Here’s an infographic, via Interactivity Marketing, that sets out ten steps within the grasp of anyone with just a little time and knowledge …

I believe real leadership is as much about who you are as what you do. There are as many ways to be a leader as there are leaders – or should be, if you stop trying to act like a leader, and actually start living like one. It’s human. Personal principles count. A lot.

So it was refreshing to read this list of eight core beliefs of extraordinary bosses. For me, it hits one or two nails firmly between the eyes. For example …

Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by “pulling levers” and “steering the ship.”

Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.

That’s more like it.

Read at source: Management Secrets: Core Beliefs of Great Bosses

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/8-core-beliefs-of-extraordinary-bosses.html

Acting Up. Human Rights Watch spotlights Russian civil activists in this award-winning multimedia feature. Click image to view

When an NGO picks up a Peabody Award for outstanding broadcast journalism, shining against competitors like the BBC and CNN, I sit up and take notice.

I hope you will too. The two award-winning features by Human Rights Watch are multimedia storytelling at its most personal and powerful. The first, Acting Up, profiles a series of Russian civil society activists. The second, Gold’s Costly Dividend, reports on human rights abuses against people living near the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea. It’s great journalism.

I’m all for trying new ways to tell stories. But multimedia can sometimes become an exercise in technical showmanship, using every media … because you can. For me, multimedia storytelling is about using the best tool to do the best job. Often, as in all creative pursuits, it’s what you leave out that really makes the difference.

For me, the intelligent, simple, approach to video, photography and words by Human Rights Watch make the features all the more compelling. And certainly worthy of the accolade. Congratulations, Human Rights Watch.

To view Gold’s Costly Dividend, click the image below …

One response was to American schoolgirl Joan Lancaster in 1956. And his tips on writing are just as relevant to budding journalists today as they were 55 years ago …

Dear Joan,

Thanks for your letter of the 3rd. You describe your Wonderful Night v. well. That is, you describe the place and the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well — but not the thing itself — the setting but not the jewel. And no wonder! Wordsworth often does just the same. His Prelude (you’re bound to read it about 10 years hence. Don’t try it now, or you’ll only spoil it for later reading) is full of moments in which everything except the thing itself is described. If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across.

About amn’t I, aren’t I and am I not, of course there are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. “Good English” is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another. Amn’t I was good 50 years ago in the North of Ireland where I was brought up, but bad in Southern England. Aren’t I would have been hideously bad in Ireland but very good in England. And of course I just don’t know which (if either) is good in modern Florida. Don’t take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic. It is good to say “more than one passenger was hurt,” although more than one equals at least two and therefore logically the verb ought to be plural were not singular was!

What really matters is:–

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Thanks for the photos. You and Aslan both look v. well. I hope you’ll like your new home.

With love
yours
C.S. Lewis

Source: Letters to Children, by C.S Lewis [Amazon link]

Just goes to prove that finding a media niche in the 21st Century is not all about technology. As Syed says: “Even if I switch to computers, then what is the difference between me and other newspapers.”

It’s a passion shared by his six staff, who pen every word, every day. Because no-one has ever quit at The Musalman.

What a remarkable story …

Eli Boardman ... the Colorado media entrepreneur out to make a community difference

I don’t know him, but meet my hero … Eli Boardman.

He’s 11, started his own weekly newspaper when he was six, and has just published the 200th (yes, 200th) issue of the Boardman Camera. He started it when he was six, and is the editor, reporter, designer, circulation manager and ad salesman … you read it right, the paper has ads.

And get this …

“Eli delivers about 65 copies by foot every Saturday, puts eight copies in the mail and delivers another 10 copies via car. Another 140 or so people receive the Boardman Camera via email, including readers as far away as Italy, Israel and Australia,” says reporter Laura Snyder.

Hopefully, those deliveries by car are with dad behind the wheel.

