Do comments for stories enhance or worsen the online reading experience? Now asks the question. However, iis that really the biggest issue facing online news sites? I say no.

The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin tries to parse what the potential sale of CanWest's National Post title could mean to the political landscape.

From CBC.ca:

The Alberta Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint against publisher Ezra Levant for reprinting the provocative Danish Muhammad cartoons in his magazine (the now-defunct Western Standard - BD) in 2006.

The complaint was filed by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities.

Levant, who has characterized the controversy as a free speech issue, said he was pleased with the outcome and pledged to continue fighting against censorship.

In this this Iggy Pop and the Stooges tune -- first presented on the eponymous The Stooges album, released in 1969 -- you can (to my mind) hear the roots of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, who actually covered the song.

Punk took the same basic rhythmic and chord structure (not to mention its spirit) and then sped it up.

Study this screen grab from the BBC Science/Nature home page carefully:

According to the huge boost story, it would seem the gorillas are doing well in the northern Congo, but the plummeting story is from four years ago. The extinction story is about the whole spectrum of primates.

I suspect when your archival material is jarringly different from your current news, you might want to find some way to differentiate it as archival. But that's just me.

Missed this yesterday:

Here's the AP story.

From the BBC:

Iran's has suspended the punishment of death by stoning, state media say.

Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) are having breakfast in the Hawthorne Grill:

From the BBC:

Iran has executed a journalist accused of involvement with a Sunni militant group blamed for a spate of attacks in the south-east, officials have said.

Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said Yaqoub Mehrnehad and another man were hanged on Monday in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province.

Mr Mehrnehad was convicted in February of being a member of Jundallah and of "crimes against national security".

He was arrested in Zahedan last year while reporting for a Tehran newspaper.

Reports say the journalist also ran a charity apparently focused on improving childhood education.

From the Guardian:

The judiciary spokesman said Mirnehad's conviction was not related to his work as a journalist, but gave no further details.

From the Guardian:

When you pop into your local, you do not expect to be interrogated under a bright lamp or recruited to the secret police while your pint is being pulled. But the owners of a new Berlin pub plan to offer these services and more at their espionage-themed drinking den, which pays tribute to the east German Stasi.

The Firm - the slang term to describe the secret police of the communist regime - is decked out with memorabilia from the bygone era, including shredded surveillance logs, Stasi porcelain and an urn the owners claim contains the ashes of the former east German leader Erich Honecker. A surveillance camera at the door tracks the guests as they enter.

A chronicler of the Stasi told a German newspaper that anyone who had seen the files of that organization  "would not have the stomach for a beer in that bar."

I'm a communist, I know
Our cell operates in a hole
We exist to smash
This running-dog capitalist state

If the revolution is pulled off
All the plutocrats will be shot
And the proletariat will rule
Ever more

Refer to this news item for context.

Asked on As It Happens if she was now, or had ever been a communist, MacNeil said no.

But that's what the communists always say, isn't it? :^)

And she did admit to being a feminist, which is pretty much communistic in any event (double :^) ).

The Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt looks at Clayton Patterson, who moved from Calgary to New York a generation ago and who chronicled the subcultures of his Lower East Side neighbourhood, incurring the enmity of the authorities in the process.

From Judith Timson's column in the Globe and Mail:

Have we had enough yet?

Enough of the macabre and heretofore unthinkable details of the stabbing, decapitation and defiling of Tim McLean, the 22-year-old carnival worker who lost his life on a Winnipeg-bound Greyhound bus last week when a man apparently went berserk and - well, I'm going to try not to repeat the details.

It now makes me nauseous to read them, let alone regurgitate them.

Yet since news of the murder first leaked out last week, I've mentioned "beheading," "stabbing" and even "eating the corpse" in conversation with friends and family, as if I were reading aloud from a Hannibal Lecter novel and not passing the time of day.

From the NYT:

WANT to buy a newspaper company? No? You’re in good company.

The Chicago Sun-Times is the kind of trophy that once appealed to deep-pocketed buyers. It has a big audience in a big market, a storied name, and stars like Roger Ebert and Robert Novak. The Sun-Times Media Group, owner of the flagship paper and dozens of smaller suburban papers, said in February that it wanted to sell assets or maybe the entire company. The chief executive, Cyrus F. Freidheim Jr., said May 8 that “a large number of parties” had asked to see the books, and that the company expected to field offers by the end of that month.

Since then, silence.

This is no isolated case. While all publicly traded newspaper companies have seen their share prices fall in the last year — drops of 50 to 70 percent are commonplace — some have tumbled so far that any number of bargain hunters could snap up a controlling interest, despite the credit squeeze. But they haven’t.

