director of the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York.

Assessing the damage

In Tonawanda, state officials are still trying to measure the damage to the air, water and soil — and to people’s bodies — in an effort that will continue long after sentencing.

According to a draft health outcomes review published in February by the New York Department of Health, residents living near the plant have been more likely to suffer lung and bladder cancer; men showed more cases of esophageal cancer, while women were more likely to have uterine cancer than the rest of the state. The study cautioned, however, that it couldn’t prove what caused the illnesses.

When residents started using homemade air tests using buckets and vacuums almost 10 years ago, they found levels of benzene 500 times above state health guidelines. State tests later found benzene levels between 10 and 75 times above the guidelines, plus high levels of formaldehyde, carbon tetrachloride and other toxins. Federal officials then forced the company to install monitoring equipment that pinpointed benzene emissions at 91 tons per year — about 30 times more than its previous reports to air regulators had indicated.

Investigators later found the plant didn’t have required pollution control devices. For years, the omission went unnoticed by state officials. The plant also opened an emergency valve every 20 to 30 minutes that released untreated gas laced with chemicals.

Now, residents say money is needed to continue the monitoring long-term, and help people pay for health services. Activists are concerned that, under the EPA’s rules, there’s no guarantee fines remain in the community. In theory, Heaney said, they could simply be deposited in the U.S. Treasury.

Hoping to prevent this, residents have launched a frantic campaign to gather victim impact statements. The hope, James-Creedon said, is that U.S. District Judge William Skretny will order fine money allocated for community improvement projects. The Clean Air Coalition is holding a series of community meetings to let the public brainstorm and ultimately vote on which projects residents prefer.

Still, the uncertainty has James-Creedon nervous. “We’re not sure we’re even going to see one penny of that money,” she said.

And, Tonawanda Coke must comply with numerous EPA violations that began with the initial investigation — and manage pollution levels if production, which dipped during the economic downturn, begins to rebound.

“It’s a relatively obsolete plant,” said community attorney Lippes, “so bringing themselves into compliance may not be that easy.”

 

Leaders of the G8 major economies have agreed new measures to tackle the lack of transparency associated with offshore tax havens.

They include sharing access to information on their residents’ tax affairs and forcing shell companies — often used to exploit investment loopholes — to identify their real owners.

The BBC reports the measures are designed to combat illegal evasion of taxes, as well as legal tax avoidance by large corporations that make use of loopholes and tax havens.

The move, in part, follows a massive reporting project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — dubbed Offshore Leaks — on the role of offshore tax havens in the global economy.

EU Commissioner Algirdas Semeta said the Offshore Leaks investigation by ICIJ and its partners had transformed tax politics and amplified political will to tackle the problem of tax evasion.

"I personally think Offshore Leaks could be identified as the most significant trigger behind these developments ... It has created visibility of the issue and it has triggered political recognition of the amplitude of the problem", he told EU Observer.

The BBC reported the G8 leaders agreed that multinationals should tell all tax authorities about what taxes they pay and where.

"Countries should change rules that let companies shift their profits across borders to avoid taxes," the communique said.

It follows separate revelations about the ways in which several major firms — including Google, Apple, Starbucks and Amazon — have minimized their tax bills.

Illegal activities, including tax evasion and money laundering, will be tackled by the automated sharing of tax information.

The BBC reported that ahead of the summit, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), proposed to share tax information by building on an existing system set up by the US and five major European economies, but on a global scale.

"This international tax tool is going to be a real feature of ensuring that we get proper tax payment and proper tax justice in our world," said the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who claimed that it meant "those who want to evade taxes have nowhere to hide".

The OECD includes all of the G8 members except Russia.

Among the information to be shared will be who actually ultimately benefits from the shadowy shell companies, special purpose companies and trust arrangements often employed by tax evaders and money launderers.

Earlier in the day, the British Chancellor George Osborne unveiled plans for a UK central register of companies and their true owners. But the G8 communique did not contain a firm pledge from other G8 countries to create similar company registries and to make them public, as transparency advocates had sought.

On Saturday, ICIJ published the Offshore Leaks Database which partially opens up for the first time the company registries of 10 offshore jurisdictions. The data, which include information on more than 100,000 offshore companies, is part of a leak of 2.5 million secret files to ICIJ.

Last week the UK also unveiled a deal with its crown dependencies and overseas territories — including the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Anguilla — to start sharing more information on which foreign companies bank their profits there.

Speaking during the summit, Mr Osborne said more progress had been made on reforming the global tax system in the past 24 hours than the "past 24 years".

However those campaigning again tax evasion said the G8 had not gone far enough.

Porter McConnell, manager of the Financial Transparency Coalition, said: ”People in rich and poor nations alike are looking to their leaders to resist vested interests and pursue policies that tackle corruption and rampant tax dodging. Today G8 leaders have taken some significant steps in an effort to make the rules of the global economy fair for everyone.

"But it is troubling that there is no G8-wide agreement on the introduction of beneficial owner registries, let alone that they be made public. Over the past several months, crimes that rely on financial secrecy, such as tax evasion, money laundering and trafficking, have become front-page news. Illicit finance is one of the most pressing issues of our time:  it’s robbing citizens of developing countries and G8 countries alike.”

Shots fired by riot police using rubber bullets and teargas injured two reporters covering protests against fuel prize hikes on 17 June.

Anton Nugroho of Jakarta-based Trans 7 TV, was hit in the left eye by a rubber bullet at a protest in the western province of Jambi. According to local press reports, Aroby Kilerley of Mata Public was hit by a teargas canister at a protest on the eastern island Ternate,

“Initial reports suggest that the journalists were not targeted but only thorough investigations will be able to confirm this,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We strongly condemn the action of the police in firing indiscriminately on crowds and without consideration for media personnel. Those responsible must be identified.

“The police should take the necessary precautions in order to guarantee the safety of journalists and allow them to work without having to fear being injured by the very people who are supposed to protect them.”

Thousands of Indonesians took part in the protests in reaction to parliament's approval of a government bill ending subsidies on fuel prices. The protests quickly led to clashes with police.

Reporters Without Borders was told that Nugroho's injury has resulted in partial blindness that could be irreversible. Kilerley was transferred to a hospital in Jakarta where he was said to be in a serious condition.

The minister for legal, political and security affairs, Djoko Soesilo, initially denied that the police fired on protesters but the head of the police subsequently acknowledged that some officers violated crowd control procedure.

Photo : ADEK BERRY / AFP

“New perspectives from the sky,” a study by Dr. Mark Tremayne and Andrew Clark published in Digital Journalism, can help you with that.

The two University of Texas at Arlington researchers lay out eight case studies of drone use, from tornado coverage to paparazzi to self-surveillance and the Occupy movement.

The eight cases identified raise a host of legal, ethical and moral questions which were raised in this report. As previous research on surveillance technologies has suggested, UAVs equipped with cameras will further blur the public–private distinctions understood by earlier eras (Ford 2011; Thompson 2011). How will the public react? Interestingly, the answer is not obvious. Technologies that seem intrusive to some are readily accepted by others, especially when they have become accustomed to surveillance or feel some remaining degree of control (Humphreys 2011; Meyrowitz 2009). The right to privacy has been diminishing over the past 100 years due to issues such as the growth of government, the growth of the mass media and technological innovations that make it possible to see and hear things that would not have been possible even a few years ago.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its regional group, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), today condemned unreservedly the violence and arrests of journalists that took place during the crackdown on the Taksim Square protesters this weekend.   According to the TGS (Turkish Journalists Syndicate), at least four journalists have been arrested, photographers have had their pictures deleted, and cameramen have been targeted by tear gas and water cannon. In a more sinister move, four TV companies have been fined by the Radio and Television High Council over their reporting of the demonstrations while the Daily Taraf publication has also been banned. Meanwhile Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to investigate social media and national media publishing photos on the demonstrations and the violence.

Today’s comic from XKCD, one of my favorite comic strips on the web, puts into perspective the “modern” debate about the alleged decline of communication in the digital age.