We’ll gloss over the competitive issues that there is already another ‘Camera’ title in the local market. But the Boulder Daily Camera, who bring us this remarkable story, clearly think of Eli as a collaborator, rather than competitor.

That could, of course, change. Eli has time on his side.

Full story at source: 11-year-old publishes 200th issue of Boulder community newspaper

Two years ago I was making the use of Firefox as near compulsory as I could get away with in my workshops and putting up posters saying “We don’t like Internet Explorer, do we? No we don’t!” Journalists weren’t giving up the Microsoft habit willingly.

Now over half my workshop participants turn up using Firefox or Chrome. I’m a huge fan of Firefox and what it stands for, but Chrome has come on by leaps and bounds and, extensions aside, has raised the bar for speed and stability. It’s no longer a matter of which browser is best – rather it comes down to personal preference, organisation and the use of extensions.

If you are a Firefox or Google power user, scan or skip this first post on browser basics and go to Firefox v Chrome. Part 2: Extensions and add-ons compared.

Start with a clean sheet

What’s the first thing you see when you launch your browser? If you like to see iGoogle or your favourite news reader that’s fine. I like to minimise distractions, with a blank page opening on launch and in new tabs.

Firefox opens blank tabs as a default and choosing a blank page at start-up is as simple as clicking the button in Firefox > Preferences > General. Chrome is not quite so helpful. To set a blank launch page, go to Chrome (or the wrench icon) > Preferences > Basics, click the ‘Open the following pages’ option next to ‘On Start-up’ and type about:blank.

Chrome opens new tabs by default with a choice of icons for recently-visited page or apps. Click the wrench icon then Tools > Extensions, and search for the Empty New Tab Page extension. Clicking the blue Add to Chrome button will install and activate the extension (no need to restart the browser, as with some Firefox add-ons – a win for Chrome).

Tidy toolbars

Using your browser’s toolbars efficiently will save you hours of clicking and searching.

Firefox has a Navigation toolbar (with the address box) and a Bookmarks toolbar below it. Toolbars can be hidden by going to View > Toolbars.

Firefox Toolbars

The Navigation toolbar is the obvious place for items included with Firefox, such as the Home and Refresh buttons (neither of which I use. To refresh just, click cmd/ctrl + R), plus installed extensions. A benefit of Firefox over Chrome is the ease with which toolbars can be customised, by going to View > Toolbars > Customize and simply dragging buttons into position on and between toolbars.

Chrome had the great idea of doing away with a separate search window, incorporating it in the ‘omnibox’. Well, you can use Firefox’s address window in the same way, and delete the search box using the drag-and-drop customisation method above. But why lose the search bar when it has a choice of search engines?

The Firefox bookmarks toolbar is ideal for storing links to your most-used online tools, and works well if  organised into folders and subfolders. To manage bookmarks, go to Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks. Tip: A quick way to add a website to your Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox is simply to drag the favicon (the small icon to the left of the URL) down to the toolbar.

The Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar, with folders and sub-folders

You’ll notice that only words show on my Bookmarks toolbar – no icons. To hide icons in the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar, go to Tools > Add-ons. In the Get Add-ons tab, search for and install the Bookmarks Deiconizer extension.

Firefox has an additional toolbar that doesn’t appear in Chrome – the Add-ons Bar, nestling at the bottom of your browser window. It’s a great place for less-used add-ons that won’t clutter up the top of your browser. Again, it can be hidden by going to View > Toolbars (or clicking the X to the left of  the toolbar)

Firefox Add-ons Toolbar at the bottom of the browser window

Now let’s look at Chrome’s toolbars … compare the Firefox and Chrome browser toolbars below (Click to enlarge).

Firefox

Chrome

Both have 20 tabs open. See how much more cramped the Chrome tabs look? That’s because Firefox allows scrolling of tabs beyond the browser margins – much better. If you regularly have a lot of tabs open in Chrome, you’ll need an extension like Tabs Menu, that adds a neat dropdown of all open tabs from the Chrome toolbar. Note also that the tabs sit on top in Chrome and below in Firefox. Users have a choice in Firefox (View > Toolbars > Tabs on Top) … but not in Chrome.