PS: On July 21, the New York Observer asked: Black and white, red all over -- Is 2008 the Worst Year in Modern Newspaper History? (seen at The Tyee)

U.S. citizen interest in politics is up in this election year, but some mainstream media outlets aren't finding their own audience metrics rising as a result.

From Saturday's Globe and Mail:

CanWest Global Communications Inc. [CGS-T] chief executive officer Leonard Asper, faced with a plunge in the value of the media company his father founded, is exploring a range of options that include taking the company private as the stock hovers at a 16-year low, sources said.

While researching the post below, I came across an older post of mine: CBC wants its lockout bloggers to use a digital eraser.

Here's an excerpt from that Oct. 5, 2005 missive:

According to a post by TorStar's Zerby, the memorandum of understanding between the Canadian Media Guild and the CBC includes purging any "negative references and material related to the work stoppage from web sites, podcasts, blogging etc. consistent with the CBCand CMG accepted journalistic standards."

Lockout? What lockout?

Tod Maffin, the guy behind CBC Unplugged, doesn't sound like he wants to be a team player about this in his post I will NOT erase history:

Click on the link to Maffin's stirring post and tell me what happens. :)

Addendum

Here is a link to a post allegedly replicating the text of what Maffin wrote back then. Somebody was on this notion back in January.

For the record, I count myself as neutral towards Tod Maffin. I've never met the guy and bear him no personal ill will. I just found it amusing that after such an unambiguous and defiant headline, his blog and posting would disappear.

For those who do personally dislike Mr. Maffin, if you are moved to comment, please do so with a real name. I've approved two anonymous comments, but that's as far as I'll go. Cheap-shotting people from the shadows is not cool.

I was wondering if Ouimet was around to comment on this stunning revelation (that actually surfaced on Thursday), but then I found out The Tea Makers blog has been resurrected by a "THE" fake Ouimet.

I'm having a quick beer on Queen St. W. The bartender, upon learning I'm a journalist, asked if I'd been out covering Caribana.

"No, I'm an online journalist," I told her. "We sit in the dark and wait for all the troubles of the world to come to us."

In that sense, I told her our jobs were very similar.

She laughed. :)

Geoffrey York, the Globe and Mail's China correspondent, has a sobering article on how seriously China takes winning gold at the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing -- and the price that some are paying.

But apparently not available online at globeandmail.com.

Pity.

Addendum

An earlier version of this post had Ms. Southey's first name spelled incorrectly. It has since been corrected.

China's President Hu Jintao held a news conference with foreign journalists -- his first newser in six years. The news conference was by invitation only, and questions had to be submitted in advance.

Sounds like Canadian national political reporters could have felt right at home. :)

Maclean's has reported on what it says is a push by some Islamic countries to control negative talk about Islam and Muslims.

Barbara Amiel wrote the following in the current Maclean's:

What does it matter if one well-off elderly white woman with too many pairs of expensive shoes now finds her social life largely limited to visiting her dearly missed husband in a U.S. federal correctional institution.

My headline summarizes my feelings about that sentence. :)

From the Guardian:

China has lifted blocks on long-barred websites for journalists after coming under fire over censorship.

I brought you the following yesterday: Boring Britney.

Apparently, there was a meeting in Los Angeles yesterday. One city councillor wants a crackdown on paparazzi. He's furious after learning that the city spent $25,000 on policing to escort Britney Spears to the hospital earlier this year when she had her breakdown.

L.A. Police Chief William Bratton had this to say:

"If you notice, since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving; Paris is out of town not bothering anybody any more, thank God, and evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don't seem to have much of an issue," he told KNBC-TV.

From the July 31 Globe and Mail:

When a guy dressed in a beaver suit can arrive on a Vancouver street corner and score some heroin within minutes, it highlights a serious problem in the city. So says the program director of a local radio station whose morning show performed the bit live on the air.

Early Thursday afternoon, I walked by the Stem for the first time in about a month.

I'd hoped for breakfast, but I saw a sign saying closed for renovations.

The Stem needs renovating?!?! Are menu changes in the mix too? Are they planning to take the Stem Club off the menu?

Who's next? The Vesta? The Only?

As an aside, I've always been amused by the Vesta's slogan: "Reputable since 1955."

But in 1954 or earlier, stay away. :)

Two teenage girls along with two guys are walking in my nabe about 12:25 a.m. One calls her mother to give an update.

TG1: My mother's with her boyfriend. I swear she's more wrecked than I am.

TG2: I passed out before 11. I vomited.