Maureen Dowd has acknowledged inadvertently lifting a sentence from a Joshua Micah Marshall blog post at Talking Points Memo, but her explanation is a strange one, to say the least.

   more »

This image captured by Hubert Van Es ensures him a place among the immortals of photojournalism:

Van Es died Friday in Hong Kong at age 67.

On April 29, 2005, I made the following post: 'Thirty Years at 300 millimetres.' It was a commentary by Van Es in the New York Times explaining one of the main misconceptions about the photo.

   more »

Margaret Wente opined on the eternal battle between optimists and pessimists. In this column lie some observations about journalists and entrepreneurs.

   more »

Sometimes, The Globe and Mail editorial board hits the nail on the head on journalistic issues (which makes up for its incoherence on climate change policy, but I'm trying to be nice here).

It certainly did with this riposte to our esteemed former prime minister.

   more »

From Lawrence Martin's column in The Globe and Mail:

In the business of politics, cheap stuff works. Behold Rubygate. That this piece of tabloid titillation about an unimportant backbencher got more coverage than the sudden resignation, with its surrounding intrigue and major ramifications, of the all-powerful Clerk of the Privy Council speaks volumes about us in the media. We defended the coverage by saying, "Oh, but there is keen public interest," forgetting to mention that we generated that public interest in the first place by overplaying the story.

From The Globe and Mail:

Brian Mulroney's voice cracked yesterday as he spoke about the impact that allegations against him have had on his family, a show of emotion he later said was triggered by the sight of giggling reporters.

In a press release posted on mulroneymediaroom.com - a website created by the Navigator public relations firm, which he has hired - he singled out CBC producer Harvey Cashore and Globe and Mail reporter Greg McArthur.

"They were carrying on like a pair of school children," Mr. Mulroney was quoted as saying on the website. "It just got to me."

Mr. Cashore and Mr. McArthur have been nominated for journalism awards in the past for stories about the cash payments Mr. Mulroney received from Karlheinz Schreiber that are now the subject of the public inquiry. ...

Both journalists vehemently denied laughing. Other journalists who were within a few feet of the two reporters supported their denials.

Robin Sears, the son of former Toronto Star journalist Val Sears, is now a Mulroney flak. He had this to say: "I've got pictures, but I didn't get them precisely at the moment of giggle."

Addendum

At various other points in his Oliphant testimony, Mulroney has railed about Stevie Cameron (author of the bestselling On The Take, Blue Trust and co-author of The Last Amigo with Cashore) and the CBC. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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.

   more »

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.

   more »

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

   more »

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.

   more »

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.

   more »

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.

   more »