From the NYT:

CNN says it wants newspaper feedback as it creates a news wire service to compete with The Associated Press and other services. At a meeting last week, one newspaper staff member offered his advice — and shared the framework of CNN’s plans — in real time on the social messaging Web site Twitter.

“Still definitely a work in progress,” Ryan Pitts, the online director for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., wrote on Twitter last Tuesday, while expressing enthusiasm about the wire service’s potential.

CNN, a division of Time Warner, invited several dozen newspaper editors to Atlanta last week for a summit about its forthcoming news wire. Gatherings of journalists aren’t usually off-the-record affairs, but CNN probably didn’t expect each segment of the summit to be shared with the Web. Then again, the increasingly popular Twitter, which allows users to share short messages with others, sometimes acts as a wire service as well. (CNN declined to comment.)

From the NYT:

The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.

The company has retained Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, to act as its agent to secure financing, either in the form of a mortgage or a sale-leaseback arrangement, said James M. Follo, the Times Company’s chief financial officer.

I would note that in a previous, more innocent time, you would think the NYT would be amongst the most rock-solid and blue-chip of newspaper companies.

My post below is obsolete.

From the NYT's DealBook blog:

Updated: The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware on Monday, as the owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team struggled to cope with rising debt and falling ad revenue.

The Tribune Co., groaning under a huge debt load, could go into default under terms of agreement with its bondholders. But is this an indictment against newspaper-dominated companies, or a cautionary tale about the dangers of highly leveraged financing?

Jean Leloup's 1990:

It bummed me out when I heard Groove Is In the Heart used in a Bell commercial, but here it is in its joyous, unsullied version:

And as a bonus, here's Groove Armada's I See You Baby (Fatboy Slim remix)

Krista Erickson, characterized as a plucky hackette in a now-defunct satirical rag, will be returning to report from the Hill for CBC TV after the Corpse's ombudsman cleared her of malfeasance in the notorious planted questions affair of 2007.

CBC TV is planning to drop Saturday Report and Sunday Report next fall and make The National a seven-day-per-week show. A world in total Mansbridgevision. :)

Dayo Kefentse got onto the contract treadmill at age 25 with the CBC. Nine years later, she's still never had a permanent job. Currently, she has no prospects past April.

From the BBC:

Human Rights Watch has called on Sri Lanka's government to free prominent Tamil journalist, JS Tissainayagam.

Mr Tissainayagam was arrested in March and charged with inciting violence in articles in his magazine, the North Eastern Monthly, which has been shut.

He has also been accused of aiding terrorist organisations through raising money for the magazine.

The international rights group said Sri Lanka was shamefully using anti-terror laws to silence peaceful critics.

An NYT article talks about differing philosophies amongst mixologists/bartenders/bar chefs in the great nation to our south. How grand! :)

That's a thread going on at CJR.org on how journalists should use Twitter:

http://www.cjr.org/news_meeting/how_should_journalists_use_twi.php

Click through and read the comments if you're interested in this stuff.

As for me, use Twitter for an early-warning system and a possible way to identify sources and witnesses. But don't use it as a crutch or take everything on it as the gospel truth. Verify.

Another thing I find is that in some ways, look for what people are not saying. Twitter is a social medium, and I think that tends to skew the conversation.

Think critically about that as you try to glean insight from your stream of tweets.

This note from a reader showed up in my inbox:

I know you're interested in this stuff so here's a link to a story about the Cambodia genocide...which happened to be the one I was reading right as I got called into the meeting where I got laid off from my media job today but that's a whole other post...
 
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/13/sbm.cambodia.ponchaud/index.html

From the BBC:

Not yet 30, Roberto Saviano has achieved what other writers only dream of: an acclaimed bestseller, which he has adapted into an Oscar-tipped film.

But he lives in hiding, with only armed policemen for company. Gangsters from his native city of Naples have passed a death sentence on him.

   more »

Check out the dismal news at j-source (from Nov. 27).

From the NYT:

In October, three weeks after Ernie Bjorkman, an institution in Colorado television, signed a new annual contract worth close to a quarter of a million dollars, he was told he was being let go by KWGN, the CW affiliate in Denver, a victim of consolidation with another station.

In the self-assured baritone of his profession, Mr. Bjorkman, a 36-year television veteran who will be paid through the end of his contract period, said, “I don’t think we’re going to see the anchor people grow old with the audience anymore.”

Across the country, longtime local TV anchors are a dying breed. Facing an economic slump and a severe advertising downturn, many stations have cut costs drastically in the last year, and veteran anchors, with their expensive contracts, seem to be shouldering a disproportionate share of the cutbacks. When station managers are forced to make cuts, hefty anchor salaries are a tempting target.

From AdvertisingAge:

As long-rumored, The Huffington Post took $25 million in new funding at a $100 million valuation. It's a healthy sum given the company has aggregated a huge audience -- 8.8 million people a month, accordng to Quantcast -- primarily on links to content it does not produce (newspaper stories) or pay for (columns).

Didja watch the Brian Burke news conference on Saturday when he was sworn in as the new executive saviour of the Toronto Maple Leafs? Didja wonder why only three questions were asked in public? Here's why.

Afghan journo Aziz Popal tells The Globe and Mail's Graeme Smith about his brief time in the hands of the Taliban, who captured him and another journalist as they attempted the dangerous drive from Kandahar to Kabul on the country's main highway.

The Politico has issued a sort-of apology for a piss-poor story on climate change that got many people overheated (see this post for my commentary).