Wednesday, May 17, 2006

BRIAN L. STEFFENS, Executive Director, National Newspaper Association, NNA, USA

Newspapers large and small have a long history of adapting to technological and market change. Small-town and community newspapers are flourishing in a new technological age that allows them to provide coverage of local events with detail and delivery speed that they've never had before.

Brian L. Steffens is executive director of the National Newspaper Association (NNA). Founded in 1885, NNA is the oldest and largest newspaper association in America, representing 2,600 community newspapers. Mr. Steffens is also an adjunct associate professor of journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism.

In the 21st century, newspapers have become chameleons, adapting with the changing environment. That's the way it's always been: from sheet-fed to rotary presses, linotype machines to desktop publishing, black and white to color, and now paper to electrons. Newspapers continue to offer unique-value propositions that ensure their long-term future even as they change to encompass new forms of presentation and distribution. Newspapers remain the only medium that is primarily news; information that is usually verifiable, accurate, fair and in search of truth.

Radio is primarily a music and talk medium. Television is dominated by entertainment. The Internet is a search medium, offering access to a wide range of information with no assurances about the quality or veracity of content.

Local, community newspapers offer something that reader's prize-local news.

Television stations and large-city dailies serve regional audiences spanning large cities, sprawling suburbs, and communities with total populations numbering in the millions. Cable channels and the Internet serve national or international audiences. None have the staff, time, space or pages to cover truly local, neighborhood news in a comprehensive and consistent way. They are limited to covering the bigger stories, the controversies, not day-to­day life that is the hallmark of community newspapers, including local government, schools, local health care and medical resources, neighborhood sports, social events, service clubs, and church activities.

This explains why the number of American dailies, and subscribers to those papers, has declined, while the number of community, non-daily newspapers has grown from about 5,500 to more than 7,000. Readership of the non-dailies has almost tripled, to nearly 70 million every week.

New technologies pose challenges to the traditional newspaper business-a new learning curve and untested business models-but these technologies also bring new capabilities and opportunities to local news organizations.

Local Newspapers Meet the Competition

Local weekly papers no longer have to forfeit breaking news or sports to local radio stations.

Pre-Internet, reports on the Thursday night local government or school board meetings or the Friday night high school sports games would not see print until the following week. The Internet gives community weekly newspapers the ability to compete head to head with daily newspapers, radio, and television for breaking news and sports.

But even the Web is becoming old news. My local paper now sends me news alerts and sports updates and scores as they happen, throughout the game, via text messages on my cell phone. When the local coach resigned unexpectedly, I was among the first to know, and my thirst for details pushed me toward my computer to access the paper's Web site (I was traveling in another state and a print edition paper was not available). When I returned home, I eagerly anticipated the next edition of the paper for further developments and interviews. Americans don't carry their newspapers or computers everywhere, but we carry our cell phones everywhere. Now newspapers can reach their audiences virtually anytime, anywhere.

Newspapers no longer have to cede color, video, and photography to television. Community newspapers can now deliver more visual elements to local stories than regional television stations. The TV station might have a five-second clip of the Friday night game between the two largest high schools, but the community newspaper's Web site can put an unlimited number of color photographs or video clips on its Web site from all the area high schools, junior high schools, and community sports leagues.

Even better, community newspapers have learned that, by posting more pictures to their Web sites, they receive more requests for reprints, thus creating a growing revenue stream. If the paper had previously printed one picture from an event, and Johnny was identified, his parents and relatives might buy a couple of pictures from the paper. But when pictures of Johnny and all his teammates are on the Web site, the opportunity for more family purchases grows exponentially.

Newspapers are delivering a wider reach for advertisers by combining the still-vibrant print distribution of community newspapers with the new and growing audience of those papers' Web sites and text­-messaging alerts. Most newspaper Web sites or electronic editions are now considered profitable, while the print products continue to generate profit margins averaging about 20 percent. That's the top line.

Emerging technologies have an impact on the bottom line, too. The nationally distributed Christian Science Monitor print edition costs about twice that of its electronic edition. The common assumption was that the more print editions sold, the more revenue the company would generate and the more profit it would realize. More sales revenue would result in more profit.

