The most Twittery journalists of them all

Profile photos of the 10 most followed journalists on Twitter; do you recognize them all? The one in fifth place (top row, extreme right) isn't disgraced baseball player Manny Ramirez, but a journalist who is using a shiny Red Sox moment as his Twitter profile photo.

Which journalists have the most followers on Twitter? Not surprisingly, they are often the ones with the biggest platforms off Twitter as well. Another way of looking at it: If you've built a big brand on places such as CNN, MSNBC or the New York Times, you can drive up your follower counts easily. (Keep in mind that raw follower counts only tell us part of the story. There are many journalists who have far fewer followers than the big stars, but whose tweets are more likely to be clicked on, retweeted, etc.)

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm on a quest to try and figure out what works - and what doesn't - on social media (see posts that analyzed a successful tweet; discussed new findings about engagement on Facebook; and looked at how a low-ranked tennis player raised her profile via Twitter).

So I asked Greg Galant (@gregory), co-founder of MuckRack, a startup that bills itself as "the destination for journalists on Twitter and social media" to share stats from his service. Think of MuckRack as a sort of LinkedIn for journalists (though it doesn't really compete with that platform and you have to do nothing but connect MuckRack to your Twitter account to get started). What it does is provide the most useful directory of journalists on Twitter and one of the best ways to track journalists - by media outlet, by beat or by country/city/region. It's free for journalists; PR folks and others pay $99 and up a month of it (includes a 30-day full-refund guarantee).

MuckRack's directory currently has more than 10,000 journalists spread over six countries (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand), with the US being the most comprehensive. If you know of journalists not listed on MuckRack (including in other countries), they can add themselves and create a profile and showcase their work. Here's my profile, as a sample. Galant (who also co-founded the Shorty Awards, which I help judge), sent over the following stats, letting CNET News reveal them for the first time (these numbers are as of a few hours ago; they will change in time and as more journalists register themselves on MuckRack, especially after they see this post).

Top 10 most followed journalists (with links to their MuckRack profiles:

1. Anderson Cooper: 3,455,256


2. Piers Morgan: 3,004,433


3. Rachel Maddow: 2,434,423


4. Larry King: 2,319,449


5. Bill Simmons: 1,931,155
   
6. George Stephanopoulos: 1,814,086
   
7. Chris Hardwick: 1,757,790
   
8. David Gregory: 1,584,068
   
9. Dr. Sanjay Gupta: 1,567,922
   
10. David Pogue: 1,454,191

You will note that in the photo collection above, the fifth spot on the top row doesn't show Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons), the rockstar sports columnist and writer, but a highlight moment of his beloved Red Sox. He can get away with that, but the rest of us should use recent, clear, recognizable photos of ourselves (in 2010, I broached the subject of why your profile photo matters).

Top 10 publications with the most journalists on Twitter:

1. Associated Press: 471


2. New York Times: 463


3. Wall Street Journal: 327


4. Bloomberg News: 310


5. Guardian: 293


6. Reuters: 238


7. USA Today: 186


8. CNN: 175


9. LA Times: 174


10. Sky News: 141

Top 10 news organizations with the most people following their journalists (sum of the followers their journalists have):

1. CNN: 12,936,330 total followers


2. New York Times: 10,361,924 total followers


3. ABC News: 8,080,255 total followers


4. NBC News: 4,886,734 total followers


5. Guardian: 4,653,253 total followers


6. ESPN: 4,468,903 total followers


7. MSNBC: 3,927,080 total followers


8. Fox News: 3,248,385 total followers


9. CNBC: 2,699,308 total followers
10. BBC: 2,136,011 total followers

This list doesn't include the main news-org accounts. Galant wrote to say, "We don't track the media org main accounts. When we started, we specifically avoided them since they were mostly regurgitations of RSS feeds. Now that they're more interesting we might add them in future." If you know a sturdy list of the top news-org accounts by follower count, please let me know (@sree or sree at sree.net).

Once you start playing with MuckRack you will see the benefits of connecting with journalists within its interface. Galant, in a SoundCloud interview embedded below, explains many of its features.