It’s amusing, when you actually look at what historically has been written on this topic, to think that these communication crises — the poor writing skills, lack of reading habits, decline of newspapers — were brought on by texting, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail, YouTube, The Internet, etc. etc. etc. When really, based on what then-modern thinkers thought of their contemporaries centuries ago, even our 21st Century communication problems prove the axiom “everything old is new again.”

Here’s the link to the XKCD comic “The Pace of Modern Life”, and the full comic strip. Hopefully you find it as entertaining, enlightening and refreshing as I did:
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its regional group, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), today condemned unreservedly the violence and arrests of journalists that took place during the crackdown on the Taksim Square protesters this weekend.   According to the TGS (Turkish Journalists Syndicate), at least four journalists have been arrested, photographers have had their pictures deleted, and cameramen have been targeted by tear gas and water cannon. In a more sinister move, four TV companies have been fined by the Radio and Television High Council over their reporting of the demonstrations while the Daily Taraf publication has also been banned. Meanwhile Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to investigate social media and national media publishing photos on the demonstrations and the violence.

Very cool visualization of global tourism using Twitter data:

With the power of MapBox and Twitter data from Gnip, data artist Eric Fischer worked with the Gnip team to create a fully-browsable worldwide map of local allegiances.

Blue points on the map are Tweets posted by “Locals”: people who have tweeted in a city dated over a range of a month or more. Red points are Tweets posted by “Tourists”: people who seem to be Locals in a different city and who tweeted in this city for less than a month.

Chris Johanesen of Buzzfeed says that publishers should ban slideshows. Can we get a round of applause? They are remanants, like pageviews and the ‘like‘ button, of the beginnings of everything digital. Nothing fills me with a sense of dread more than clicking on a link and realizing there are ten, 30 page slideshows at the bottom of the story. It’s why it’s hard to read certain sites.

And of course, slideshows and the pageview complex go hand in hand. Johansen writes that you can’t trick people into sharing content, which is how Buzzfeed considers engagement. Which is sort of interesting in that, while also ploys to get readers to click through and add to the tally, slideshows are also perfect packages of content to share. Like silly lists.

Sometimes, content is made for slideshows. A collection of really great photos, be it of a newsworthy event or a fashion spread, that enhance a story is one. But who has a staff photographer anymore?

Other kinds of niche content will still exist in slideshow form as long as we’re clicking though on desktops, too. I’ve recently made grilling a bit of a hobby and when I’m browsing for ideas, I click through Food and Wine collections, in the same way my grandmother used to peruse her tattered recipe box.  Maybe they’re tricking me into monetizing their site for them, but there’s something inherently ‘browse-worthy’ about food and restauarant pages, much like travel.

As our content all ends up mobile, we’re going to have to be more innovative about packaging it. Even good tablet versions of good magazine just replicate the print version of the magazine, like Wired or the Atlantic, with some extra features and links. Meanwhile, content like this spread here, should just be one colorful, interactive page on the web, sort of like it used to be in the magazine.

Slideshows, and lists, will only die when mobile content really subsumes your desktop view. Do you think slideshows are ever anything but a way to garner pageviews? Are you encouraged to create them?

Photo c/o The Huffington Post

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The International Federation of Journalists( IFJ) today called on Iran's President - elect Hassan Rohani to make good on the promises he made after clinching the presidency in last week' s poll. At his first press conference on Monday, President-elect Rohani was asked about the closure of the office of the Association of Iranian Journalists( AoIJ), an IFJ affiliate. He replied that "guilds and associations are the best ways to run social affairs of the society." The IFJ reacted by writing to the new leader, welcoming his new approach to civil liberties , especially journalists' rights. "We welcome your response regarding the Association of Iranian Journalists closed down since 2009," said the letter signed by IFJ President Jim Boumelha. "Your view has been applauded throughout the global community of journalists worldwide.

The International Federation of Journalists( IFJ) today called on Iran's President - elect Hassan Rohani to make good on the promises he made after clinching the presidency in last week' s poll. At his first press conference on Monday, President-elect Rohani was asked about the closure of the office of the Association of Iranian Journalists( AoIJ), an IFJ affiliate. He replied that "guilds and associations are the best ways to run social affairs of the society." The IFJ reacted by writing to the new leader, welcoming his new approach to civil liberties , especially journalists' rights. "We welcome your response regarding the Association of Iranian Journalists closed down since 2009," said the letter signed by IFJ President Jim Boumelha. "Your view has been applauded throughout the global community of journalists worldwide.

De Russen betrokken in de fraudezaak-Magnitsky zijn niet welkom in de Verenigde Staten. Maar intussen kunnen ze de miljoenen dollars die ze uit een Brits bedrijf hebben gezogen wel in Europa besteden. Hoe gaat de EU met de frauderende ambtenaren om? In de zaak werd niet enkel 153 miljoen dollar achterovergedrukt, er stierf ook een kroongetuige in voorhechtenis.

A government initiative aimed at saving money by eliminating paper checks is hurting some recipients of federal benefits while earning the bank that operates the program millions in fees charged to consumers.

The U.S. Treasury Department has been urging people who collect Social Security and other benefits to switch to direct deposit rather than rely on mailed checks, to save millions of dollars a year in administrative costs.

But beneficiaries without bank accounts — and even some who do have accounts — are being pressured into using prepaid debit cards offered by Comerica Bank, an effort that is shifting costs to elderly people, veterans and other vulnerable consumers.

The Treasury Department launched the program in 2008, teaming up with the Dallas-based bank to issue the “Direct Express” debit cards in a deal that lacked the open competition or transparency of most federal contracts.

The exclusive agreement — whose financial details are not public — was then renegotiated to make it more lucrative for the bank while Treasury took over responsibilities that were originally Comerica’s.

Now millions of poor people who rely on Social Security and Supplemental Security Income are using debit cards that may be ill-suited to their needs and can cost them more than paper checks or direct deposit to a bank account.

 Meanwhile, Treasury is saving money and Comerica is booking profits.

“To stand in the way of the purpose of the programs is appalling, and that’s really what they’re doing,” says Rebecca Vallas, a Philadelphia attorney who represents federal benefits recipients.

The Senate Special Committee on Aging is holding a hearing Wednesday on the Treasury program and Treasury’s inspector general, its independent, internal watchdog, is looking into the Comerica deal.

Paper or plastic?

It costs the U.S. government $1.05 to print and mail a check, compared with 9 cents for an electronic transfer, according to testimony last year by Richard Gregg, Treasury’s fiscal assistant secretary, who is set to testify at Wednesday’s hearing.

Congress in 1996 ordered Treasury to eliminate paper checks from the federal payments system within three years. That mandate, however, gave the department broad leeway to waive the requirement where it didn’t make sense or would impose hardship.

In 2010, more than 85 percent of all federal payments were electronic, and Treasury officials decided to make a final push to eliminate the remaining checks by March of this year. By then most people on Social Security or SSI were having their payments deposited directly into their bank accounts. Others received benefits on debit payment cards offered by private companies — a choice that can lead to heavy fees.

People who choose to keep receiving paper checks are generally elderly or poor or both, and don’t have bank accounts or access to bank branches. Some mistrust banks because of abuses and failures they observed during the Great Depression or the recent financial crisis. Others may not understand how electronic payments work.

Treasury didn’t have a good option for them, so it sought a low-cost payment card, eventually selecting Comerica to provide Direct Express.

Government prepaid cards are a fast-growing industry. At least $100 billion was distributed in 2011 on cards for 158 federal, state and local governments’ payment programs, according to a Federal Reserve study published last July. The cards are similar to those issued with checking accounts, but don’t always offer the same consumer protections.

Comerica has issued 9 million government payments cards, including more than 4 million Direct Express cards, making it the second-biggest issuer, according to recent investor presentations. Other top issuers of cards used by states and other governments to deliver payments to consumers include Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp and Citigroup.

Comerica offered to issue the Direct Express cards at no cost to Treasury, spend millions to market them and charge consumers lower fees than most privately issued prepaid cards.

Comerica offered one free ATM withdrawal per month.

Treasury pressure

In January 2011, the government began an all-out push to move the 10.4 million people who were still receiving paper checks to electronic payments, an effort that could eventually save $119 million per year.

Treasury resorted to tactics that advocates for the elderly and disabled say were too pushy and sometimes misleading. Notices papered the walls of Social Security offices and advertisements looped on the offices’ closed circuit televisions, urging people to go electronic, according to Vallas.

A large countdown clock dominated the government’s main webpage for people seeking information about the change, indicating down to the second how long people had before their benefits “may be delivered on Direct Express.”

Government fliers and websites said anyone who failed to use the card or arrange direct deposit would be on the wrong side of the law. “Switching to an electronic payment is not optional — it’s the law,” said David Lebryk, commissioner of Commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, in a January press release titled “Time is Running Out.”

In January and February, Treasury mailed thousands of the cards to poor, elderly and disabled people who had not requested them, hoping they would activate them anyway.

A Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the program candidly, said the department tried to send cards to people living in low-income neighborhoods, because they are less likely to have bank accounts.

People who received cards without requesting them had already received two written notices urging them to pick an electronic payment method. The high-pressure appeals were necessary, Treasury officials say, to get the attention of Americans who cling to paper checks despite decades of opportunities to embrace direct deposit.

Customer service employees were trained to get people to accept Direct Express, regardless of whether it was the best option for them, according to interviews with call center employees who spoke on condition of anonymity and a Center for Public Integrity review of transcripts and recordings of calls to Treasury’s call center.

Operators provided inaccurate information on seven of 10 calls placed in February by a former call center worker who conducted a personal investigation because he was unhappy with how the call center was operated. The worker spoke on condition of anonymity because he had agreed not to discuss it as a condition of employment.

On at least five calls, operators denied that certain groups were allowed to keep receiving paper checks. Several said people who failed to switch to electronic payments would be mailed a card automatically after the March 1 deadline. One told the caller that using direct deposit to a bank account “would incur more fees” than enrolling in Direct Express.

A February memo instructed the call center workers not to offer waivers to callers, allowing them to continue to receive paper checks, “unless they specifically ask for one.” When callers insist they qualify and want to obtain a waiver, operators should transfer the call to a group that would provide that information “ONLY AS A LAST RESORT,” says the memo.

The aggressive campaign worked. By the agency’s self-imposed deadline of March 1, 2013, it had cut the number of paper checks to 3.5 million, saving the government about $79 million per year. If the remaining holdouts went electronic, the government could save another $40 million per year.

Juliet Carter was one of the people who were persuaded to enroll in Direct Express. The 57-year-old former cook, who was living on government disability benefits after being hit by a car five years ago, was spooked by the notices that accompanied her checks urging her to sign up for Direct Express or risk being “out of compliance with the law.”

She phoned the number listed on the flyers and switched to the card. Within months, identity thieves had redirected her benefits to a different account and stolen six months of her income. She was evicted from her apartment and has spent the past few months renting rooms in houses or staying with her sister.

“I’ve learned I can’t trust those cards,” said Carter. She says she prefers a paper check because “it comes direct from Social Security to the mailbox to me, and I feel safer.”

Treasury says the cards are far less susceptible to fraud than paper checks.

In a prepared statement, Treasury spokeswoman Suzanne Elio said, “Electronic payment provides federal beneficiaries a safer, more secure, and convenient method of receiving their benefits as compared to paper check payments, which are considerably more vulnerable to fraud.”

The agency “took great care” in implementing the electronic payment system and sought to provide “strong consumer protections” for people without bank accounts, Elio said.

Social Security and SSI are meant to provide people with secure and accessible income, says Vallas. “They don’t exist for the sake of administrative efficiency or meeting arbitrary number targets.”

Fees mount

Direct Express’ fees are lower than those on most payment cards. Still, they can eat into the benefits of people like Juliet Carter who are living on fixed incomes, often far from banks or ATMs that participate in the Direct Express network.

To get a month’s worth of cash can require three or four ATM transactions because of limits on how much money can be withdrawn at a time. At ATMs participating in Direct Express, customers get one free withdrawal a month before Comerica charges a 90 cent fee. ATMs outside the network can tack on fees of $2 or more.