Tabs Menu helps keeps tabs tidy in Chrome

Both have bookmarks toolbars, but Chrome has folder and globe icons next to the text. Why? Because there isn’t a Bookmarks Deiconizer extension (that I can find) for Chrome.

Both have lots of extensions installed. But because there’s no bottom add-ons bar in Chrome, all the icons sit a lonnnnnng line. In Chrome, you can drag the position of extension icons, but they still sit to the right of the omnibox – Firefox is much more flexible. There are extensions to help tidy up your Chrome toolbar, like AppJump, but the easiest way is to place your least-used extensions to the right of the line, then place your cursor just after the omnibox and drag to the right. Hidden extensions will now appear in a dropdown under the chevron symbol.

Tidy up the Chrome toolbar by hiding lesser-used extensions in a dropdown menu

On the subject of tabs, here’s a tip – no, a plea – to PC users. Please stop minimising browser windows … then clicking the application launcher every time you need the browser. I frequently see people hunting through half a dozen minimised windows, each with several open tabs. Life’s too short. Have one browser window open, and keep on top of your tabs.

A word on security

Both Chrome and Firefox have a private browsing mode – in Chrome, it’s called Incognito. This stops your browser recording information like search history and cookies. Handy if you are using a computer that can be accessed by other people. It’s important to note that websites you visit may still have records of your visit and any files you download will be preserved. To start private browsing in Firefox, go to Tools > Start private Browsing. In Chrome, click the wrench icon and New Incognito Window.

To clear browsing information from Firefox, go to Tools > Clear Recent History. In Chrome, go to Chrome > Clear Browsing Data.

Extensions and add-ons

Thinking of changing from Firefox to Chrome? Will your favourite add-ons work? Read Firefox v Chrome. Part 2: Extensions and add-ons compared.

If you’re already using Firefox and thinking of switching to Chrome (or vice versa), which of your favourite extensions are waiting for you on the other side?

Here’s a list of extensions – designed to help you stay organised online – with versions that work in Firefox and Chrome, and a few alternatives for those that don’t. I’ve focused on tools journalists (and anyone else) might find useful.

The essentials

Evernote

Still the best research and clipping tool for web and mobile, Evernote’s web clipper works well in both Chrome and Firefox to capture pages, stories, URLs and more.

• Firefox: Evernote Web Clipper
• Chrome: Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote Web Clipper for Firefox

LastPass

“The last password you’ll have to remember”, LastPass is the indispensible, free online password manager and form filler that remembers your login information so you don’t have to. Syncs smoothly between Firefox and Chrome.

• Chrome: LastPass
• Firefox: LastPass

Xmarks

Chrome and Firefox both have bookmark syncing. But Xmarks syncs virtually everywhere.

• Firefox: Xmarks
• Chrome: Xmarks

Read it Later

Works a dream on Firefox. Just save pages you want to read later by clicking the chevron in the address bar, then click the toolbar button to open your reading list. In Chrome the third-party Later extension adds a chevron in Chrome’s address bar, so saving is easy. But, unless I’ve missed something, you’ll need to add a bookmarklet from the Read it Later site to open your reading list, or use another extension. The ReadMine extension seems to do the trick.

• Firefox: ReadItLater.
• Chrome: Later (to save pages) and ReadMine (to view reading list)

ReadItLater for Firefox ... much better than Chrome

Google Shortcuts

Both Firefox and Chrome feature lots of toolbar add-ons to access Google services. But why not keep things simple, with your favourite Google services in a single dropdown menu? Firefox’s Google Shortcuts add-on has the option to add dividers and has a neater look than Chrome, in my view. One of the services in Firefox’s list is Reader Subscribe, offering a easy way to subscribe to RSS feeds if you use Google Reader. It’s not there in the Chrome version.

