Upton Sinclair was a big-name,muckraking journo in the very early 20th century (one of his books, Oil!, forms the basis for the current film There Will Be Blood).

But he really set the cat amongst the pigeons when he ran for governor of California in 1934.

Mona Eltahaway writes at globeandmail.com on how young bloggers in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are infuriating their governments and paying the price through harassment and, in some cases, imprisonment.

From a Jan. 11 posting at Poynter.org:

There seems to be a growing agreement among economists and bankers that we may already be in a recession and that if we are not, we will be soon. Journalists would do well to ask: What does a "recession" mean? Are recessions normal? Who decides if we are in a recession? And, how do we get out of a recession? What is the difference between a recession and a depression?

Recessions are a normal part of the economy

As the old saying goes, what goes up must come down. Economies expand and contract. It is part of the normal economic cycle. The U.S. economy has gone through several recessions. Most are short-lived and are followed by a new growth spurt. At the moment, economists predict the recession of 2008 will be fairly short. For some, however, it will not be painless. Long and deep recessions are called depressions. (More on that later.)

From the NYT:

An internal memorandum from The A.P.’s Los Angeles bureau dictating coverage of the troubled pop star was published by several media blogs on Tuesday, prompting some punch lines at the news service’s expense.

“Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal,” Frank Baker, the Los Angeles assistant bureau chief, wrote on Tuesday morning, three days after Ms. Spears was released from the hospital where she had been admitted in the wake of a custody dispute.

“Boy, that qualifies as an understatement,” Tirdad Derakhshani, a Philadelphia Inquirer writer remarked in the online column SideShow. On Romenesko, a popular online media site owned by the Poynter Institute, a commenter added, “Not a good day for journalism as a discipline.”

In the memo, Mr. Baker said that not every rumor should be published by The Associated Press. But “we want to pay attention to what others are reporting and seek to confirm those stories that WE feel warrant the wire,” he wrote, adding, “And when we determine that we’ll write something, we must expedite it.”

Lest we tut-tut too much, demand from AP members is helping drive the move -- and I suspect that's happening because they sense their customers want such stuff. AP has also created the position of director of entertainment content and will add 22 entertainment jobs, although some of those will be filled by transferring AP staffers from other areas.