Bruce Cheadle of The Canadian Press has written an analysis piece of the current head-butting going on between the Parliament Hill press gallery and the Prime Minister's Office.

Conservative MP Colin Mayes, inheritor of noted anti-racist Darryl Stinson's old Okanagan-Shuswap riding, has written that perhaps jail sentences should be the appropriate punishment for misbehaving journalists.

Update: Mayes has now retracted his remarks.

Hmmm. Another MSM column that takes a whack at blogs for being something they're not: a news medium. And in this one, Russell Smith also gasps at the hatred projecting out of monitors from blogs. However, some of his points are worthy of consideration.

A Vermont newspaper publisher is threatening to quit the Associated Press unless he gets some answers on why the agency fired Christopher Graff, the veteran AP bureau chief in the state. And some excerpts from AP boss Tom Curley's response to four politicians over the firing (H/T to Morgan W. Brown).

The Western Standard is asking people to pony up a few bucks to help it fight a complaint launched against it by a Calgary Muslim man over the Danish cartoons it reprinted.

The two biggest unions representing media workers both blasted the new Conservative government's plans to limit media access.

Don't know how I wound up there, but this blurb on Canoe.ca caught my eye: "Recognizing the changing media landscape, Quebecor is converging its resources to create a new and exciting path to a successful future, ...   more »

This BBC piece looks at the pressures on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai as he wiggled Abdul Rahman off the hook of an apostasy charge by having the Muslim-turned-Christian declared mentally incompetent.

It's a decent general overview of the case at this point.

The fun fact: No one has ever been executed in Afghanistan for apostasy, even under the Taliban.

Here's a journo-centric bit of info:

In similar cases in recent years, two Afghan editors accused of blasphemy both faced the death sentence, but one claimed asylum abroad and the other was freed after a short spell in jail.

And here's a related story: Italy mulls Afghan convert asylum

What the hell, one more: What Islam says on religious freedom

The PMO is aggressively trying to limit reporters' access. On Monday, Parliamentary security personnel were made to herd journalists away from Harper's office, where a photo op involving cancer-stricken youngsters giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper daffodils was in progress.

Update:This Paul Wells blog posting is probably the best commentary I've seen so far.

From her column Panic in the Newspaper Biz, distributed by Creator's Syndicate and found by myself on truthout:

I've thought for years that newspapers should all be owned by nonprofits. There is a chance something like this will actually happen-the Newspaper Guild, in alliance with the Communications Workers of America, is getting ready to bid on the 12 KR papers McClatchy has to sell. Eight of the 12 are Guild papers, with combined employment of 7,000 and circulation of 1.3 million. Among the 12 are such outstanding newspapers as The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News and St. Paul Pioneer Press.

    McClatchy can't swallow all of them, and so the two unions have turned to a "worker-friendly" investment fund to back their bid. Keep an eye on this: It is a most hopeful development.

I also liked this bon mot that kicked the column off:

I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

From an NYT article on the new book by magazine editor Bonnie Fuller titled The Joys of Much Too Much:

... Ms. Fuller says she grew up "a geeky, Canadian Jewish girl from a dysfunctional family."

Along the way, she was treated badly by the cool set and suffered from minimal fashion sense, even as she relentlessly pursued a career in fashion journalism — propelled, she said, by her insecurities.

At Cosmopolitan and Glamour, she did not take maternity leaves, setting a whole new standard for pregnant editors. "I'm not embarrassed to say I was reading proofs in the delivery room," she writes.

Not even a little embarrassed?

As the  McClatchy company prepares to sell 12 of the Knight-Ridder newspapers it just bought, prospective suitors have one main question on their mind: Will buying one of the papers help make them a regional superpower?

Technology journalist Edward Tenner wonders if the brilliant technology behind Google has had a negative impact on the critical faculties of students, who used to have to work their brains to create a decent search query.

In addition, he criticizes Google for basing search results in part on links to a page, which he likens to citation analysis in the natural sciences -- a practice which could leave some very useful information buried.

Heavy.com has almost no text on it, with video programming (and ads -- can't forget the ads!) forming most of its content and video games determining its aesthetics. And as a result, it had a measly 5.5 million unique visitors in February, tripling its audience from a year earlier.

This NYT article looks at Al-Jazeera International's coming launch in late May, and what the operation has to do to be successful.

Democracy Now! had some guests expand on the story I posted earlier this week about the Lincoln Group's public opinion manipulation efforts in Iraq on behalf of the Pentagon.