• Firefox: Google Shortcuts
• Chrome: Shortcuts for Google

Google Shortcuts for Firefox

Shareaholic

Shareaholic is great if you want to share across several different Twitter accounts (therefore a boon for teams), or post to Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, WordPress and over 100 other services. I also find Shareaholic invaluable (and neat – everything under one dropdown menu) for sharing page links via Gmail and creating a bit.ly shortlinks.

• Firefox: Shareaholic
• Chrome: Shareaholic (Note: When selecting Facebook in the Chrome version, be sure to click the gear icon and choose ‘old pop-up’ in order to to post to Facebook Groups and Pages)

Choosing services to include in Shareaholic for Chrome

Screenshots and image editing

Even though my favourite simple photo editor Picnik is closing, there’s still lots of choice out there – especially for grabbing screenshots. But to keep things simple …

Pixlr Grabber

Pixlr is the best online image editor going, in my view. If you have used Photoshop, you’ll feel immediately at home with Pixlr, even down to the keyboard shortcut for Levels. But the Grabber extension for Firefox and Chrome makes it even better. You can open images in Pixlr by right clicking on a web image, or capture parts of a screen for downloading or editing.

• Firefox. Pixlr Grabber
• Chrome: Pixlr Grabber

The Pixlr editor

Awesome screenshot

• Firefox: Awesome Screenshot
• Chrome: Awesome Screenshot

Handy utilities

RSS

Firefox comes with a built-in RSS button. When Firefox detects an RSS feed on a page you visit, the button turns from grey to black. Clicking the button will let you subscribe. Chrome, oddly, needs an extension to do the same job. The RSS Subscription extension, by Google, activates an orange RSS icon in the address bar when it finds a feed. As with Firefox, clicking the button lets you subscribe.

• Firefox: Go to View > Toolbars > Customize and drag the grey RSS icon to the navigation toolbar.
• Chrome: RSS Subscription

Firefox RSS button

MeasureIt

A handy little ruler for measuring pixels on a web page. Need to know how big to make that image for your blog? Use MeasureIt.

• Firefox: MeasureIt
• Chrome: MeasureIt

MeasureIt ... it measures things

Web2PDF

Need to save a copy of a web page, with all the links and formatting intact? Right click on the page, and click the Web2PDF convertor.

• Firefox: Web2PDF
• Chrome: Web2PDF

Video download

If you wish to download videos for legal reasons, there’s an excellent add-on for Firefox called Flashgot. Given Chrome is in the same family as youTube, it’s not surprising there isn’t an obvious contender. However, Media File Downloader will download media from sites that do not have Flash-based players. (If using Chrome, you could always try webvideofetcher.com)

• Firefox: Flashgot
• Chrome: Media File Downloader

Google Image search

An easy way to find other places an image has been used, and other sizes.

• Firefox: Search by Image for Google
• Chrome: Search by Image

A Google image search based on the Scribus logo

Table data

If you’ve ever tried to copy and paste a table of data from a browser into a spreadsheet, you’ll know the results are often not pretty. With a simple right click to capture data, Table2Clipboard in Firefox works well (usually). Table Capture for Chrome has a few more bells and whistles, flagging up pages it finds containing data with a red icon in the address bar, and giving an option to save data directly into a Google Spreadsheet. (I find the copy and paste route  more reliable).

• Firefox: Dafizilla Table2Clipboard
• ChromeL Table Capture

Table Capture for Chrome

Extensions for developers and designers

Colorzilla

A Firefox classic now available for Chrome. Identify colours on web pages using the eyedropper tool, automatically analyse all colours, and generate your own colour palettes. Invaluable tool for web design.

• Firefox: Colorzilla
• Chrome: Colorzilla (also try Eyedropper)

Firebug

Another Firefox legend now (with a lighter tool set) ported to Chrome. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. Great for customising a site’s CSS without fear of making a horrible mistake.

