Gannett's experiment in radically reworking what its newsrooms do puts the focus on the Web first and print product second. Reporters' offices are their cars. No story is too local.

From a speech by Peter Horrocks, head of the Beeb's TV News Services, to the Reuters journalism institute at Oxford (posted at the BBC's The Editors blog):

Dr. Qadir Assemy, a doctor in Herat, tells the BBC about the rebirth of his city. I found this paragraph about the Taliban's time in control there to be sad:

In my culture anyone called a "Taleb" is a deprived, poor man with nowhere to stay but a mosque. For us, talking about a Taleban who could lead a society or capture a city like Kandahar sounded unbelievable.

And then we came to realise that these people were not the Taleban in the way we always understood it. Overnight, we were told the Taleban were going to take Herat. Overnight, everything changed.

Schools were banned for girls, there was no media, no television, music, western clothes - I could not wear jeans anymore. We had to grow beards and my female classmates, teachers and lecturers were not there anymore.

I do not believe that Europeans have lived like this; to have an illiterate guy stop you at a checkpoint and hurt you for having a tape in your vehicle or asking why your beard is not appropriately long is awful.

The Wall Street Journal will unveil its updated look on Jan. 2. Expect a narrower paper and smaller newshole.

The Star did a story on some communications academics who tried to measure the impact of bloggers at the Liberal leadership convention.

The Globe blurb: Known as the headquarters of the Taliban, Quetta's streets throb with anger at Kabul and Islamabad, GRAEME SMITH reports.