The Globe and Mail has won the 2005 Michener Award for public service in journalism -- to my mind, the most prestigious award in Canadian journalism.

The Canadian Press story about proposed Conservative government changes to the Access to Information Act says the draft legislation backpedals on previous Tory commitments and weakens some of the existing language.

Alexander Panetta of The Canadian Press wrote an account Tuesday of how Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to manage news conferences.

This NYT story talks about how a McDonald's call-centre clerk in California handles the drive-through order of a customer in Honolulu, Hawaii. This still-experimental concept is being looked at skeptically by at least one other burger giant, but it was the details about the work that chilled me.

While TV is still king of the news media in Russia, the Internet is starting to make some inroads, according to this BBC article.

This April 10 New York magazine article talks about the new generation of editors at America's high-brow magazines. The headline is Brainy Young Things.

The four mentioned are Roger Hodge of Harper's, Franklin Foer of The New Republic, James Bennet of the Atlantic and Philip Gourevitch of Paris Review.

An excerpt:

 In keeping with the magazine’s promotioning traditions, (Foer is) the youngest of the four, at 31. And while he used to work for Slate, he’s a believer in print. “The thing that sort of unites us is that we’re all trying to preserve a style of journalism that flies in the face of the onslaught of the blogosphere,” he says. “You get the sense that if you grow up editing blogs, you have a different cognitive framework.”