In his new film The Girlfriend Experience, director Stephen Soderbergh cast an actor from the adult side of the business - Sasha Grey.

According to Gawker, Soderbergh explained the decision thusly to the Wall Street Journal:

"It's so mainstream now.... When you look at people who are transmitting the news to you on television they all look like they're in porn, the way they're coiffed. It's really crazy. There's this like hyper-grooming thing going on now, men and women.

Gawker decided to run with it. It put up a gallery of 16 photos -- eight people from the porn side of the equation, eight from U.S. TV.

Check the comparisons out here.

Federic Filloux, Paris-based editor with the Norwegian group Schibsted, passed along these points to some j-students in Paris.

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The NYT offers up a May 6 article on the basics of Twittering, and one on how the wunderkind social messaging platform appears to be losing steam.

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Some stuff that I deemed worthy of 'starring' today on Twitter.

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From the Financial Times: (seen via Twitter)

News Corp is planning to introduce micro-payments for individual articles and premium subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal’s website this year, in a milestone in the news industry’s race to find better online business models.

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The NYT's Frank Rich sums up developments in American newspaper journalism and ends with a warning that if we want good journalism, we're going to have to pay for it.

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From the May 9 Toronto Star:

Toronto Star Editor Michael Cooke has announced a series of newsroom changes that emphasize local news coverage and more closely align the Star's newspaper and website, thestar.com.

Associate editor Lynn McAuley, who takes charge of the Star's daytime news operation, has also been handed the task of newspaper and website reorganization.

"She has been tasked with masterminding a huge restructuring that will enable us to put more stories and multimedia online faster and smarter while strengthening the newspaper," Cooke told staff in a notice announcing the changes, which have taken effect.

Alison Uncles takes charge of the features team while Graham Parley becomes the city editor.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism found H1N1/swine flu to be number one with a bullet for the week of April 27 - May 3.

But Toronto Star public editor Kathy English thought her paper handled the news tsunami well.

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Why very, thank you very much.

Now allow me to elucidate.

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Since its last full update in 2001, the CBC Journalistic Standards and Practices code has been rendered out of date in part by the rise of the social web.

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From The Globe and Mail:

CBC Radio veteran Jennifer McGuire has finally officially been handed the title of general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News.

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Under threat of closure, the Boston Globe's unions blinked -- or so it appears. A deal on concessions has been reached, but now the rank-and-file must cast their votes.

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Programmer Seth Finkelstein thinks Twitter is an empty cool kid's club. He may have a point.

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From a May 4 NYT article on high-functioning alcoholics:

In some cases, the culture of the workplace fosters high-functioning alcoholism. Abusive drinking was once commonplace among journalists, who had “liquid lunches” and frequently met for drinks after work. When work and social lives blend, excessive drinking may be considered part of the job.

The article also had this rationalization:

As the writer Pete Hamill said in his memoir, “A Drinking Life,” “If I was able to function, to get the work done, there was no reason to worry about drinking. It was part of living, one of the rewards.”

I wonder if anyone's done formal research on whether the propensity to overly refresh has gone down in the business. I can't think of very many people who have serious alcohol or substance abuse problems these days.

From AP via globeandmail.com:

As U.S. President Barack Obama passed his 100th day in office last week, two studies judged that the news media has given him more coverage, and more positive coverage, than his two predecessors at the same point in their terms.

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From The Globe and Mail:

Reporters won the right Monday to live-blog and send instant news stories from their handheld devices during the trial of Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien.

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Don Newman, who has been covering national politics for more than 40 years, will step down as host of CBC Newsworld's Politics show when the current season ends in June.

The tributes are already flowing.

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A storied name in American newspapers may soon be carved into a tombstone in the U.S. media graveyard.

The New York Times Co. may file federal notice today that it intends to shut down the Boston Globe, a famous American newspaper but one projected to lose US$85 million this year.

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Stuart McLean of CBC Radio's The Vinyl Cafe  (b. April 19, 1948, according to Wikipedia) proclaims his love for newspapers and says his 92-year-old dad loves them too.

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Stephen Ward, director of the centre for journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's school of journalism and mass communications, argues that ethics is the only thing that defines a journalist.

The craft must not sacrifice ethics on the alters of changing business models and emerging technologies, he argues.

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The most famous one from that seminal 1972 film is "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

But I like this one from Michael Corleone to his brother-in-law Carlo when trying to elicit a confession that Carlo set up Sonny Corleone (Michael's older brother) to be killed: