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The news media is taking heat for reporting on politicians who lead or want to lead the country. The president doesn’t like it. John McCain, who ought to be grateful for the vetting, doesn’t like it. Bill O’Reilly doesn’t care for it. But Sarah Palin shows she can take it.
The GOP has found its issue [...]

Steering into the iceberg, the Troubled Tribune company rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic. The redesign of Trib’s Baltimore Sun and prototypes of the new Chicago Tribune are distress calls. This is what we get from the new captains, former shlock-radio execs: talk-radio on newsprint, passed off as innovation. The ghosts of Mencken and [...]

Last night was “a night for history.” USAToday said so this morning.
I guess the Nation’s Newspaper thought I missed it, marginalized as it was. The editors probably thought I was too busy switching between the convenient coverage by the networks (musn’t pre-empt America’s Got Talent). Or shouting at the mind-numbing graphics and prolific pundits [...]

What’s the purpose of journalism, media, art - or communication of any sort? Your goal may be to build a business, or to prevent one from crumbling. Both are tough and worthy goals. But are they a purpose?
Here’s a purpose: help an anorexic woman tell her friends about her disease; or raise $500,000 for a [...]

Much of the world will form opinions about China from the legions of mainstream broadcasters and journalists descending on Beijing for the Olympics. A lot of it is an exercise in first impressions, Western perspective and cultural context.
Thirty years ago I toured China as a young reporter covering the first U.S. trade mission to a [...]

Two related announcements today from a U.S. journalism institute reflect the changing nature of how journalism is produced, distributed and experienced globally - and also the expanding role for non-profits and philanthropy in paying for U.S. journalism.

In an open letter to craigslist, Steve Outing asks its founders and operators to help save the newspaper industry from itself. My response:

Steve,
It takes real chutzpah to ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist to help newspapers salvage their classifieds businesses and thus save democracy, or at least the part of it that newspapers [...]

The Orange County Register confirmed it will outsource copy editing and page layout to an editorial services company based outside New Delhi, India. So much for local knowledge and the sense of place that only local publishers can deliver.

Jay Rosen has posted his cogent take on “semi-pro journalism” on TechPresident. Provocative metaphor about the news tribe and its survival drama.

At this week’s Personal Democracy Forum, a sponsor distributed a low-tech, but highly effective stress toy to attendees willing to listen to their pitch: a rubber ball on an elastic string that connects to a velcro band. Strap the band to your finger and you can play catch with yourself. Which is what I came [...]

Christy Bradford, who taught me how to be an editor, died late last week at her home in Kansas City. She had been teaching journalism at the University of Kansas since 1999.
I love the description of Christy by her students at KU: “combination den mother/drill sergeant.” It was the same for us in her newsroom, [...]

For the past week I’ve been playing with the private “alpha” of a new social bookmarking tool called socialmedian. You can also give it a try. To register as a tester, use this code on the signup page: wemedia. (This code is available for 100 testers).

What would you do to provide a better news service for your community? Or for any community? David Cohn, one of our We Media Fellows at this year’s We Media Miami conference, is trying to ferret out good ideas for one community, San Jose, California, from an obvious source: people who live there.
On April 19 [...]

More than 300 people from 13 countries gathered last week in Miami for our annual deep dive into the emergence of We Media as a defining force for the connected society. We’re already working on several big ideas we heard to take the conversation forward - through new research, the We Media Community, member working [...]

Sponsored by Washington Post - newsweek Interactive
Location: Storer Auditorium at 4:15 pm
Session Chair: Hal Straus, Interactivity and Communities Editor, Washingtonpost.com
Robin Miller, Editor, Slashdot/SourceForge
Slashdot has a multilayered moderation system for ranking comments. “If you ever get into a content rating system, do *not* call it ‘karma’.” Slashdot moderators are selected at random, and these moderators [...]