But there are a couple of other reasons to spend time on MuckRack. One is that you can find journalists by specific beats, not just broad topics. For example, you can use the advanced search to find several journalists who cover dance, rather than just a broad listing of arts journalists, ditto for fracking, instead of just energy, or online education, instead of just education (some of the links will work only for registered journalists or those who've gotten the pro accounts).

Another useful, but obscure, feature is that the tweets it displays by journalists are only the ones that don't start with "@," reducing the clutter you seen when you visit a Twitter stream of someone who uses a lot of @ replies.

I also like the fact that there's a special trending list for MuckRack's journalists themselves. Considering how Twitter's worldwide, country and city trends are usually overrun with topics that are time-wasters, obscure shenanigans and Justin Bieberalia, MuckRack's list is much more newsy and relevant, though, as you can see in the comparison below, sports dominates on the weekends.

A look at trending topics on Muckrack (left) and Twitter worldwide trends.

One last list from MuckRack. These were terms that trended the most on the site this year.

Biggest Muck Rack trending terms:

1. Romney


2. #Syria


3. China


4. London


5. Santorum


6. #Egypt


7. Olympics


8. Florida


9. Christmas


10. #London2012 frequency 2061

Yes, I, too, am surprised to see "Obama" missing from the list, unless it's because journalists "split their votes" by using "POTUS" or "@BarackObama" too often. Twitter handles don't trend in both MuckRack's algorithms and in Twitter's, says Galant. "It could be that while there was a more constant amount of coverage and mentions of Obama, there where more surges of coverage for Romney and Santorum due to the primary battle," he wrote in an email.

As part of my short audio interviews on SoundCloud with entrepreneurs and other interesting folks, I asked Galant to talk about MuckRack and how journalists and PR executives can make best use of the service. You can listen to his tips (including some on how startups can get more attention) below or at this link:

What do you think of these lists? Post your comments below, please. If there's enough interest, I will publish a follow-up post, looking at the top 50 journalists on Twitter, along with the ones created an account in 2012 and got the most followers and a list of the 100 journalists to first have a Twitter account.

These and other topics will be part of the festivities at the next Social Media Weekend, which I am hosting at Columbia Journalism School, February 15-17, 2013. Last time, 500 people from 12 countries showed up in NYC. Hope to see some of you there.

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

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Obama Still an 'Optimist' on Cliff Deal

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON D.C. – Ten days remain before the mandatory spending cuts and tax increases known as the “fiscal cliff” take effect, but President Obama said he is still a “hopeless optimist” that a federal budget deal can be reached before the year-end deadline that economists agree might plunge the country back into recession.

“Even though Democrats and Republicans are arguing about whether those rates should go up for the wealthiest individuals, all of us – every single one of us -agrees that tax rates shouldn’t go up for the other 98 percent of Americans, which includes 97 percent of small businesses,” he said.

He added that there was “no reason” not to move forward on that aspect, and that it was “within our capacity” to resolve.

The question of whether to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000 remains at an impasse, but is only one element of nuanced legislative wrangling that has left the parties at odds.

For ABC News’ breakdown of the rhetoric versus the reality, click here.

At the White House news conference this evening, the president confirmed he had spoken today to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, although no details of the conversations were disclosed.

The talks came the same day Speaker Boehner admitted “God only knows” the solution to the gridlock, and a day after mounting pressure from within his own Republican Party forced him to pull his alternative proposal from a prospective House vote. That proposal, ”Plan B,” called for extending current tax rates for Americans making up to $1 million a year, a far wealthier threshold than Democrats have advocated.

Boehner acknowledged that even the conservative-leaning “Plan B” did not have the support necessary to pass in the Republican-dominated House, leaving a resolution to the fiscal cliff in doubt.

“In the next few days, I’ve asked leaders of Congress to work towards a package that prevents a tax hike on middle-class Americans, protects unemployment insurance for 2 million Americans, and lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction,” Obama said. ”That’s an achievable goal.  That can get done in 10 days.”

Complicating matters: The halls of Congress are silent tonight. The House of Representatives began its holiday recess Thursday and Senate followed this evening.