WRONG. The print product generated more revenue but the print product cost much, much more to produce and distribute. The profit from each print edition sold was only about half that of producing and distributing a single electronic copy. Without the need for more newsprint, more ink, and expensive distribution channels, the electronic edition could sell for less yet earn more profit.

Newspapers are learning that electronic distribution is a viable alternative to traditional print editions, especially for distribution outside the core market area. Papers sent to vacationing readers, retirees who've moved away, or those who have moved to a new region but want to keep up on news of family and friends back home often arrive weeks late and damaged.

Digital editions are delivered the same day, no rips, and no tears. Births and deaths and news of a local sports hero are available to friends, family, vacationers, and retirees near and far ... in time to send a note of congratulations or condolence.

All in all, new technologies help news companies improve customer service and control costs. For decades to come, millions of Americans will value the inexpensive price, availability (no need to buy a computer) and portability (no need for a power cord or batteries) of a printed newspaper. But there will also be those who value urgent alerts and updates (cell phones) and more depth and context (Internet) than a printed

newspaper can deliver.

If a reader is jogging, he or she can't read a print paper but can listen to a news podcast (a newscast recorded to an iPod). If riding a train or bus with no power outlet, a reader will value a print edition (or a good battery for the laptop). If a reader is outside a major metropolitan area, he or she may not have wireless access for a laptop or a strong signal for a cell phone. Newspapers have to be where the news consumers are, and delivered on a device they can use wherever they are, whatever they're doing.

For the near term, those devices include paper, computers, cell phones, and iPods. Tomorrow can and most assuredly will introduce even more ways to share information. Newspapers that capture that vitality and deliver the news when, where, and how the audience is equipped to receive it will enjoy a long and prosperous future.

The Ties That Bind a Community Together

A current theme in the media is an exploration of how to engage citizens in civic activity. Newspapers are experimenting with expanded online letters to the editors, local and personal blogs, online forums, and various forms of citizen-originated content.

Some argue that community newspapers have never lost touch with their communities, that the emphasis on new technologies is misplaced. Readers in small towns have always had access to editors, reporters, and even the publisher. They chat while in line at the supermarket, at service dub meetings, at church functions, and in the barbershop or salon. The distance between reader and newspaper is smaller than in large cities or metropolitan areas.

A perhaps unforeseen benefit of the new technology to community newspapers is the expansion of the old-fashioned network of correspondents. Small newspapers have always been challenged with small staffs and too few reporters or photographers to be everywhere at once, especially when the school board, city government, local sporting event, and church social all occur on the same evening.

Community newspapers have long relied on part-time or occasional volunteers to contribute reports from meetings or events that staff could not get to, or to contribute columns on local topics of interest. Wireless laptops and digital cameras have made it easy for virtually the entire community to become reporters and photographers for their local newspaper.

This has strengthened not only the connection between the community and its newspaper, but connections within the community as well.

Many American newspapers are producing issues that are filled with content submitted by local residents. In Columbia, Missouri, My Missourian.com [http: llwww.MyMissourian.com] is a citizen-produced collection of stories, columns, commentary and photos published online under the umbrella of the local newspaper and.

(traditional) newspaper Web site. It doesn't replace the newspaper or the newspaper's Web site-it complements it. It is news and information that doesn't necessarily fit the space requirements of the print newspaper nor the hard news orientation of the paper's Web site.

It is full of pictures of newborns and college graduates posted by proud parents and grandparents, community social events, and even the largest vegetables grown

locally and favorite pets. There are personal stories, remembrances, reports from meetings and events that reporters could not attend, notes on church and school committees that often do not get covered in a newspaper, local recipes, and columns, commentary, and letters to the editor.

The best of these are assembled in the weekly print publication-news of, about, and by your neighbor. Technology is a neat thing, and early adopters drive key portions of economic growth. But sometimes it's just

another tool to help people and communities do what they've always done: connect with each other.

(The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or polities of the US. government.) Text courtesy: GLOBAL ISSUES / MARCH 2006 eJournal, American Center in Nepal-ed.

The Long Farewell To Oil

- Fritz Vorholz, Germany

Petroleum is still the most important raw material used in the production of electricity, heat and fuel. But it is a finite resource. That is compelling us to consider alternatives. Biodiesel or fuel cells - which fuel and which technology can replace oil? And above all, when?

