The Globe and Mail, Canada's premier newspaper, is looking to shed bodies in an attempt to slice operating costs. The move is being blamed on a moribund advertising climate.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University has devoted the winter issue of the Nieman Report to examining the digital road ahead for journalism.

From the introduction by editor Melissa Lutke:

We live in a time when President-Elect Barack Obama breaks news on his Web site’s newsroom blog, speaks to the nation through YouTube, and invites everyone to share ideas on change.gov. At the same time, newsrooms confront the reality of a broken business model, and journalists search for direction in this new territory as they seek to reset the bearing of what “true north” means. In this issue, neuroscientists and social media analysts, digital journalism entrepreneurs and newsroom reporters and editors, explore how the best of what journalism can be can find a home in the era of digital media.

There appears to be a wealth of interesting reading here.

From the BBC:

Police say Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickramatunga was shot by unidentified gunmen on motorcycles as he drove to work in the city suburbs.

He died from head wounds after nearly three hours of surgery, doctors say.

Correspondents say Mr Wickramatunga had numerous run-ins with the government. It is the second major attack on the media in Sri Lanka this week.

On Tuesday, gunmen armed with grenades ransacked offices of the largest private TV broadcaster in the country.

Journalists in Sri Lanka have suffered a string of recent attacks and media freedom groups say intimidation and violence make it one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to report.

From the Globe and Mail:

A Canadian woman has launched a lawsuit against Google Inc., demanding that the company reveal the identity of the people she says posted offensive statements about her on a blog hosted by the U.S. technology titan.

Liskula Cohen, a 36-year-old fashion model who appeared on the covers of the Australian Vogue and W magazines in the early 1990s, wants Google to hand over the name of the anonymous blogger who posted a series of unflattering photos and comments about her using the company's Blogger publishing service.

The lawsuit has turned Ms. Cohen into an instant Internet celebrity as details of her ordeal began to emerge this week. However, legal experts in the United States say she may have a difficult time making her case.

Her complaint relates to a series of posts made in August, 2008 on the “Skanks in NYC” blog.

Jeffrey Simpson wrote in the Globe and Mail that Canada's prospects are tied to the U.S.'s fortunes.

Well, China will have a significant influence over the U.S.'s destiny by deciding whether or not to keep feeding America's debt habit.

In an interview with Fortune magazine, Google CEO Eric Schmidt professes concern for the state of the U.S. newspaper industry.

Dan Froomkin at the Neiman Watchdog Blog offers some suggestions on how Google can help:

The Atlantic explores the issue of whether the Great Grey Lady could just up and financially collapse, and if so, what that might mean to American journalism.

I sent out a message on Twitter saying I was working on a piece on Canadian journalism in 2008.

I received the following tweet (actually, the only response) by @jayrosen_nyu on Jan. 1: "Small case study in Harper's suspension of Parliament. Who explained it best across the press and blogosphere?"

This is as much a master's thesis as it is a blog post. :)

But I'm going to attempt to tackle it and examine the issue of how the media should apply those lessons to political coverage in 2009.

You can see this evolve in real time, so pitch in some thoughts, if you wish Updated Jan. 11.

I've rounded up some other news about journalism and the news in Canada in 2008.

From the BBC (Jan. 2):

The authorities in Vietnam have sacked the editors of the country's two largest pro-reform newspapers.

Nguyen Cong Khe and Le Hoang were ousted months after two of their journalists went on trial over coverage of a government corruption scandal.

Correspondents say the two papers concerned - Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre -have taken a leading role in exposing allegations of official corruption.

Vietnam has recently toughened reporting restrictions.

From the BBC:

Somali kidnappers have released a British journalist and Spanish photographer, according to officials.

   more »

Margaret Wente wrote some stuff on global warming in her Globe and Mail column on good news for 2009 that I can only describe as breathtakingly ignorant.

Think you can make better news decisions than the tall foreheads running the Toronto Star?

