From the (April 1) Guardian:

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink

• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters

While 2008 and 2009 are the high-water marks in terms of anni horribli for the U.S. newspaper industry, the same ain't necessarily so across Europe, where some publishers have been more creative about business problem-solving. For example, the news is free, but people pay for related services.

From AP via nytimes.com (posted March 29):

The Huffington Post said Sunday that it would bankroll a group of investigative journalists and make the nation’s economy an initial priority for coverage.

The Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to create the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, with an initial budget of $1.75 million.

That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate coverage with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post.

Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said.

From the NYT:

Maybe once a year, a city has a news day as heavy as the one that just hit Detroit: The White House forced out the chairman of General Motors, word leaked that the administration wanted Chrysler to hitch its fortunes to Fiat, and Michigan State University’s men’s basketball team reached the Final Four, which will be held in Detroit.

All of this news would have landed on hundreds of thousands of Motor City doorsteps and driveways on Monday morning, in the form of The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News.

Would have, that is, except that Monday — of all days — was the long-planned first day of the newspapers’ new strategy for surviving the economic crisis by ending home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Instead, on those days, they are directing readers to their Web sites and offering a truncated print version at stores, newsstands and street boxes.

“This morning, I felt like something was missing,” said Nancy Nester, 51, a program coordinator at a traumatic brain injury center who is from West Bloomfield and has subscribed to both papers for four years. “There was this feeling of emptiness.”

She did not even bother to pick up the condensed print versions that were offered free on Monday. “I don’t have time to stop at the store,” she said. “That’s why I have home delivery.”

The Smoking Gun reports that Vince Shlomi, the ShamWow pitchman, got arrested last month in Miami after picking up a prostitute who bit his tongue and wouldn't let go, necessitating a vigorous physical response from Mr. Shlomi in an attempt to free himself.

And please, figure out ways to make your lifestyle a less carbon-intensive one on a daily basis.

New York University professor Jay Rosen has collated some of the best essays out on the Web right now about journalism and the state of the U.S. newspaper industry.

You can find them in this PressThink blog posting.

Ian Brown and Margaret Wente both kick the tires on Twitter. Brown's look-over is more existential, while Wente displays her usual snark.

Russell Smith loves the texture of a newspaper in the morning, so it pains him that the end of the newspaper era appears to be looming.

The CBC will cut a total of 80 news jobs across its English language services, part of 393 to be chopped. Those are part of 800 jobs to be chopped across the entire corporation.

I got to go to the budget lockup and cover the budget for ctvtoronto.ca. Here's what I came up with (the video reports of my CTV Toronto colleagues Paul Bliss and John Musselman, CTV News' John Vennavally-Rao and BNN's Amanda Lang are attached, along with some raw vid):

Ontario posting $57 billion in deficits over 7 years (main)

Duncan defends budget as 'serious undertaking' (political reaction)

GTA to see tax credits, funding for infrastructure (Toronto-centric)

In the area of commentary, here's the Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski:

McGuinty finds (Flaherty's) religion

And here's the Toronto Star's Jim Coyle:

McGuinty will thrive or die on this budget

If someone comes across some solid citizen commentary that does more than just regurgitate the talking points of whichever party they happen to support, I'd love to read them. Please shoot me a link.

A final cheery thought for tonight. Excerpts from John Ibbitson's column on whether the Obama administration's economic policies could make the current crisis worse.

From the BBC:

Unidentified gunmen have shot dead the editor of a newspaper in India's north-eastern Assam state, police say.

Anil Mazumder, editor of the Assamese daily Aji (Today), was attacked by armed men when he was returning home in the state capital, Guwahati, they said.

The attackers who came in a car shot at Mr Mazumder at point-blank range and fled, a police official said.

Local television channels say Mr Mazumder was sympathetic to the separatist movement in Assam.

The murder has caused widespread panic in the state as the campaign for the forthcoming parliamentary elections is just beginning.

Pain announcement day at the CBC. :(

From the BBC:

Rising violence in South Asia is putting journalists at "severe risk", a US-based media human rights group says.

The Committee to Protect Journalists lists nations where reporters are regularly attacked or killed.

In the committee's list of 14 leading countries where the authorities had failed to solve murders of journalists, six were in South Asia.

This year has seen the high-profile murders of a Sri Lankan editor and a Nepal radio journalist.

The committee's report says attacks on reporters have increased in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, while Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and India also all appear on its "impunity index" of 14 countries.

Here's the report: Getting away with murder 2009

Iraq remains the worst place for journos -- 88 unsolved murders in a pop. of 29.5 million.

From the BBC:

Harakah and Suara Keadilan have been told they cannot publish for the next three months, with immediate effect.

It comes a week before the expected designation of a new and controversial prime minister, Najib Razak, and two weeks before important by-elections.

Analysts say the government, which has faced strong opposition challenges, is increasingly intolerant of criticism. ...

Harakah and Suara Keadilan are the main publications of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and the People's Justice Party, which belong to a three-party opposition alliance that has made major inroads against the ruling National Front coalition in the past year.

Carbondale, Col. lost its newspaper. So some townspeople banded together to replace it, with many offering volunteer labour. However, the only paid staffer is wondering how sustainable such an operation can be.

GlobalPost.com hopes to fill the the gap in international coverage being created by the retrenchment of newspapers and hopes to do so at a profit.

I was a lazy blogger on Thursday and Friday, so I'm making this post a note-to-self on some of the CBC news that went on late last week.

NYT public editor Clark Hoyt scolds the paper for continually breaking its own rules on anonymous sources.

The Toronto Star's David Olive admits he and his fellow business journalists weren't skeptical enough about the forces driving the real estate and stock market booms that preceded the drastic economic collapse we're currently enduring.

But I'm left without any sense as to how greater journalistic vigilance could have helped, except to encourage individual investors to start rowing to shore.