• Firefox: Firebug
• Chrome: Firebug Lite

Web Developer

A whole heap of developer tools and information in a very neat format. Includes, by the way, a ruler if you didn’t want to install MeasureIt.

• Firefox: Web Developer
• Chrome: Web Developer

Web Developer for Chrome

Dummy text

Really handy if you are developing a test site or need some Lorem Ipsum text to check typography. In Firefox, the Dummy Lipsum add-on requires only a right click to enter text. In Chrome, YALIG (Yet Another Lorem Ipsum Generator) will generate not just text, but titles, dummy email and web addresses, and dates, with options available via a toolbar button.

• Firefox: Dummy Lipsum. Simple dummy text from the right-click context menu.
• Chrome: Yet Another Lorem Ipsum Generator

Yet Another Lorem Ipsum Generator for Chrome

SEO

SEO for Firefox is one reason I couldn’t desert Firefox. It’s just too good (as are the accompanying SEOBook tools). The SEO Site Tools for Chrome has some excellent information, nicely displayed, though.

• Firefox: SEO for Firefox
• Chrome: SEO Site Tools

FTP

FireFTP is a star among Firefox add-ons. A simple, light, easy FTP client. Chrome, by contrast no FTP client of any note at all. If you are a Chrome user, look to tools like FileZilla (works on Mac and PC)

• Firefox: FireFTP

Conclusion

I’m not ready to say goodbye to Firefox just yet … how about you? Chrome has some real strengths – and a lot comes down to speed, including speed and ease of installing extensions. But there are aspects of the Chrome experience that leave me disappointed.

Scribus

So is it a real alternative to the astronomically-priced InDesign and Quark? It’s a big ask. But Scribus, updated to version 1.4 just a few weeks ago and sporting a choice of clean-looking UIs, does has real strengths and potential, plus a few niggling shortfalls.

I’ve been trying out Scribus as a potential training tool for overseas journalism workshops – something with a faster learning curve than InDesign (and useful life beyond the 30-day trial), stable performance on Macs and PCs and professional output options. The Audacity of page layout, perhaps?

Installing Scribus was easy on my MacBook Pro and the detail of documentation is superb. There’s a very good Scribus Quick Start guide. Like many other new users of Scribus, I was landed with a ‘Ghostscript error’ message on first launch and tracking down the right plugin did take a while.

After that, if you’ve used InDesign or Quark you’re in familiar territory, with options to open one of the pre-installed templates or create a new document from scratch with custom bleed, margin and column settings. Live documents are saved (with flexible auto-save timing) in the Scribus .sla file format.

The Scribus 'New Document' dialogue

As in Quark, you use different frames for different purposes. Hit T, draw a text box, import text. Hit I, draw an image box, import image. Hit L, draw a line. Hit S, draw a shape. Settings for content sit within a multi-tabbed Properties palette. The X,Y,Z tab has position, layer, locking and grouping options. Other palettes allow manipulation of Shape, Group, Text, Image, Line and Colour.

Unlike Adobe tools, you can’t dock, move or hide individual palettes – the menu is set.  And while the heading of an individual tab, for example Text, turns from grey to black when when you click on a text box in the layout, the text palette itself does not dynamically open. I found the need to click on a piece of text, then manually open the Text palette, seriously frustrating after a while.

Image manipulation within Scribus is a mixed bag. It has its own handy set of non-destructive image effects, like brightness, curves and colour, and you can open images from the layout directly into open-source Gimp for further editing (Gimp, unfortunately, being my least-favourite tool for editing images). You can move an image within its frame, but can’t increase or decrease the size of the image without selecting ‘Frame to Scale Size’ in the Image palette, dragging a frame handle, then resizing the frame. What a pain.

