From the March 31 NYT:

Newspaper advertising revenue fell 7.9 percent in 2007, the second-worst year in more than half a century, the Newspaper Association of America said on Friday. Those figures include continued growth in online advertising.

Until last fall, the industry appeared headed for a less severe decline. But as the economy slowed, newspapers suffered a particularly bad fourth quarter — the peak period for ad sales — with revenue down 10.3 percent from a year earlier.

Revenue from ads in printed newspapers dropped 9.4 percent for the year, the biggest drop in any year since 1950, the period charted by the association.

Internet ad revenue on newspaper sites rose 18.8 percent, a marked slowdown from the torrid pace of the previous three years, when it averaged 30 percent annual growth. Online ads accounted for just 7.5 percent of all newspaper ad revenue in 2007, evidence that it will be years before digital growth outweighs the print slump.

From the Independent:

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country's economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story.

New Yorker writer Steve Coll, author of the highly regarded 2004 book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the C.I.A., Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to Sept. 10, 2001, has a new book on the bin Laden family: The bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.

The NYT's Michiko Kakutani reviews it.

MSM attention on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post continues, with the NYT chimming in with a story on the site that has now passed the venerable, conservervative-leaning Drudge Report in unique visitors.

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The Beeb has a list of 10 stories that probably shouldn't be published on this day of all days.