When Rene Gunther's car is running low on fuel, he doesn't drive to the nearest filling station. The taxi driver from Altlandsberg near Berlin goes to a local snack bar. He collects used fry­ing fat in a large container, takes it home, filters the brown concoction and then pours it into the tank of his Mercedes C220 Diesel - straight. Collecting the old oil takes some effort, but it means he can drive his car rather cheaply - for practical­ly nothing.

Is used cooking oil a fuel alternative? Even on the basis of the most generous calcula­tions, the republic's entire supply of old cooking oil would not suffice to replace 1% of the diesel fuel used in Germany. The total was 32 bil­lion liters in 2004 alone. Nev­ertheless, the recyclers are tapping the pulse of the age. After all, not only car drivers are beginning to wonder what will actually happen when the crude oil - and therefore diesel and petrol - finally runs out.

Although the oil price has again fallen slightly since its all-time high of 70 dollars a barrel at the end of August 2005, oil remains more than twice as expensive as it was only two years ago. And a price recovery is nowhere in sight. "The years of perma­nently cheap oil are over," warn all the experts. At the same time, a growing num­ber of geologists believe that worldwide oil extractions will soon "inexorably fall", as the Englishman Colin Campbell forecasts. Campbell worked for the oil industry for a long time before he founded a global organization to re­search the remaining oil re­serves.

Difficult times are on the way. To make matters worse, the burning of fossil fuels is al­so one of the main causes of global warming - and is therefore responsible not on­ly for hurricanes, but also for rising sea levels and for droughts in southeast Europe and elsewhere.

Experts are already cele­brating "green gold", fuel from the fields that can be grown over and over again. Or they are putting their faith in hydrogen, an energy source that is theoretically available in ample quantities and is also non-polluting. However, this is still all very much in the future. More ef­ficient energy use is the first step, especially for car dri­vers, say the analysts at Deutsche Bank and the ex­perts of the Umwelt-Sachver­standigenrat, a specialist en­vironmental commission.

This scenario will indeed hit no other group as hard as the millions of vehicle users. Al­most half of the 114 million tonnes of petroleum products that were processed in Ger­man refineries last year flowed into vehicle fuel tanks. The next largest item - heat­ing oil - provides heat in roughly one third of all Ger­man homes. However, where­as it has long been possible to build houses that can be kept comfortably warm without any heating, road traffic - 55 million cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles - would come to standstill without petrol and diesel.

So far, only 35,000 motor vehicles are powered by nat­ural gas - and bio-fuel does not meet more than 2% of the demand for conventional petrol and diesel. Neverthe­less, the nearer the end of the oil era draws, the more avidly car drivers are clutching at al­ternatives. Workshops that adapt vehicles to run on veg­etable oil are doing a magni­ficent trade; Kai Lorenz of Aachen-based conversion firm Unicar is registering some 50 enquiries a day alone. The cost of the engine modifications is more than 2,000 euros.

Irrespective of whether it is rapeseed oil, wheat or sug­ar beet, the creativity of fuel producers around the world is boundless. Canadian biotech­nology firm Iogen is experi­menting with straw. Specially cultivated enzymes transform the straw into a petrol substitute . The Shell oil group has already acquired a stake in lo­gen. Diesel fuel is being pro­duced from old yoghurt pots; the South Korean company EOS System is currently look­ing for partners to produce the fuel substitute in Ger­many.

How about giving up oil? Nothing would seem impossi­ble. In fact, an expert com­mission set up by the German federal government has as­certained that there are "roughly 270 fuel production options". According to the wishes of the EU, just under 6% of the fuel sold across Eu­rope is already to be grown on farmland by the year 2010. Although Germany already leads the world when it comes to biodiesel, there are limits to its development. According to the Federal Finance Min­istry, no more than 3.7% of Germany's fuel needs could be met by domestic rapeseed production.

Certainly, it is possible to produce bioethanol - in lay­man's terms, alcohol - from sugar beet or potatoes, and so-called Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) will guzzle this high-­proof spirit in undiluted form. However, the costs of produc­ing ethanol are still so high that production would be uneconomic. Even the impor­tation of cheap ethanol made from Brazilian sugar cane would not enable this al­ternative to oil to achieve a break­through.

Accordingly, great hopes are currently being placed on the second generation of re­newable fuel, BTL (biomass to liquid). It is not made merely from the seeds, but from en­tire plants. Initially, they are gasified - everything from roots to leaves - and then syn­thesized into a liquid fuel, a complicated process. Yet the energy yield is great and the fuel produced meets the high­est standards.

Hopes for SunFuel

Saxon company Choren in­dustries is already conducting production trials of a fuel with the brand name SunDiesel. Mercedes and Volkswagen have successful tested it. Be­cause the chemical composi­tion of this synthetic fuel can be precisely adapted to the re­quirements of the propulsion system of the future, a cross between the diesel and petrol engine, engineers are already enthusing about the "design­er fuel". What is more, it pro­duces almost no more carbon dioxide than the plants originally absorbed from the earth's atmosphere before they were pro­cessed into fuel. Oil com­panies have also discov­ered SunFuel. Shell has bought a stake in Choren. Competitors, including Total and BP, have such a strong in­terest that they now want to investigate BTL technology jointly with the German En­ergy Agency (Dena) and plant engineering firms and car manufacturers. Their find­ings will become available in the middle of 2006. In terms of price, BTL fuel will "offer an attractive alternative", promises Dena chief execu­tive Stephan Kohler. Its po­tential lies in the region of "20-25% of total fuel needs".

As a result of forecasts of this kind, others also hope to be able to supply the motor­ing community in the future - Werner Miiller, for example. In the face of dwindling oil and gas reserves, the former economics minister and cur­rent chairman of RAG, the Es­sen-based energy group that also owns coal producer Deutsche Steinkohle AG, at­taches "growing importance" to coal liquefaction.

Transforming coal into oil has not presented any prob­lems for engineers and tech­nologists for almost 100 years. In 1913, the German scientist Fritz Bergius discovered a process for which he later re­ceived the Nobel Prize. Some ten years later, a second tech­nique was developed at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research in Mulheim an der Ruhr. Today, the process is again considered competi­tive. Although German coal is still too expensive for the process, in China, for exam­ple, the first modern coal li­quefaction plant is already planned to begin operating in 2007.

Environmental and ener­gy experts are putting a damper on the hopes for coal-­based fuel, primarily because of the significant environ­mental burdens. However, they also admit that no other oil substitute has a real chance in the short term - ex­cept, perhaps, for natural gas. Although natural gas-pow­ered automobiles are a little more expensive than diesel or petrol vehicles, consumers benefit from lower running costs because natural gas has been exempted from fuel tax­ation until the year 2020 in Germany. "Compared with premium petrol, you can dri­ve for half the cost," says Chris­tian Jacobs, spokesperson of Tragerkreis Erdgasfahrzeuge, an organization set up by nat­ural gas suppliers and carmakers to promote natural gas vehicles.

The natural gas reserves stored in the earth's crust will last a little longer than global oil reserves. Furthermore, natural gas does less harm to the environment than con­ventional fuels when burned. Its molecules contain fewer carbon and more hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen is consid­ered the ultimate clean ener­gy source - and natural gas is thus seen as a bridge to the hy­drogen era. Hydrogen does indeed burn in a completely residue-free way and is also available throughout the uni­verse in almost unlimited quantities - namely, in water. "An antidote to fuel price crises is in sight" was thus the message of the first world hy­drogen conference in Munich five years ago.

So far, however, the dawn of an era of clean and plenti­ful hydrogen has remained just a splendid idea. A hydro­gen car has never been pre­sented at a car show and there are very few public hydrogen filling stations. "Energy needs time, decades rather than years," says Carl-Jochen Win­ter, calling for patience. Win­ter, professor emeritus of en­ergy and engineering, is con­sidered Germany's "high priest of hydrogen". Nonethe­less, Winter and the experts in this field are convinced that vehicles will run on hy­drogen in the future. This ex­plosive gas can either power cars with modified combustion en­gines, the strategy on which BMW is relying, or serve as an energy source for electric vehi­cles, the idea that most other car manufacturers prefer. Fuel cells are to convert hy­drogen into electricity for that purpose. Mercedes-Benz is al­ready testing 27 fuel-cell bus­es on regular routes in seven European cities and hopes this will provide valuable in­formation for the future of motoring. However, hydro­gen has to be produced first. And enormous amounts of electricity are required to sep­arate hydrogen molecules from water. As a result, ex­perts anticipate that hydro­gen will only have a 2%-at best, 5%-share of the fuel market by 2020. Because the alternatives will either be technologically underdevel­oped, too expensive or too scarce, vehicles will have to continue using familiar sub­stances, fuels refined from oil, for some time to come.

