Author Chris Mooney, writing in the Washington Post, dissects those who would claim that global warming has stopped or that scientists were hysterical about "global cooling" in the 1970s.

The Globe and Mail's Graeme Smith has a very disheartening story about the pervasive narco-corruption that reaches into Afghanistan's government -- a situation that only benefits drug dealers and the Taliban.

J-prof Kelly Toughill thinks the up-to-date online skills of new journalism grads -- plus their willingness to work cheap -- are edges in this extremely tough job market.

She also plugs the overall value of a journalism education.

Lawrence Martin calls for Canadian journalists to show some Jon Stewart-style outrage.

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen believes that Jon Stewart's run at CNBC was unfair. However, there is a certain Swiss-cheesy quality to his argument.

From AP via CTV.ca:

Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, called comedian Jon Stewart's attacks on business network CNBC "incredibly unfair."

At a media conference Wednesday in New York, Zucker said the "Daily Show" host's recent criticisms of CNBC, its "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer and business media in general were "completely out of line."

Stewart has had strong words for CNBC on his Comedy Central show, arguing that journalists who cover Wall Street should have done more to warn of the financial meltdown through critical reporting, instead of acting like market cheerleaders.

Zucker said while interviewed on a stage by BusinessWeek that while "everyone wants to find a scapegoat," to suggest that the business media or CNBC was responsible for the economic meltdown is "absurd."

A Comedy Central spokeswoman said the channel had no comment.

Let's hope this broadside leads to fairer satire in the future.

Globe and Mail deputy editor Sylvia Stead and media reporter Grant Robertson made themselves available for an online chat on Tuesday. Some excerpts and observations:

National Post comment editor Jonathan Kay says the only real reason to keep the CBC going is to preserve and promote intellectual elitism across this great land of ours.

Heritage Minister James Moore has put a number on possible job losses at the CBC,  and it ain't pretty.

The U.S. Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual report on Monday -- The State of the News Media. And it is a very sobering read.

New York University j-prof Clay Shirky wrote a blog posting on Friday that's been getting a lot of attention. In it, he posits the question of whether the current spasms rattling the news industry, primarily newspapers, is similar to the disruption seen after the invention of the printing press.

Given that the strategies the newspaper industry had for coping with the Internet have proven to be spectacularly wrong or inadequate, that leaves the unthinkable.

From AP via globeandmail.com:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city since logs slid down its steep streets to the harbour and miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska's gold fields, will print its final edition Tuesday.

Hearst Corp., which owns the 146-year-old P-I, said Monday that it failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for a 60-day sale in January after years of losing money. Now the P-I will shift entirely to the Web.

From CP via globeandmail.com:

The spectre of ads on CBC Radio is being raised as the public broadcaster meets behind closed doors to discuss its funding woes.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting say the controversial tactic is just one of the harsh choices being considered as the CBC wrestles with a way to cope with the slumping economy in the next fiscal year. ...

In a speech to the Empire Club of Canada last week, CBC President Hubert Lacroix said several measures were being considered, including “increasing the advertising we accept on the air.”

I have some other, related stuff inside.

From The Globe and Mail:

Eating fish has always been touted as an excellent dietary source of protein, with Health Canada's food guide recommending everyone eat two servings a week. The recent craze over the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish has only added to the allure.

But is eating fish the best choice for health and the planet?

Although negative views about fish consumption are almost never expressed, a group of medical and fisheries experts is making an argument against eating the seafood in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In an analysis being released Tuesday, they say that the purported benefits of fish for such things as cardiovascular health have been overstated, while the growing demand among health aficionados for the food is destroying global fish stocks.

“The public view is that fish are good for you. There is plenty of it and let's go for it,” said David Jenkins, a nutrition professor at the University of Toronto and lead author of the journal article. “I don't think either of those views should be as strongly held as they are.”

From Saturday's Globe and Mail:

Is democracy written in disappearing ink?

Main story. Starts off by looking at the potential demise of the San Francisco Chronicle, which would leave San Fran as the first major U.S. city without a daily newspaper.

Operation rescue

A sidebar on new business models.

Team of rivals

Some new organizations trying to ensure the survival of serious public-interest journalism.

Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown dissects why Jon Stewart's epic takedown of financial pundit Jim Cramer resonated.

CTV's Paul Workman writes that murdered Afghan journalist Javed 'Jojo' Yazamy -- a freelance CTV cameraman and 'fixer' in Afghanistan -- lived those words until bullets cut him down in Kandahar city on Tuesday.

For background, until he became Washington bureau chief, Workman had been South Asia bureau chief and one of our main correspondents in Afghanistan (I work for CTV.ca News).

From AP via CTV.ca:

Jon Stewart hammered Jim Cramer and his network, CNBC, in their anticipated face-off on "The Daily Show," repeatedly chastising the "Mad Money" host for putting entertainment above journalism.

"I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a ... game," Stewart told Cramer, adding in an expletive during the show's Thursday taping. The episode aired at 11 p.m. ET on The Comedy Network and 12:00 a.m. on CTV in Canada.

• Watch on CTV News Video Player

It was perhaps the hardest lashing Stewart has given to a TV commentator since 2004 when he called Tucker Carlson and his then co-host Paul Begala "partisan hacks" on CNN's "Crossfire," the since cancelled political commentary program.

I will try to find time to say something about this tonight, but here's some tweets I made this morning:

A meeting of the world's climate scientists, designed to bring everyone up to speed on advances in research since the 2007 IPCC report, finds that things are bleaker than that report found.