Meanwhile, the president has his own vacation to contend with. Tonight, he was embarking for Hawaii and what is typically several weeks of Christmas vacation.

However, during the press conference the president said he would see his congressional colleagues “next week” to continue negotiations, leaving uncertain how long Obama plans to remain in the Aloha State.

The president said he hoped the time off would give leaders “some perspective.”

“Everybody can cool off; everybody can drink some eggnog, have some Christmas cookies, sing some Christmas carols, enjoy the company of loved ones,” he said. “And then I’d ask every member of Congress, while they’re back home, to think about that.  Think about the obligations we have to the people who sent us here.

“This is not simply a contest between parties in terms of who looks good and who doesn’t,” he added later. “There are real-world consequences to what we do here.”

Obama concluded by reiterating that neither side could walk away with “100 percent” of its demands, and that it negotiations couldn’t remain “a contest between parties in terms of who looks good and who doesn’t.”

Boehner’s office reacted quickly to the remarks, continuing recent Republican statements that presidential leadership was at fault for the ongoing gridlock.

“Though the president has failed to offer any solution that passes the test of balance, we remain hopeful he is finally ready to get serious about averting the fiscal cliff,” Boehner said. “The House has already acted to stop all of the looming tax hikes and replace the automatic defense cuts. It is time for the Democratic-run Senate to act, and that is what the speaker told the president tonight.”

The speaker’s office said Boehner “will return to Washington following the holiday, ready to find a solution that can pass both houses of Congress.”

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The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

A FEW days ago, a woman called New Scientist's subscription desk with an unusual question. Was it true that the world would end in a week's time? She was worried about her young relatives: "They don't deserve to die," she told our sympathetic, if nonplussed, representative.

Our usual response to such enquiries is to say there's about as much reason to expect the world to end this week as any other, which is to say: not much ("Countering the new horsemen of the apocalypse", New Scientist, 1 December, p 5). But surprising numbers of people think otherwise. In a recent poll by the US Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), about 2 per cent of people said they expected the world to end before 2012 does; 15 per cent - many of them evangelical Christians - said the end would come in their lifetimes.

Most of us are jokier about prophecies of doom, but still subject to deep-seated anxiety about what the future will bring. The order of things has crumbled in recent years. But we should relish, rather than fear, the challenge of rebuilding it. After all, apocalyptic thinking is also about renewal: those waiting for the world to end usually expect a better one to take its place ("The end is always nigh in the human mind", New Scientist, 4 June 2011, p 30).

There is certainly cause for concern. Struggling western economies eye the fate of Greece uneasily. Democracy's birthplace has plunged abruptly from apparent affluence to penury. Nor are its problems confined to its borders: its economic crisis is turning into a continent-wide public health problem, with long-vanquished "tropical" diseases staging a troubling comeback ("Greek crisis: How to prevent a humanitarian disaster", New Scientist, 26 May, p 6).

There's better news on the global scale - although it still has its befuddling features. The Global Burden of Disease report released last week shows life expectancies to have risen significantly around the world over the past 40 years - but we now die of different causes, from AIDS to traffic accidents. Strikingly, excess weight is now a bigger global health problem than undernutrition (see "Overeating now bigger global problem than lack of food").

And the general increase in living standards is being thrown into doubt by climate change, which is becoming more serious, more quickly, than most feared ("Climate change: It's even worse than we thought", New Scientist, 17 November, p 34). Thankfully, public acceptance of the problem seems also to be on the rise. Some 6 out of 10 people in the PRRI poll think the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of global climate change. That's a bolder link than most scientists would make. But then again, more than a third of those polled took such disasters as evidence of the end of the world.

This is a deeply unhelpful reaction. Our species has certainly made a mess of the atmosphere, and it will take immense efforts to sort it out. But we are capable of them. It's our species that built a huge machine to test our theories of the universe's finest workings. It's also our species that this year winched a giant robot down to the surface of another planet to see what's there. And beyond sating our curiosity, it's our species that's cut the death rate in our under-5s by 60 per cent in 20 years.

