A site called Topix.net picked up my post on New York Blondes. Don't be fooled by the juxtaposition of my name relative to the photo. For one thing, I'm not blonde, let alone Blonde.

Grand jury testimony by Scooter Libby has him claiming that Dubya himself authorized the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney to leak parts of a prewar intelligence estimate on WMDs in Iraq.

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Vancouver's CKNW Radio lost the rights to broadcast Vancouver Canucks games three weeks ago, and has now gone after its own newsroom with a scythe.

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The U.S. Center for Media and Democracy says at least 77 local stations in the U.S. have been caught running corporation-generated news reports in the past 10 months. Not only that, some of these stations have actually tried to disguise those reports and make them look like original reporting.

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The headline above Lawrence Martin's column in today's Globe and  Mail asks: "Are we being taken for a ride on Afghanistan too?"

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Farhad Manjoo at Salon has the same relationship with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart as I do; He loves the guy most of the time, but wants to kick his ass when Jonno gets soft, moist and supine with some of his interview subjects.

Manjoo thought Stewart handled his Tuesday night interview with John McCain -- who accepted a speaking engagement at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University -- with just the right tone.

Read  Manjoo's blog posting here (free with a daypass).

Myself, I thought Stewart was okay in that exchange, but he really redeemed himself last summer with Christopher Hitchens.

Some stuff on Katie Couric, who will become the first woman to solo-anchor a Monday-to-Friday U.S. network newscast when she becomes anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News in September.

TorStar, April 7: K-K-K-Katie!!! (blog, links to treeware column)

NYT, April 7: Couric says Jump, and fans reach for their remotes

NYT, April 6: Anchor's chair was an irresistible lure for Couric

NYT, April 5: Couric announces departure from 'Today' show

LAT, April 6: CBS is betting on 'Today' anchor's pull with viewers

LAT, April 6: It isn't the old evening news on CBS anymore (column)

Wash. Post, April 6: The new apple of CBS's eye: Katie Couric plans big changes at newscast

Newsday is a daily on Long Island that is owned by the Tribune Company Ltd. The paper has gone through three buyouts in two years, losting 150 people from the editorial staff in the process.

To enhance feelings of job security, unionized journalists there have noted bylines appearing from AmNewYork, a freebie, non-unionized daily -- one in which a certain company has a major investment.

Can anyone name the company? Any wild guesses out there?

Read the full April 3 NYT story.

John Green, executive producer of ABC's Good Morning America (Weekend), gets a month off without pay after some e-mails critical of Dubya and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Allbright surfaced in The Drudge Report and New York Post, respectively.

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An eye-opening expose on the high cost of looking glamorous in the Big Apple. And until reading this story, I didn't realize the difference between being a New York Blonde and a New York blonde.

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SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, TX—In what wildlifestyle reformation volunteers are calling a "positive step," the first group of rehabilitated Girls Gone Wild were released back into the civilized world Monday, and early signs indicate that they are adjusting smoothly, according to the director of the group responsible for their rescue.

Two Girls Gone Wild in their natural habitat, just before capture at the height of molting season.

"At first, the girls were disoriented," said Janet Ottley, director of the South Padre Island Wild Life Rescue Foundation. "They were frightened by the absence of familiar comforts such as overt male attention, binge drinking, and camcorders. But over time, we've seen improvement: so far, no reports of nipple exposure, so we're very hopeful."

The 11 girls were captured nearly one month ago during their annual spring migration to the area and then put through an intensive rehabilitation program. "They have come a very long way," Ottley said. "When we first brought them into our clinic, they could barely function beyond baring their breasts, and they communicated solely through loud, sustained hoots."

As their subspecies does every year, the Girls Gone Wild, roaming in packs, flocked to bars and clubs during the spring break migratory season. Lured by drink specials, promotional merchandise, and the chance to "go wild," they were discovered at Señor Chug Chug's, a nightspot where the girls gathered to perform a mating ritual in which brief nudity is exchanged for Jell-O shots and Smirnoff Ice trucker hats.

Rescue volunteers identified the Girls Gone Wild by their torn tank tops, threadbare Daisy Duke-style cutoff shorts, hair extension plumage, and bright orange skin with patterned lower-back markings.

From (where else but) The Onion

Slate's media columnist gushes here.

From an April 3 BBC story; filed under WTFF?!?!:

Officials said international and local media would not be allowed to do stories about the food situation as they did not want that subject touched.

Hunger and malnutrition are recurrent problems in Niger, which is the poorest country in the world.

For more cheery reading, try this March 30 BBC story: 'Barren future' for Africa's soil

The gist is that population pressures, the inability of farmers to afford fertilizer, deforestation, use of marginal land and poor farming practices are wrecking Africa's soil, creating the potential for even more hunger problems there in the future.

Here's BBC's in-depth page on Africa's Food Crisis.

An NYT story reports that hundreds of Chinese factories are experiencing labour shortages. While that drives wages up, that also means China becomes a higher-cost producer. And that could drive the relentless bargain-hunters of globalized business to seek cheaper workers elsewhere.

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A new study came out saying the Prairie's rivers are getting over-used even as they continue to shrink in flow volume.

These rivers provide Albertans -- and Saskatchewanians and some Manitobans -- with drinking water and help the rest of us by providing the water necessary to separate oil from oilsand, our great hydrocarbon hope.

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An e-mail making the rounds:

This is interesting:

Once in a lifetime event.

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06
This will never happen again.

Former L.A. Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley wonders if technology is in part driving a change in journalistic content, and under what circumstances that might be a bad thing.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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Craigslist is one of a new breed of companies that claims to be happy with just covering costs. Unfortunately, it's eating the lunch of profit-minded businesses like newspapers. But they aren't the only example of "purpose-driven media" out there.   more »

Veteran (if not storied) NYT foreign correspondent and Baghdad bureau chief John F. Burns talks about the Jill Carroll case in the context of the environment in which western reporters in Iraq find themselves.

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This NYT article finds the Internet to be an markedly more important tool for politicos now than it was even two years ago.

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The Globe and Mail's Anne McIlroy looks at the Canadian Medical Association Journal's battle over editorial independence.

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My 10th anniversary recollection of the Leader-Post downsizing was a runaway favourite amongst the visitors to this site and is probably the most single-clicked-on item in the history of this blog, maybe even beating The King. Here's the full list:

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Producer Matt Hann talks about how he and his crew made a documentary called The Insurgency, which looks at who is fighting back against the U.S.-led coalition.

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