Perhaps, however, they will consume much less of it. After all, conventional en­gines still have enormous po­tential for efficiency improve­ments. These can be realized, for example, by reducing en­gine size - a process referred to in modern German as "downsizing" - or enhance­ments in gear design. Accord­ing to a recently presented re­port by a group of environ­mental experts, diesel engines can be made almost a third more fuel-efficient without much effort. The experts believe that vehicles with petrol engines could even achieve energy savings of 38%.

Text courtesy: DEUTSCHLAND Magazine, April/May issue, 2006. Embassy of Germany in Nepal-ed.

Insurgency resurrects: Human Rights Violation in CH: Myth & Reality

-Mohammad Zainul Abedin, Researcher/Journalist, Bangladesh

Insurgency, once starts, seldom ends peacefully. It ends, at times, if any expansionist bully like India does not fuel it. Experiences of insurgencies of other countries, say whenever, a peace deal is signed with any rebel group, one or more factions of it (the group) or any other new rebel group continue insurgency opposing the treaty or deal. We can cite the example of northeast, situated just on the doorstep of CHT. Though India signed dozens of peace deal with a number of insurgent groups that operated in Northeast. If any peace deal could end insurgency, it would have been died down in the sixties, but it violently persists till date, though the insurgents of Northeast do not get external support from their foreign mentors, as India provides to the miscreants of CHT. The Indian government never discloses the exact figure of the insurgent outfits that operate in Northeast. On the eve of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's maiden visit to the region that started on November 20, 2004, AFP news agency, in a dispatch from Guwahati Informed, " Around 30 outfits are operating in the Northeast, seeking secession, greater autonomy or independence." (The Daily Star: Dhaka: November 20, 2004). The Annul Report of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs of India for the year 2004, listed 18 groups of which 13 were mentioned as `major.' On the other hand, an Indian analysis body, `South Asian Intelligence Review (SAIR) of South Asia Terrorist Portal' listed some 115 insurgent groups in the region. Whenever one group becomes inactive due to the signing of treaty, three groups emerge within days, with more frequency of violence. After Indian groups signed peace treaty with the Tirpura insurgent group TNV, eight new insurgent groups cropped up in opposition to the peace deal. Same thing happened in Manipur, Nagaland and other states of Northeast India.

Same thing happened in CHT. The peace treaty that went beyond the independence, sovereignty and constitution of the country and the birthrights of its people failed to please the CHT people, as the hundreds of comrades of Shantu Larma and cadres of Shanti Bahini rejected the peace deal instantly. The chanted slogan against the treaty, waved black flag at the Khagrachhari stadium, the venue of the so-called surrendering the arms of the defunct Shanti Bahini. Within days, another new outfit named UPDF emerged rejecting the treaty. On the other hand, a good number of former leaders of CITY stayed back in India and they renewed their militancy in CHT. None of the training centres of Shanti Bahini was closed down, rather it is alleged new recruits were sent to those training centres and other renowned cantonments of India.

JSS and UPDF issue more or less identical statements against the role of the army (Jugantor, September 13, 2003). To keep their extortion and other atrocities intact, after the peace accord, the followers of PCJSS that formed UPDF to continue their demand for CHT's autonomy. According to newspaper reports, there is a move to create a unity between JSS and UPDF in order to strengthen their struggle for the tribal population (Amar Desh editorial, April 24, 2005). It is also heard that Shantu Larma's son-in-law, Probir Talukdar, along with some other tribal leaders, presently stay abroad from where they work to narrow down their differences between JSS and UPDF in order to build a vigorous armed struggle. (Zahidul) Karim Kochi, "Move to create unrest in CHT again", Dinkal, June 18, 2005). And UPDF also extended support to the PCJSS movement and carrying out the movement jointly (Ittefaq, November 18, 2003). It is heard that Chakma Raja Debashish Roy is also working for a unity between the two groups. In the near future this secret understanding between JSS and UPDF will surely be revealed to the people. The discussion above gives ample justification for deploying the army in the area due to its geo-strategic importance and fragile state of security in the region.