The Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee looks at how Japan went from being a booming economy to a 10-year basket case -- and whether there's any lessons for North America.

Ding, ding, ding: This is the 6,000th post on this blog.

From the BBC:

US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades, according to American intelligence agencies.

US clout will weaken as China and India grow more powerful, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts in its latest report on global trends.

When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were looking to sell the rights to their newborn twins' photos, they wanted more than just cash from the lucky bidder. They wanted to keep control of their image. They supposedly got what they wanted.

From Canoe.ca:

The Associated Press will trim 10 per cent of its work force over the next year as a reduction in fees paid by member newspapers and a declining economy take their toll, chief executive Tom Curley said Thursday.

The staff reduction will amount to a loss of more than 400 positions from a global staff of 4,100, and Curley said the cuts will include some of the news co-operative's 3,000 journalists.

Curley told the staff in a meeting webcast to AP offices globally that he hopes most of the cuts will be achieved through attrition, but he did not rule out layoffs.

Asked if the cuts would include newsroom jobs, Curley noted that 75 per cent of the staff are journalists. "Everybody's going to participate," he said.

The AP faces problems on several fronts. CNN wants to set up a competing wire service, and more than 100 U.S. newspapers have threatened to quit the newsgathering co-operative.

Patricia Best had this in her globeandmail.com blog:

The set-up is that CanWest Global patriarch Izzy Asper, in his heart of hearts, really didn't believe in journalistic independence. If you worked for him, you were his puppet (the Shawinigate stories in the National Post were a particular bug up his ass). The Aspers took control of Southam from Conrad Black in 2000, paving the way to riches beyond their wildest dreams:

Eldest son David Asper was equally adamant that the family had the right to push their opinions down their journalists' throats. “We own the paper,” Mr. Newman recounts David as saying. “We have the right to have the papers print whatever the hell we want them to say. And if people don't like it, they can go to hell. They can leave, get another job. People knew that Conrad had a much more hands-off policy. On the other hand, in the papers he cared about, he hired people who didn't breathe without talking to him first. We inherited some of those people – for better or for worse.”

From The Globe and Mail:

If true, the clemency option would be a bit of a climbdown for Mr. Black, as reporters Sinclair Stewart and Paul Waldie note here:

As some Turkish writers exercise their freedom of expression, the state has responded with a crackdown -- and there's also been a murderous backlash from some virulent nationalists.

A BBC feature on the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and what her son thinks about the 2006 contract-style killing.

From the NYT:

The convoluted trial of three men accused of involvement in the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya took a new twist on Wednesday when a judge decided to bar the media from the proceedings, reversing a decision made two days earlier to open the courtroom to the public.

Mother Jones published a photo essay based on images captured by Martin Gee, a news designer at the San Jose Mercury News, one day after a round of layoffs and buyouts.

Here's the MoJo version.

Here's Gee's Flickr collection.

(h/t to Tom Popyk)

Tara Singh Hayer became a journalistic martyr when unknown gunmen murdered him a decade ago. Sadly, those responsible for the newspaper publisher's killing have not yet been brought to justice.

From the NYT's David Brooks:

Recessions breed pessimism. That’s why birthrates tend to drop and suicide rates tend to rise. That’s why hemlines go down. Tamar Lewin of The New York Times reported on studies that show that the women selected to be Playboy Playmates of the Year tend to look more mature during recessions — older, heavier, more reassuring — though I have not verified this personally.

From the NYT:

An association representing international news organizations is campaigning for an end to an unusual Israeli policy barring foreign reporters from entering Gaza that has lasted for almost two weeks.

The IFC Media project, to run on the U.S.'s Independent Film Channels, is to provide a six-part look at how the news comes to be.

From the BBC:

Emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised nations rose 2.3% from 2000 to 2006, according to new figures from the UN's climate change agency.

The biggest increases were in the former Soviet bloc - and Canada. ...

(The figures) show that in 2006 emissions did actually fall by 0.1%, but the UN's climate change secretariat said that this tiny dip was statistically insignificant.

The overall underlying trend since 2000 is up, even though the countries in question had promised to cut their emissions.

The worst culprit has been Canada. Its emissions since 1990 have shot up 21.3% - they should have fallen 6%.

Recently the biggest rise was recorded by the Eastern European bloc, with emissions up 7.4% since the turn of the century.

I think the Beeb may have gotten it wrong. Canada's Kyoto target was certainly for a six per cent reduction below 1990 levels by 2012, and we're certainly among the worst performers. However, I don't know if we are the worst.

Look at Table 4 on Page 16 of this UNFCCC document: Australia is up 28.8 per cent, and Greece is up 27.3 per cent. Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and Turkey all show higher increases from 1990 to 2006 than does Canada.

Great journalism and the trust of readers will ensure the future of newspapers in the 21st century, no matter the medium in which that journalism is distributed, argues Rupert Murdoch.

From the NYT:

As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover.

The Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt rounds up recent faux news and f-up events in the U.S. media.

He kicks off with the imitation NYT, but there's more, much more.

From TypePad:

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program

Because your Tumblr and Tweets, while clever, will not pay your bills.

Hello, recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist! We're Six Apart (you know us as the nice folks who make Movable Type or TypePad, which maybe you used for blogging at your old newspaper or magazine) and we want to help you.

From AP via Google News:

A gunman on a motorcycle killed a hard-hitting Filipino radio commentator Monday in the seventh deadly attack on reporters in the Philippines this year, police said.

The gunman sped away after firing several shots at Arecio Padrigao, a commentator at Radio Natin, in front of Bukindon State University in southern Gingoog city, said police Chief Superintendent Teodorico Capuyan.

He said police were investigating.

Padrigao regularly criticized corruption in his radio show broadcast in Misamis Oriental province, about 480 miles southeast of Manila, police official Catalino Rodriguez told ABS-CBN television.

At least six other Filippino journalists have been murdered this year.

From the BBC:

Several men have gone on trial in Moscow charged with involvement in the murder of prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.

Circuit City whacked many of its best, most experienced -- and therefore most expensive -- staff to cut costs.

The company is now bankrupt.

U.S. newspapers are doing much the same thing with their senior journalists.

From the NYT:

When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago — claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a “60 Minutes” segment about President Bush’s National Guard service — the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as “old news.”

So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money.

Toronto Star public editor Kathy English compared the handling of CBC journalist Mellissa Fung, taken captive in Afghanistan by bandits, with that of a Canadian man arrested in North Korea.

There was a media blackout on Fung, but not on Je Yell Kim's case.

Sigh. Another necessary set of correctives from moi to a Haroon Siddiqui column.

Tabitha Southey explains why the news media need to pace themselves in constructing a recession narrative.

I will say in advance that the excerpt below won't make sense standing on its own (Ms. Southey writes that way; not a bad way, it's just her way), so read the column in its entirety. In the meantime, here goes nothing.

Craig Oliver, CTV's chief parliamentary correspondent, has keen political antennae -- and eyes clouded over by glaucoma.