Direct Express may be a good option for people who don’t have a bank account, as Treasury argues, but almost certainly increases costs for those who do have accounts. Users pay Comerica for most ATM withdrawals, online bill payments and money transfers — services that many banks provide for free.

Yet Treasury and Comerica have pushed the card with such vigor that as of June 2012, more than a million people with bank accounts had nonetheless signed up for Direct Express, according to Gregg’s congressional testimony last year.

Comerica spokesman Wayne Mielke declined to comment for this story. Comerica’s contract with Treasury bars it from discussing the program without Treasury’s permission.

Fees benefit bank

Both Treasury and Comerica have strong incentives to push the Direct Express card. For Treasury, each conversion saves money and moves the government closer to its aim of eliminating checks.

Comerica receives $5 from Treasury for each card it issues, according to several people with direct knowledge of the contract. Treasury redacted this information from copies of the contract provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Treasury had made direct payments to Comerica totaling more than $22 million as of August 2012, including the $5 fee and other charges, according to data disclosed in response to the FOIA request. The bank stands to collect millions more through ATM withdrawal fees, payments from Visa and MasterCard and the interest earned on money that people haven’t yet withdrawn, which Comerica keeps.

Comerica initially was chosen because it offered to issue cards and provide customer support at no cost to the federal government. After it had won the deal, Comerica reversed course, saying that it was having trouble making money off Direct Express, in part because of the high cost of providing telephone support for people who sometimes call to check their balances multiple times a day, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

Without reopening bidding, Treasury agreed in March 2011 to give Comerica $5 per card, paying retroactively for enrollments since December 2010. Comerica received millions more to beef up its call centers and prepare for additional users. The exclusive contract runs until January 2015.

Treasury’s inspector general wants to k now if the Department acted improperly when it added the $5 per-card fee and other payments. The original contract specified that the government would not guarantee “ANY MINIMUM VOLUME OF BUSINESS, OR LEVEL OF COMPENSATION TO [Comerica] AND SHALL NOT ADJUST THE COMPENSATION ON THE BASIS THAT VOLUME LEVEL DID NOT MEET [Comerica’s] EXPECTATIONS.” (Emphasis in original.)

A spokesman for the inspector general declined to comment. The office does not discuss ongoing audits.

Treasury officials declined to speak on the record about the contract.

Comerica’s contract also required it to enroll people in the program and provide customer service including helping prevent fraud. However, Treasury took over these responsibilities, setting up a parallel call center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, about a mile from Comerica’s headquarters. Treasury didn’t reduce Comerica’s compensation.

Between October 2011 and the end of August 2012, the Social Security inspector general received more than 18,000 reports of unauthorized changes or suspected attempts to make unauthorized changes to payments. Treasury says it put new procedures in place in January 2012 to reduce fraud. Yet early this year, the Social Security inspector general’s office said it was still receiving more than 50 such reports a day.

Juliet Carter says Comerica failed to root out the fraud and reissue her lost payments despite several requests. At one point, she says, a Comerica representative threatened to investigate her for fraud if she continued to pursue the matter.

Comerica declined to comment on her case. Mielke, the bank’s spokesman, said it does not comment on individual cases, to protect customers’ privacy.

Carter got rid of her Direct Express card, and switched back to paper checks last year. The repeated notices from Treasury continued to scare her, however, and earlier this year she signed up to get her payments on a Rush Card, a private payment card that carries higher fees than Direct Express.

Vallas, her lawyer, helped her apply for a waiver this spring to go back on paper checks.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its regional group, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), today condemned unreservedly the violence and arrests of journalists that took place during the crackdown on the Taksim Square protesters this weekend.   According to the TGS (Turkish Journalists Syndicate), at least four journalists have been arrested, photographers have had their pictures deleted, and cameramen have been targeted by tear gas and water cannon. In a more sinister move, four TV companies have been fined by the Radio and Television High Council over their reporting of the demonstrations while the Daily Taraf publication has also been banned. Meanwhile Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to investigate social media and national media publishing photos on the demonstrations and the violence.