So yes, the world is complicated, and the challenges we face are enormous. But we mustn't just throw up our hands in despair: all the ingenuity and determination we can muster will be needed. We have to believe that we can make the world a better place, and act to make it one. We shouldn't view the end of the old world as a threat - but as an opportunity.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Kingfisher shares rise on new licence application

NEW DELHI: Shares in India's grounded Kingfisher Airlines climbed nearly three per cent on Friday on news that the stricken carrier has applied to renew its operating licence.

The move came days after Kingfisher, whose liquor baron owner Vijay Mallya has been desperately seeking investment from foreign carriers, said it aims to resume operations in a "phased manner".

Kingfisher's shares rose to 15.88 rupees in morning trade after regulatory authorities confirmed it had applied Thursday for the licence renewal.

An official said, however, that the application had not included the revival plan that has been demanded by regulators.

"This application needs to be made as their licence is expiring but there can be no (licence) renewal without a revival plan," the official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation told AFP, asking not to be named.

Kingfisher, once India's second-largest airline by market share, could not be immediately reached for comment but it said on Monday it has come up with a full recapitalisation plan.

The firm has not flown since its planes were grounded in October by an employees' strike over unpaid wages, leading the regulator to suspend its operating licence until it comes up with a "viable" revival formula.

The airline, whose current licence expires on December 31, said last week it was in talks with investors including Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways.

But aviation analysts have expressed doubt whether Etihad would be interested in Bangalore-based Kingfisher given its debt load, which is estimated at $2.5 billion by the consultancy firm Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

Kingfisher's shares have climbed from an all-time low of 7.05 rupees in August on investor hopes a stake sale will avert a shutdown but they are still trading at a fraction of their record 2007 peak of 334 rupees.

- AFP/il

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Senate approves Netflix-backed amendment to video privacy law

Ready to share your Netflix viewing on Facebook?

(Credit:
LG)

The U.S. Senate has approved legislation to amend a 1988 law that would make it easier for people to share their video-viewing habits online should the Netflix-backed bill win President Obama's signature.

The Senate approved revisions this evening to the Video Privacy Protection Act to allow video rental companies to obtain consent from customers in order to share information about their viewing preferences on social networks. The 24-year-old law was enacted after a newspaper printed the video rental history of Judge Robert H. Bork during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Bork died yesterday at age 85, a day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved the legislation.

A Netflix representative applauded the Senate's approval and promised to introduce new products should the president sign the bill.

"We are pleased the Senate has moved quickly to modernize the VPPA, giving consumers more freedom to share with friends when they want," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said in a statement. "After the president signs the bill, we will introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013."

Users outside of the United States have the option to link their Netflix accounts with Facebook, allowing them frictionless sharing of their video viewing preferences with other member of their online social network.

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Hollies Get Prickly for a Reason

With shiny evergreen leaves and bright red berries, holly trees are a naturally festive decoration seen throughout the Christmas season.

They're famously sharp. But not all holly leaves are prickly, even on the same tree. And scientists now think they know how the plants are able to make sharper leaves, seemingly at will. (Watch a video about how Christmas trees are made.)

A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society suggests leaf variations on a single tree are the combined result of animals browsing on them and the trees' swift molecular response to that sort of environmental pressure.

Carlos Herrera of the National Research Council of Spain led the study in southeastern Spain. He and his team investigated the European holly tree, Ilex aquifolium. Hollies, like other plants, can make different types of leaves at the same time. This is called heterophylly. Out of the 40 holly trees they studied, 39 trees displayed different kinds of leaves, both prickly and smooth.

Five holly leaves from the same tree.

Photographs by Emmanuel Lattes, Alamy

Some trees looked like they had been browsed upon by wild goats and deer. On those trees, the lower 8 feet (2.5 meters) had more prickly leaves, while higher up the leaves tended to be smooth. Scientists wanted to figure out how the holly trees could make the change in leaf shape so quickly.

All of the leaves on a tree are genetic twins and share exactly the same DNA sequence. By looking in the DNA for traces of a chemical process called methylation, which modifies DNA but doesn't alter the organism's genetic sequence, the team could determine whether leaf variation was a response to environmental or genetic changes. They found a relationship between recent browsing by animals, the growth of prickly leaves, and methylation.