Public editor Kathy English would like you to take a 10-question news judgment quiz that seems to be ripped right from the year's headlines.

The shovelware version has some comments attached.

Andrew Coyne, quite likely in response to Jeffrey Simpson's annual mea culpa in the Globe and Mail, used to write a witty year-ender in which he would highlight all the things he got right.

I checked at macleans.ca and didn't see such an effort for this past year yet, but he'll have a tough time explaining away this May 14 headline:

Why the public might buy into a carbon tax

Oopsie. :)

Via Twitter:

KathySierra RT @billbrandon: Sometimes the meme content in tweets is so lightweight and numerous, it's like being stoned to death with popcorn.

Margaret Wente and Jeffrey Simpson revisit their records over the past 12 months.

From the Globe and Mail:

Normally, the press stands apart from mass adulation. Not so with Mr. Obama. A recent report in The Washington Post read like a mash note from a teenager. The article had a picture of the Lightworker, shirtless, and commented: “… he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions.” I beg to differ. Pass the defibrillator, now.

The reporter/disciple was, however, just warming up. Next he galloped off into territory left unexplored even in chicklit: “The sun glinted off chiselled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”

If this guy gives up the politics beat, there are a hundred massage parlours out there thirsty for this kind of copy. This is The Washington Post, remember. Has the financial crisis tipped the collective media mind into entertainment reporting mode?

I'm hate making predictions, but I will venture that the level of Obama-mania in the United States media will subside in the next 12 months, if it doesn't turn into a full backlash.

Obama seems to be a remarkably skilled (even gifted) politician, but he's still a human being. After Jan. 20, he will have to start implementing decisions, and he will have to decide who to betray and what promises to break (hey, that's politics).

As soon as the media decides that the Lightworker is a fallible human politician after all, the hyperbole will start working against Obama, just as it is working for him now.

Addendum

So I just went back to the original W-P story published Dec. 24: As duties weigh Obama down, his faith in fitness only increases, by Eli Saslow.

It was essentially a soft feature about how important staying in shape is to Obama. Yes, the prose was a little purple off the top (that's the snippet Murphy chose), but overall, it's a pretty good yarn.

From Six Pixels of Separation:

We no longer have a twenty-four news cycle. Something happens in the world (Mumbai, Gaza, or that someone was involved in a plane crash) and somebody, somewhere is informing the world through text, images, audio and even video within sixty seconds. What does the news and media industry look like now? Media empires are going to look very different in the coming months and years as we quickly shift into this Sixty Second News Cycle. It's no longer about which outlet breaks the new or how fast, it's going to be about how well they can report on something that everybody has already seen. By the time it takes a news outlet to produce a TV news segment, record some audio for radio or draft up a newspaper article, that news item has not only moved on, but it has already been replaced - countless times - by more and more news. Publishing online is fast and free.

We are inches away from the real-time news cycle.

The flow of the news is only increasing. It is hyper-local and global at the same time. News from your backyard is at your fingertips at the exact same speed as news from across the globe. How advertising is bought, sold and displayed is going to have to adjust. The longer, more thought-out and verified stories are going to have to mingle with the 140 character blasts. It's not going to stop. It's only going to increase.

I left the following comment:

Tabatha Southey takes note of how real news this holiday season may pushed out the traditional service journalism that prevails at this time of year -- and the consequences that may have flowed from that.

Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, on what he's learned over the past year by operating his themediamanager blog.

Here's my take on the significant events and trends in Canadian journalism over the past 12 months, ranked in hierarchical order of importance.

China has chugged along with growth of at least 10 per cent. But it needs eight per cent growth just to absorb growth in the labour force, so with five per cent growth a possibility in 2009, social unrest could loom.

John Cruickshank promises the Toronto Star will renew its historic mission under his watch as publisher.

Here's a CTV.ca feature I wrote: Economy in 2008: A stunning reversal of fortunes.

It outlines how differently this year ended compared to Dec. 31, 2007, and wraps up what happened in between.

Here's some other stuff I culled from other news stories.