From CP via CTV.ca:

Is our appetite for celebrity gossip waning, spurred on by the mystifying fame of cookie-cutter reality stars and a preponderance of speculative stories that rarely come to pass?

Some are suggesting that a 10-year tidal wave of Hollywood celebrity news has crested and is beginning to recede -- though others counter that, in fact, the unfiltered gossip found on blogs and websites is pulling readers away from more traditional sources of dirt.

From the NYT:

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney H. Schanberg.

Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.

More in this post from Steve Herman, editor of the BBC news website, at The Editors blog. But in the meantime, the new BBC home page is live. The Beeb offers a tour; you can customize this new home page.

From AP via CTV.ca:

New data confirming slowing growth in Google Inc.'s paid clicks renewed debate Thursday on Wall Street over whether the Internet search company's revenue can quickly adjust to changes it made in how it generates clicks.

From the Guardian:

BBC Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green's famously steadfast composure on the Today programme deserted her this morning as she dissolved in a fit of giggles live on air while reading an obituary - sending the press office into meltdown.

Green's perfect enunciation is so constant it is an article of faith among her millions of fans, but it fell apart shortly after 8am today as she read a news item about the death of Oscar-winning screenwriter Abby Mann and had to be rescued by presenter James Naughtie.

However, the corpsing spread, with Naughtie struggling to suppress giggles when introducing the next report at 8.10am, about the danger that Iraq may be sliding into civil war after this week's clashes in Basra between government forces and fighters loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr.

Here's an audio file link.

From the Times Online:

The BBC said that Ms Green's giggles started when she heard in her earpiece a colleague's remark that the clip sounded like "a bee buzzing in a bottle". A spokeswoman said that the programme had so far had 20 comments about the incident, "all positive, about how funny they found it" and no complaints. ...

She has form in this area however, having “corpsed” in 1997 while delivering a Today programme item about Papua New Guinea’s chief of staff Jack Tuat. But Ms Green was unrepentant. Recalling the incident in a recent interview, she said: “It’s an open secret that I have a ribald sense of humour. I knew immediately that I was going to have trouble getting through the next story, which to compound the problem was about a sperm whale. For me, it’s essential to laugh both at the absurdity of life and at oneself. Inevitably, the laughter sometimes spills over into my work and I find myself poleaxed by merriment.”

Globe and Mail columnist Ivor Tossell on the bottomless appetite for lists online -- and how Cracked has turned them into an art form.

You can see Fitna the Movie here (the title means "Ordeal" or "Strife," in Arabic). Here's the BBC story. Here's one from the Washington Post.

Frankly, it's one nasty little propaganda film. And unfortunately, one could make the same type of film about Christianity (see the book The End of Faith to see what I mean; more in this earlier post). In fact, it would be interesting to run Fitna and jihadi propaganda films simultaneously on a split screen. Here's an AP story about how al Qaeda's media arm, al Sahab, is looking for a few good online-savvy media geeks.

From AP via CTV.ca:

Former "Nightline" reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in the U.S.

From the March 27 Washington Post:

The United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations in that country, according to U.S. officials.

Eric Alterman writes the following in the New Yorker about newspapers:

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin’s Courant, it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America’s last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, said recently in a speech in London, “At places where editors and publishers gather, the mood these days is funereal. Editors ask one another, ‘How are you?,’ in that sober tone one employs with friends who have just emerged from rehab or a messy divorce.” Keller’s speech appeared on the Web site of its sponsor, the Guardian, under the headline “NOT DEAD YET.”

In his New Yorker article on American newspapers, Eric Alterman asks whether the liberal U.S. news website the Huffington Post is the future of news delivery.

From AP via CTV.ca:

The Los Angeles Times apologized for using documents that were apparently fabricated in a story implicating associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs in a 1994 assault on rapper Tupac Shakur.

From the NYT:

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.

From the BBC:

Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar said the answer lay in what he called the "Afghanisation" of security.

Mr Atmar, who is a close ally of President Hamid Karzai, said Afghan forces needed more training.

In the latest violence, officials say the Taleban killed six people in the western province of Herat.

Traditional system

While Nato leaders have been calling for member countries to commit more troops to Afghanistan, Mr Atmar told the BBC that this was not the answer.

He says a traditional Afghan system, with local communities being allowed to practice self-defence, would be more effective.

He believes that Afghan forces could defeat the Taleban in five years, instead of the 15 he believes Nato would need.

Expense, danger, a stagnant story line and other, more compelling news could explain a precipitious drop in coverage of the Iraq War by the U.S. news media.

The NYT's David Carr on how some successful businessmen who thought they could turn U.S. newspaper properties around are currently rueing their investments in the troubled industry. Some might have trouble meeting financial obligations.

The NYT's Elaine Sciolino prepared some tips for adapting to French culture. This one particularly applies to journalists.

Conrad Black tells The Canadian Press that he's adapting to life behind bars.

"I am doing fine,'' Black said in an e-mail to The Canadian Press from his Florida prison. "This is a safe and civilized place and I don't anticipate any difficulty.''

From AP via CTV.ca:

A journalist for state-run Russian television was found dead in Moscow early Friday and prosecutors have opened a murder investigation, colleagues and officials said.