"In holly, what we found is that the DNA of prickly leaves was significantly less methylated than prickless leaves, and from this we inferred that methylation changes are ultimately responsible for leaf shape changes," Herrera said. "The novelty of our study is that we show that these well-known changes in leaf type are associated with differences in DNA methylation patterns, that is, epigenetic changes that do not depend on variation in the sequence of DNA."

"Heterophylly is an obvious feature of a well-known species, and this has been ascribed to browsing. However, until now, no one has been able to come up with a mechanism for how this occurs," said Mike Fay, chief editor of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society and head of genetics at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. "With this new study, we are now one major step forward towards understanding how."

Epigenetic changes take place independently of variation in the genetic DNA sequence. (Read more about epigenetics in National Geographic magazine's "A Thing or Two About Twins.")

"This has clear and important implications for plant conservation," Herrera said. In natural populations that have their genetic variation depleted by habitat loss, the ability to respond quickly, without waiting for slower DNA changes, could help organisms survive accelerated environmental change. The plants' adaptability, he says, is an "optimistic note" amidst so many conservation concerns. (Related: "Wild Holly, Mistletoe, Spread With Warmer Winters.")

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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?

Dec 20, 2012 11:00pm

The defeat of his Plan B — Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down — is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner.  It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.

Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.

Boehner’s Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth – but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it.  Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed – especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.

Plan B is dead.

Now what?

House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act.  Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.

Each side is saying the other must move.

The bottom line:  The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do:  come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.

The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.

SHOWS: This Week

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Fail-safe software could stop flash crashes

HIGH-FREQUENCY trading algorithms are seriously profitable. But they are also a serious problem, leading to mysterious "flash crashes" on the world's financial markets. So would emergency fail-safes of the kind used to prevent medical robots and nuclear reactors going haywire be any help?

Philip Bond, a computer scientist at the University of Bristol, UK, thinks so. At present, suspicious trading at an exchange can be stopped by a catch-all "market halt", but that's often too late: what is needed is a reliable way of sensing when wild stock-price variations suggest a build-up to a crash. At that point a smart circuit breaker could step in, Bond told a London meeting of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation on 11 December.

The idea is to avoid another debacle like the flash crash of 6 May 2010, when $10 trillion was briefly knocked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average after a trading firm's high-frequency algorithm went awry. Prices mostly recovered in a matter of minutes, but the turbulence caused slumps in stock prices around the globe.

High-speed traders have a distinct advantage over traditional investors, according to research by Andrei Kirilenko, chief economist at the US Commodity Trading Futures Commission, and his colleagues. Kirilenko presented the findings on 30 November at the National Bureau of Economic Research's Market Microstructure Meeting. This skewed playing field might increase market instability even more.

Because high-frequency trading algorithms (HFTs) can work at blistering speeds - a trade every 60 microseconds is common - a lot can happen before humans have a chance to intervene. This has left governments scrambling to come up with ways to regulate the practice. The European Parliament is considering legislation that could force traders to increase trading intervals to a "safer" half a second.

But Bond and his colleagues, who examined the risks of high-speed trading for the UK government, say that enforcing a delay is wrong-headed. Making algorithms wait half a second would stop them from reacting to breaking financial news and render them useless.

Instead, they propose using circuit-breaker algorithms that will trip when trading becomes erratic. Such software monitors systems like medical robots and nuclear reactors for potentially dangerous behaviour. "HFT circuit breakers need to be considered as very high reliability software engineered to work under stressed conditions and with multiple backups," he says.

A decision is needed fast. The proportion of high frequency trades has declined in the US in recent years as they have lost some of their initial edge, but they still account for a majority of trades. And the hardware needed to get in the game is becoming more accessible - a server running a high-speed system costs only $270,000, and prices will keep falling.

Any technical backstops will have to distinguish between algorithms gone haywire and simple bad decision-making, warns Fod Barnes, an economist with UK consultants Oxera. "The HFT system is a bit more complex than just engineering," he says. "Why should those who manage to write an algorithm that makes a series of very bad trades be protected from their own folly?"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Park Geun-Hye: South Korea's president-elect with history

SEOUL: Park Geun-Hye's historic election victory that will see her installed as South Korea's first woman president of a still male-dominated nation caps a political career founded in privilege and personal tragedy.

