Ethics and Publishing

More woes for Wikipedia

We know newspapers are looking for ways to cut costs, but this might not be the best way to do it.

Murdoch's News of the World pays out $1.6 million in out-of-court settlements to silence people whose phones and personal information was hacked by reporters.

Under normal circumstances, the fact that Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, logged over 17,000 free views in a day on upstart "social publisher" Scribd would be the story. The real story, however, lurks in the comments left on the Scribd web site.

The Washington City Paper had the key ingredients for a scandalous stink bomb of a story: Marion Barry, a sexual fling with an ex-aide and a scoop involving embarrassing voice mails.

Okay. I'm sure most of us have seen the City Paper for this week, or will see it after reading this story. I know they are supposed to be an "edgier" publication, but was this really necessary? We can all fill in the blanks and could've read between the lines to know what the headline said without seeing certain words clear as day. I'm not a prude, but that was a bit much. What do you all think?

As more journals shift from being run by university presses and scholarly societies to corporate entities, the goal is better management, better sales (since packages of journals are frequently sold together) and economies of scale. The fear of some involved in journal publishing is that corporate interests will limit the role of scholars in making key decisions.