Scribus Properties palette, to the left of the document layout

Adding runaround to images and text frames is made easy within the Shape palette, although adding additional space to avoid text sitting too tightly against frames (using the Stroke function or adding an additional Shape frame) isn’t exactly intuitive. Speaking of shapes, the variety of Shape, Line and Arrow options is excellent. Adding colours in RGB or CMYK models, with knockout/overprint options, is top notch, too.

Scribus preferences provide a long list of user shortcuts. Only a few are preset, but all can be customised … actions like ‘show/hide baseline grid’, ‘fit image to frame’ and ‘snap to guides’ are obvious candidates.

Scribus handles the basic business of mapping out a page very well. And that includes planning multi-page documents with master pages. But the real test of a page layout tool, especially for print, is the speed at which text and images can be manipulated, supported by stylesheets, templates and libraries.

Scribus Text palette, showing style and advanced options

All the essentials are there in the Text palette: Font, tracking, kerning, horizontal scale, leading and so on. But search as I might, I couldn’t find the option to set shortcuts for text manipulation, in particular increasing/decreasing text size, kerning and leading. (Have I missed them?) Given the bells and whistles elsewhere in Scribus, this was a disappointment that meant a lot of to and fro between page and Text palette.

There’s good control over H&Js (hyphenation and justification) and the addition of a pop-up font preview window is nice (fonts selected in the Text palette are not previewed). Creating stylesheets to set, for example, body, intro, caption and headline styles, was simple – but in practice a little buggy, as applying a style didn’t always update the font details at the top of the Text palette. Most confusing.

Scribus uses a Scrapbook to store things you’ll need again and again, such as grouped byline and strapline templates, or even whole pages. I like the way new Scrapbook pages can be created, saved and imported. Items can be dragged from the Scrapbook and placed on the layout (good), but you have to send items into the Scrapbook via a right-click menu command, rather than by dragging. I’d like to include the Scrapbook in the Properties panel, but can’t.

The final step in any layout project is output. And here’s where Scribus does a cracking job. The export dialogue within Scribus is excellent, making it easy to add registration marks, colour bars and bleed marks, and export ISO compliant and ICC color-managed PDFs. The preflight check works well, too.

A final gripe … there appears no way to hide guides, margins, bleeds and frames in a single action, giving a quick ‘clean’ view of the layout – each has to be turned off individually, unless I missed a trick.

Conclusion

I want to love Scribus. I really do. And I’m hugely impressed by the effort that has gone into it – especially the professional export options, support for over 24 languages, documentation and preference customisation. This is an open-source project, remember. And the passion clearly shows.

However, the lack of text and image manipulation shortcuts, and constant need to click between palette tabs, dented my enthusiasm, as did a few intermittent display and font glitches. If these issues could be ironed out, I’d be a lot happier.

I’d use Scribus for a brochure, e-book, even a magazine. (Take a look at some Scribus success stories).

In fact, Scribus is a very good (free) layout tool. But does it compare with Quark and InDesign? No. And would I be confident in using it for a deadline-driven newspaper? Regrettably not.

• Here’s an A3 news-style page, put together as a quick test using Scribus and my last few blog posts. Click to enlarge.

[Story update April 5, 2012]

‘Iran trains female ninjas as potential assassins’. Catchy headline, you must admit, especially on a website as reputable as Telegraph.co.uk. The accompanying video shows a roomful of black-suited women doing summersaults over swords and performing impressive splits. See for yourself.

I watched the video. I read the five-paragraph story (two of which are taken up with Iran’s potential to spark a new Cold War over its development of nuclear weapons). And I wondered why on earth The Telegraph had run this bizarre story with more holes in it than a string vest.

Who says these women are being trained as assassins? No-one. The ages of women are said to be between 5 and 56. Can you see any young children in the video? I can’t. There are said to be 3,000 women being trained as “lethal warriors” in Iran. Who says? The women “say they will use their martial arts skills to defend the country if necessary.” Not in this story they don’t.

