From washingtonpost.com:

The magazines stack up, unread, on your coffee table: the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair. You subscribe to them but don't have time to read them. So there they sit, a glossy pile of guilt.

Where you see wasted money, Jeremy Brosowsky saw a business opportunity.

The Washington publishing entrepreneur recently rolled out Brijit, a Web site that creates 100-word abstracts of articles from dozens of magazines and rates them. Brijit, Brosowsky said, aims to be "everyone's best-read friend."

Now on Brijit are summations of articles in current issues of GQ, Wired, Mother Jones, ESPN the Magazine, the Economist, Smithsonian and more than 50 other magazines. Even if you never read the entire article, just scanning Brijit could make you the smartest person at your next cocktail party.

From the BBC:

The US has criticised Azerbaijan over the imprisonment of a newspaper editor, urging the Caucasus republic to respect the right to free speech.

Eynulla Fatullayev was given a sentence of eight-and-a-half years on Tuesday, on charges of making a terrorist threat and inciting inter-ethnic conflict.

The US Department of State said it appeared to be "an attempt to silence criticism and stifle free speech".

His two newspapers have been shut down. He has been in detention since April.

Sahar is one of a group of female Iraqi journalists collectively honoured by the International Women's Media Foundation with the 2007 Courage in Journalism award.

She talked to the BBC about her life and work:

This cheery little brief from CP via globeandmail.com:

The Montreal Gazette, the city's only English-language daily newspaper, has told employees it wants to reduce its newsroom staff. Publisher Alan Allnutt says the Gazette wants the staff reductions to be achieved through voluntary departures sweetened by enhanced severance packages. He says in the memo that the move is being driven by the newspaper's market, circulation and readership as well as by other economic factors. The newspaper is one of several Canadian daily newspapers owned by CanWest Global Communications Corp. CGS (TSX) rose 70 cents to $8.28.