The Globe and Mail published an editorial on Monday defending the necessity of cruelty in editorial cartoons.

CBS wants to send news alerts, including video, to mobile devices like cellphones.

At no point in my life did I ever expect to make three postings about Leah McLaren over a two-week period, but I've got to close off some business.

J. Kelly Nestruck summed up the aftermath of the trashing of McLaren's book by one Ryan Bigge, including the reaction of Toronto Star books editor Doug Smith.

Marc Weisblott of Paved almost triggered another feud when he described Nestruck as a fellow fluff reporter. :)

Leah McLaren decides to permanently check out of checking out the blogosphere after doing a Technorati search on herself and several other writers she admires and finding a world of hate, envy and -- worst of all -- bad spelling out there.

When the gunmen came for Al-Arabiya's Atwar Bahjat, one yelled, "We want the anchorwoman." On Wednesday, they killed her and two of her colleagues.

And today, her funeral was fired upon by gunmen.

The Salon blurb: "By caving in to fanatics over the Danish cartoons, the West has shown that it is not only gutless but brainless," argues U.S. editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette.

While today's Chinese government is just as censorious and authoritarian as its predecessors, some of today's Chinese media figures aren't rolling over and playing dead.

I went over to The Dirt (http://mediadirt.blogspot.com) the other day. Gone was the Canadian media gossip. Actually, pretty much every trace of its previous existence was gone.

That was possibly to be expected. "Dirty Dan" had been dropping broad hints about its possible demise.

However, the domain name is back. But this latest incarnation seems to have it as a splog for adult entertainment industry products.

Shams (Sun), a Saudi newspaper, was acting with the best of intentions when it republished some of the infamous Prophet Muhammad cartoons with an eye towards mobilizing its young Saudi readership against Denmark.

You know what they say about the road to hell and best intentions.

Flemming Rose -- the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, but currently on indefinite leave -- explains why he commissioned the cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad.