From the web (updates possible later today):
- Update 1: Digital obliterators: How the media sanitizes our news. A disturbing post from Dennis Dunleavy about how TV networks “cleaned up” images of the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s slaying and how that robs the images of the power to reflect reality and, possibly, lead to change.
- Update 2: Outlook for local online advertising in ‘08. TV-related, but contains this interesting nugget, which likely pertains to newspapers as well: “…small and mid-sized businesses are probably ‘four years away’ from investing in local display ads.”
- Update 3: Looking back on 2007. Mellisa Worden’s piece is a good read, capped off with a bonus: a JibJab look back at 2007 that made me laugh out loud.
- The Best Links 2007. Jason Kottke is screwing up all my plans for January, as he does every year, because I’ll be glued to the laptop following all the weird and wonderful links he’s collected.
- 2008 is the year of ‘the year of…’ Jay Small has some better ideas for more interesting stories than the spate of year-end reviews, year-starting projections and smug declarations about what this will be the year of.
- Looking for ways to tame poisonous words on Web. The ombudsman for the Miami Herald pokes a hornet’s nest as he looks into how his newspaper (and others) should be dealing with readers’ comments. Via Martin Stabe.
- $23B zapped in news stock value. Alan Mutter continues his valuable watch on the business of newspapering with details about the gloomy numbers. Includes this: “With neither improved business prospects nor white knights likely to be on the horizon, you can’t blame newspaper executives for cringing as they turn a new page on the calendar. Unless they come up with a lot of creative and profitable ideas in a hurry, many of them may not be around to ring in 2009.”
