…it was an accident. There was a set of forces that made that possible. And they weren’t deep truths — the commercial success of newspapers and their linking of that to accountability journalism wasn’t a deep truth about reality. Best Buy was not willing to support the Baghdad bureau because Best Buy cared about news from Baghdad. They just didn’t have any other good choices.

"Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. "

"Even an annual news site fee of about £15 (the kind of price a fifth of of those who favoured annual subscriptions said they would pay) is about 17 times less than a reader of a printed quality newspaper would pay out over the same year."

It’s a social process, people see what leaders in the community and their peers are giving and say they want to be a part of that,” Barnett says. “People start small and work their way up. Not every body will move up the ladder, not everybody who moves up will go to the top, but the end game as a not-for-profit is to make this a part of people’s lives. When there’s a socialization to it, that’s when you start getting the reinforcing numbers at the lower end.”

"There’s more foundation money available for journalism startups than ever before, Donohue told me in an email. But he added: “We’ve learned that this isn’t money you should rely on for your long-term. It’s startup money to get you going. You’ve got to be absolutely obsessed with finding as many revenue streams as possible to sustain and diversify you for the future.” "

I" have bad news on two fronts: The Judiciary Committee didn’t vote on the shield law, but it did adopt an amendment that would exclude amateur journalists from protection."

"News International's service now offers customers the choice of one of eight weekly or daily publications from within and outside the company's stable."

"You took the leap and installed WordPress to host your own blog because you want complete control over how it looks and works. Now, it's time to power it up, lock it down, and make your blog completely yours."

"The section will feature highlights from categories called Today’s Top Stories, Our Latest Post, Who Just Blogged, What We’re Listening To, Today’s Hot Videos, Who Should I Befriend and Apps We’re Playing With."

"The study will test a range of advertising formats, including pre- and post-roll, companion ads, in-stream overlays and branded video player skins and may also extend to include interactivity."

"Brands In Public provides an online dashboard that pulls together the latest news and conversation about a brand from sources such as Google Blogsearch, Google News, Yahoo! News, Twitter, BackType, Google Search Trends and Quantcast."

"Mercedes-Benz is now allocating 50% of its UK marketing budget to digital media, according to its VP for brand communications, Anders Sundt Jensen.

So much city thinking seems mad keen for a return to city states; autonomous islands, connected to each other through finance and fibre but not to land that surrounds them. It's a little bit collapsist; let's wrap the city around us while we still can. But maybe we could think about network technologies as a way to reintegrate rural and urban rather than accelerate the dominance of one over the other.

"When the rebound comes, what will drive advertising growth, and which of these media will rebound to their prior-year levels? That depends the size of ad budgets relative to retail sales, and how media buyers choose to allocate the dollars. Neither of these factors is likely to favor newspapers."

"I've been thinking a lot lately about my changing work practices, in terms of the tools I use to improve the way I work or just offer different, more interesting ways of getting things done. Here's a quick run-through of stuff I've tried, tested, stuck with, abandoned or am just doing differently."

"A group of volunteers is building a rival version of Birmingham City Council’s website which they believe improves on the £2.8 million official site pilloried by the internet community on its launch earlier this month."

"The following list of citizen journalism websites illustrates some of the efforts underway to develop new forms of inclusive, participatory journalism"

"The Wrexham Chronicle and the Mid-Cheshire Chronicle, both freesheets, and the paid-for Whitchurch Herald will all cease printing next week. Trinity Mirror expects that eight editorial and three commercial jobs will be lost as a result of the closures."

"Still, 5% is 5% – thats a similar number to what seems to emerging as a rule of thumb for Freemium use, so that probably points to the answer – offer extra value and you will get a 5% freemium user base. Much cheaper than trying to Bunker-Hunt the news market and buy them all."

"Out into the ‘useless’ pile goes status updates on z-listers cellulite, footballers’ sexual preferences and stories about what people wear on the school run.
It’s looking good so far as a test to avoid being the new bankers."

"Dow Jones plans to close the its Hong Kong-based monthly Far Eastern Economic Review in December, after more than 60 years of publication.
The magazine's six remaining staff will be redeployed within Dow Jones. The Wall Street Journal publisher said it wanted to "focus on its core publications to better serve readers and advertisers in key markets".

"I recently convened an online meeting using CoverItLive, a live-blogging tool. I invited members of our community to join me for a discussion about a specific topic. There would be no experts on hand — just me and the people who logged on."

"Journalism.co.uk wonders how Telegraph.co.uk will monitor and police misuse of the videos – if abuse was extensive. Or how they decide who is commercial and who is not? If, as the Syndication people tell us, ‘on this occasion Telegraph.co.uk are not offering this video for web syndication’ why bother supplying it at all? Isn’t that just asking for trouble?"