If The Telegraph was not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, they were not alone.

India Today’s ninja story pushed the Cold War angle further: “As Israel steps up pressure on Iran over fears that the latter has been building nuclear weapons, these lethal kunoichis could be called upon to represent their country if relations turn ugly leading to a war.”

Spot the striking similarity with the Mail Online’s story a full two weeks before: “As Israel steps up pressure on Iran over fears the country is building nuclear weapons, these lethal ninjas could be called upon to represent their country if relations descend into military conflict.”

There are dozens of versions of the ninja story floating around. Several point to a story at The Atlantic on February 3, headlined: ‘Why Thousands of Iranian Women Are Training to Be Ninjas’.

So why are women training to be ninjas? According to The Atlantic, not – as you might by now expect – to prepare for war with Israel, but to assert themselves within a regime notorious for suppressing women’s rights.

Says The Atlantic: “The Iranian regime’s 33-year quest to make Iranian women weak and helpless, to force them into child-like subservience, has failed … and one of the places where their failure becomes clear is in the surprisingly vibrant arena of women’s sports.”

It goes on to highlight the creation of an Iranian women’s rugby league, the Olympic record of the country’s female athletes (in martial arts) and the triumph of a dentist and graphic designer from Iran, who became the first two Muslim women to reach the summit of Everest. The post reports there are 3,500 women in Iran officially registered as training to become ninjas. Happily, it attributes the source … Iran’s Press TV.

That’s Press TV, the 24-hour English language news network owned by the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. So it’s propaganda? Hardly.

Press TV’s report on the rising popularity of ninjutsu is laden with Crouching Tiger cliches and shot with tongue firmly in cheek. The sequences are similar to those used by The Telegraph, but the angle bears no relation. It was uploaded to Press TV’s YouTube channel a few days before The Atlantic story.

In the Press TV package, one trainee ninja explains: “The most important lesson is respect and humility.” Hardly the confession of an assassin. Here’s the video …

The Telegraph story hangs on a single quote by trainer Akbar Faraji who says (in a subtitle): “We have to do everything to protect our homeland,” which seems curiously out of context and doesn’t appear in the Press TV story.

It’s easy to dismiss the ninja women story as just too ludicrous to be taken seriously. But surely that doesn’t excuse such sloppy reporting by The Telegraph, especially at a time when relations with Iran are anything but ludicrous.

Update: Seems I wasn’t the only one to take issue with this story.  The Tehran bureau of Reuters has been suspended because of its headline on the video, branding the female ninjas as terrorists [March 29, 2012].

According to a report by Iran’s Press TV, the female ninjas are suing Reuters over the story, which was run by media around the globe. One woman is quoted as saying: “We are taking legal action because the ladies that train in Ninjutsu first and foremost enjoy it as a sport. It’s about working out and staying fit. Reuters has blatantly lied about us.”

In a quick dig around the internet before writing my post, it appeared that the source of the video and story was Press TV, Iran’s state-owned English-language news channel. This would make sense, given the original women’s sport angle and the way it was shot. If it was in fact a Reuters video, I’m very surprised Press TV didn’t take issue with the assassin line at the time.

So something still doesn’t quite add up to me. Was this a soft Press TV story, given the ‘assassin’ twist and put out by Reuters, or the other way round? Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Some media commentators have been quick to blame Iran for using the ninja story as an excuse to hammer foreign media. That may be true. But the fact is this story, on a theme that should have set newsdesk alarm bells ringing, was put out by Reuters even though it failed the most elementary journalistic scrutiny.

What’s just as worrying is that it was published so widely. Rightly or wrongly, we all rely on wire feeds to be pretty safe, but this doesn’t say much for current copytasting skills or editorial judgement.

• Hat-tip to Andrea Jankelow at Newsy for alerting me to the Reuters suspension. Newsy has a video report on the Reuters ban and ninja story background.