Monday squibs

A few thing from the reader:

• McClatchy Cutting 10 Percent Of Workforce As May Revenue Falls 15 Percent. Is the American newspaper industry near the bottom? Is there a bottom?
• John O’Boyle explores the world of dragon boat racing. A very nice piece of newspaper video that breaks all the “rules” some are trying to impose: it’s longer than two minutes, features narration and probably took longer than an hour to shoot and edit. Also: Mike De Sisti has a collection of nice news and feature videos at JS Online.
• Union tremor shakes Bay Area print media. Some newspaper employees in the Bay area have unionized in an attempt to rebalance the relationship.
• Who at IB posted Russert’s death on Wikipedia? Interesting, this. Wikipedia was apparently away out in front on the death of Tim Russert and the indications are the news may have come from inside NBC.
• Jocks plan shock for Trib Co. readers. This points to Alan Mutter’s report on the tellzell.com blog that has apparently broken the story on a “radical” redesign, the first of many, for the Tribune company’s Orlando Sentinel. Some newspaper designers are setting their hair on fire over what seems to be a fairly insignificant redesign (the word “radical” did not jump to mind once when I was looking at the before and afters). Alan’s take is interesting and so is Mark Potts’ (Lipstick on a Pig): redesigning the print issue isn’t what’s needed.
• BBC accused of muscling in on local news. British newspapers are out to scuttle Beeb plans to get all hyperlocal.
• Search for an Ideal High-Definition Streaming Technology. Edgar Huang and Clifford C. Marsiglio of Indiana University–Purdue University in Indianapolis deserve medals for service to journalism (and other fields) for the latest in their reports on best-in-the-business technologies for delivering video. You can skip straight to the conclusions for their results (Flash is best), and they even have tutorials. An amazing resource. (One point about the tutorials: their based on encoding video for the average American broadband connection speed of 4.8Mbps. I can’t even hit 3Mbps with Telus service here in Vancouver.)