Reporting from the mountains of Yemen

I sometimes use this blog to celebrate some great pices of journalistic writing and here is an excellent piece of journalism from Time Magazine,Al-Qaeda Wedding: Celebrating in an Unfortunately Named Town by Holly Pickett

The men were firing their Kalashnikovs so close by that I was certain I could hear the bullet casings cascading down onto the roof of the tent. A crowd of women swaddled in black cupped their hands over their veiled mouths to emit a wave of high-pitched ululations — a call of celebration familiar across the Middle East. The 16-year-old bride, draped in a sparkly white gown, henna tattoos running up her arms, sat silent and tearful as she prepared to meet her groom for the first time. I hadn't meant to spend the night in this tiny village in a country everyone is pointing to as the next hub of global terrorism. But it's not every day that you get invited to an Al-Qaeda wedding.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1955577,00.html#ixzz0f8uGZYDh

Bernanke is Time's man of the year

Following hot on the heels of Barack Obama,Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2009.

For those who don't know the name,he runs the US Federal bank and according to the magazine can be counted as one of the saviours of the world

Here is what they say

Professor Bernanke of Princeton was a leading scholar of the Great Depression. He knew how the passive Fed of the 1930s helped create the calamity — through its stubborn refusal to expand the money supply and its tragic lack of imagination and experimentation. Chairman Bernanke of Washington was determined not to be the Fed chairman who presided over Depression 2.0. So when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed's balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn't just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.

More cuts on the way at Time Inc

Time Inc looks to be carrying out more job cuts in the coming months.

It follows last year's restructuring which saw 6 per cent of the staff leaving(around 600 people.)

According to the FT

The cost cutting comes as Time Inc’ key business title, Fortune magazine, said it plans to cut its annual frequency by a quarter and will publish 18-times a year beginning in 2010, confirming a Wall Street Journal report. A Fortune spokesman said the business planned to invest more heavily in the reduced number of issues, with better paper quality.

Making people smarter whilst saving them time-the online concept

Transfering content from a magazine to online is not always as easy as one might think.

This fascinating interview with Josh Tyrangiel, Managing Editor of TIME.com, explains some of the pitfalls.

He explains that it isnt just a question of replicating the content online and ignoring the unique selling points of the web.

"We need to be cautious about the medium he says adding that "we tell our journalists that their goal is making people smarter whilst saving them time."

Time tries to differentiate itself from other news sites by recognising this time constarint on the reader and getting to the point quickly.

"We prioritise what is important and recognise where and who the reader is."

Time Inc hints at a paywall model

I had missed the comments of Time Inc's Ann S Moore who explained to the Telegraph why the company is ripping up its five year business plan yesterday.

Besides greater integration between the online and the print side she says

We are going to have to figure out a way to have paid content in the future," she says, adding that the business is considering making its most successful websites, such as Time.com and People.com, subscription-based.

Endangering the roots of civilisation

According to the Jerusalem post,the world's media is endangering the roots of our civilisation.

In a article in yesterday's edition it claims that

Leading the charge is Time magazine, the most recent cover of which prominently features a Star of David behind barbed wire, a startling and disturbing image that seems to suggest a parallel between the Gaza war and the Holocaust, presumably not to Israel's credit.

Of course it would be a lot easier if the media were actually allowed in to report on the conflict but the paper has certainly got it in for Time and continues

Time likes to use Holocaust imagery that hints that Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.

Time magazine however doesn't take this lying down and in a piece written today by Andrew Butters Lee argues that

Israel's decision to keep the Western press out of Gaza may also have backfired, because it's given a monopoly of coverage to the more inflammatory reporting of Arab satellite television stations such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya that maintain bureaus in Gaza. And while there are many excellent Palestinian journalists working for the Western press in Gaza, there have been some examples of doctored photographs and suspicious looking videos showing civilian suffering.