The Newspaper Association of America finds some positive news in the number of Americans coming to newspaper websites.

About one in three Internet users -- or 55 million Americans -- visit a newspaper website every month (question: Where do they get their daily news?). Unique visitor stats and page views went up 21 per cent and 43 per cent respectively over the course of 2005.

After five years, nytimes.com has unveiled a new design.

Here's a note I sent about it to online-news@poynter.org:

Here's a few stories from late this past week:

Randolph Herald (editorial): What sunshine?

Vermont Guardian (editorial): When harsh light hits the media

FAIR: Counterspin (podcast)

I'm heading west-bound earlier tonight on the College St. car. At the intersection with Bathurst, there was a southbound streetcar, one of whose passengers transferred to my car.

Both the streetcars sat and waited as the Bathurst car's operator walks over.

He enters the car and goes up to the elderly man who had transferred, holds up a pill bottle and says (words to the effect of) "you forgot your medication." The fellow was embarrassed to have lost it but quite happy to have it back.

My operator must have have been signalled somehow by the other operator; otherwise, why stick around?

So a bolt of good karma to both of them for helping reconnect the elderly man with his medication -- saving him some money, keeping him healthier and making Toronto a little more humane in the process.

From a Vermont Guardian story on April 1 (H/T to Morgan W. Brown):

WASHINGTON — Efforts to impeach the president are helping to place Vermont on a new list of "rogue states" being circulated by the Bush administration, the Vermont Guardian has learned.