One might assume Park's upbringing to be one of privilege, having lived in the presidential Blue House as a child and served there after her mother's murder as first lady to her later-assassinated father.

The Daegu native was just nine years old when her father, Park Chung-Hee, came to power in 1961 in a military coup that set the stage for 18 years of authoritarian rule.

Wednesday's presidential result was, in some ways, a referendum on the legacy of her father whose name still triggers polarised emotions in many South Koreans.

Admired for dragging the war-torn nation out of poverty, but reviled in some quarters for his repression of dissent, his shadow loomed large over Park's election campaign.

Thus, in an effort at reconciliation, Park publicly acknowledged the excesses of her father's regime and apologised to the families of its victims, a move aimed to shed the historic baggage that has plagued her campaign.

"In the shadows of South Korea's rapid growth, there was pain," she said at a news conference held at the Grand National Party's (GNP's) headquarters in Seoul, September 24 earlier this year.

"I deeply apologise to all those who were personally hurt and family members of victims of government abuse."

And like Korea itself, Park was as much the victim of her father's legacy as the beneficiary.

Park was attending graduate school in France in 1974 when she was called back to Seoul after the First Lady Yook Young-soo was killed by a pro-North Korean gunman aiming for her father.

The then 22-year-old took on the duties of her mother and played a sizeable role as the First Lady of Korea, one of which included persuading the 39th US President Jimmy Carter of the importance of the ongoing presence of US troops in Korea when he visited in 1979.

She left the presidential palace after her father was shot dead by his spy chief in 1979 and after a nine-year hiatus finally began her political career in 1998 as an assemblywoman in her home town for the conservative GNP.

The unmarried 60-year-old with no children -- a fact Park used to gain traction with voters tired of corruption scandals surrounding their first families.

"I have no family to take care of and no children to pass wealth to," she said in a televised address on the last day of campaigning, "You, the people, are my family and your happiness is the reason that I stay in politics."

Park's image of a female politician who promised a strong, maternal style of leadership that would steer the country through the challenges of global economic troubles is at odds with that pushed by her critics, an aloof aristocrat they call the "Ice Queen".

But even dissenters acknowledge her strengths as a campaigner that helped her party secure strong results in local and national polls between 2004 and 2006, emerging victorious in all 40 re-elections and by-elections, earning her another royal moniker as the "Queen of Elections".

And despite her privileged upbringing, Park has demonstrated a tough streak.

In 2006, an attacker at an election event where she was speaking slashed her face with a utility knife, leaving an 11-centimetre wound that needed 60 stitches.

Park had previously ran in 2008 to become the presidential nominee for GNP but eventually lost to the now outgoing president Lee Myung-bak by a narrow margin. Park had won the "party member's bid", but she lost the "national bid" which is a larger percentage of the total presidential bid.

Now Park will face numerous challenges when she begins her five-year term in February, not least dealing with a North Korea.

Even before Park won her party's presidential nomination in August, the state-run Korean Central News Agency hat attacked her candidacy, warning that "a dictator's bloodline cannot change away from its viciousness".

Park has signalled a break from outgoing President Lee Myung-Bak's hard line on Pyongyang, and even held out the possibility of an eventual summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un.

But she will be restricted by conservative forces in her party as well as an international community intent on punishing North Korea for its long-range rocket launch last week.

While Park's election as South Korea's first woman president marks a major breakthrough in a male-dominated country, which ranked 108th out of 135 countries in terms of gender equality by the World Economic Forum -- one place below the United Arab Emirates and just above Kuwait.

However, not everyone sees her victory as paving the way for greater women's rights.

Kim Eun-Ju, executive director of the Centre for Korean Women and Politics, believes Park is a female political leader "only in biological terms".

"For the past 15 years, Park has shown little visible effort to help women in politics or anywhere else as a policymaker," Kim told AFP.

-AFP/CNA/fl

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