This CTV.ca story has video attached of Amanda Lindhout being interviewed by CTV News Channel hours after she gained her freedom.

Her release came exactly one month before Christmas (I wrote this on Christmas Eve of last year - Amanda Lindhout still isn't home). This time, she will be home with her family.

But that leaves two cases outstanding:

• Beverly Giesbrecht, a convert to Islam who is being held in northern Pakistan
• blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan, being held in his native Iran

The always-excellent Matt Taibbi dissects the dissecting of Sarah Palin as she does the hard slogging of flogging Going Rogue -- although what he says about political reporters is not flattering to them.

Cambodians have become slowly become riveted by the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch, who ran the horrifying Tuol Sleng prison during Khmer Rouge's reign from 1975 to 1979.

From CP via ctvtoronto.ca:

Management at the Toronto Star newspaper has filed formal notice of a plan to contract out newsroom production work and cut 121 jobs in a bid to save more than $4 million a year.

From TheStar.com:

A sharp drop in Wikipedians, the volunteers who write and edit the online encyclopaedia, is a disturbing and inevitable trend, the Toronto man who was once their top contributor said Monday.

Toronto Star writer Tyler Hamilton apologizes on behalf of his craft. He then explains why an apology is due.

Internet thinker Clay Shirky ruminates on how the Internet conveys authority.

The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson on the Conservative government's reflex to attack its critics when under criticism.

After trumpeting the virtues of a free press at a rubber chicken dinner in Markham on Saturday night, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not deign to take any questions from the wretches of the fourth estate.

Mark Luckie of the blog 10000 Words pointed to this HowStuffWorks primer. (seen first on Twitter)

An excerpt:

Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptic feedback and smell to the natural world as it exists. ...   more »

Ruth Teichrob -- formerly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which shut down in March -- surveyed her former newsroom colleagues to see how they are doing. Seventy-one of 140 responded.

The results are sobering.

Lindsey Hoshaw, a young journo, travels out to a Pacific Ocean garbage patch. Blogs about it over a period of weeks.

Her travel is funded by Spot.us, which crowdsources funding for worthy journalistic ventures.

Spot.us does a deal with the New York Times to have a news story published. Approximate length - 900 words.

Critic Megan Garber, writing at CJR.org, pronounces the NYT story to be not so good: