By Geoffrey Baum: A message from USC Annenberg Journalism School director Geneva Overholser: Thank you for your interest in OJR. The fast-moving changes in digital media are more compelling every day, and they remain an important area of focus for the USC Annenberg School for Communication. We are committed to keeping the archives of OJR available online and are exploring ways to continue the School's efforts to increase understanding about the revolutionary transformation of news and information.

By Robert Niles: After a decade, the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication has suspended publication of OJR. One of OJR's goals over the years has been to help mid-career journalists make a successful transition from other media to online reporting and production. I'm pleased to say that USC Annenberg will continue to provide support in that area, through the Knight Digital Media Center. I encourage OJR readers to click over to the KDMC website and its blogs, if you are not already a regular reader there. I am hopeful that OJR will continue to live at the KDMC, and that the publication might be revived under the KDMC's blogs. The decision to suspend OJR for now means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com. I hope that many of you will click over and visit me there. Finally, on behalf of OJR, I want to thank you. Thank you for your readership, tips, corrections, kind words and support. And I want to wish you success as you work to build engaging, informative and sustainable websites, to better serve your audiences. So... in that spirit, I suppose that I will borrow a classic sign-off from the world of journalism, one that's been borrowed by another recently: Good night, and good luck.

By Robert Niles: The past decade has brought the journalism industry some of its darkest moments. On the business side, management teams that grew used to local monopolies could not react swiftly enough to protect their market share as thousands of online competitors emerged. Revenue tanked, readership declined and layoffs became a seasonal task at many newspapers. On the editorial side, many newsrooms blew or missed one major story after another, from the Whitewater "scandal," hitting the snooze button on the global warming alarm, the emergence of al Qaeda before 9/11, the Bush administration's phony case for war in Iraq, to the abandonment of mortgage lending standards that inflated a housing bubble. But not every news organization blew it. Indeed, as journalism has suffered some of its darkest moments over the past decade, a few news organizations stand apart for their bright triumphs. On the Washington beat, perhaps no single news organization so often has gotten the story right as the McClatchy Washington bureau. From providing one of the few domestic voices to consistently challenge the Bush administration's bogus claims before the Iraq War (The New Yorker being another), to dogging the administration over the politicalization of the U.S. Justice Department, the bureau, and its website, www.mcclatchydc.com have become the must-click destination for readers thirsty for clear, accurate, spin-free reporting. The bureau will publish this weekend an in-depth investigation of the situation at Guantanamo Bay, where the United States has been holding alleged terrorists, in violation of due process rights, according to a Supreme Court ruling this week. I spoke with McClatchy Washington Bureau Web editor Jim Van Nostrand by phone this week, and asked him why McClatchy's had such success, and why the bureau took the unusual step of launching its own, stand-alone website. An edited transcript of our conversations follows.

By Robert Niles: OJR now allows its registered members to maintain individual blogs on OJR. Just click the "Post Blog Entry" link near the top of the right navigation rail to get started. OJR's editors and I will read all the submissions, then select ones to go on the OJR front page feed. You can find links to all the most recent reader-submitted blog entries under the "Recent Blogs" header on the right rail. You can start a free blog just about anywhere on the Web, from Blogger.com and beyond. And many of you likely already have a blog. So why would you post anything on OJR? It's simple: for the readers. A front-page post on OJR will reach several thousand readers via the website, our e-mail newsletter and RSS feeds. OJR readers aren't your average Web surfers, either. They include editors, entrepreneurs and bloggers at many top newspaper and independent news websites. So, if you want to draw the industry's attention to some really neat new work from your shop, you want to comment on something you've seen in the industry that's bugging you, or you want to rant or rave about a new tool or widget you've tried, we think OJR provides a pretty good platform for you to do that.

By Tom Grubisich: The headline on the Wall Street Journal story about the Washington Post's widely watched venture in local-local journalism on the Web was unambiguous: "Big Daily's Hyperlocal Flop." So how bad actually is LoudounExtra.com? Let's look. On the LoudounExtra homepage, I am greeted with this above-the-fold spread: My squinting eyes try to read the reverse-type blurb, but before I can finish, a new image/blurb is automatically rotated in the space. After figuring out how to retrieve the original blurb, I pull up the story. Big mistake.

By Eric Ulken: Which campaign will get to 270 in November, and how will they do it? The L.A. Times has built an interactive map that allows readers to create and test their own electoral vote scenarios, and then embed those scenarios in their own sites. (Sample after the jump.) We're hoping to improve on this as the campaign heats up, perhaps adding demographic info and data on past elections by state. Would love to hear suggestions.

By Robert Niles: For this week's discussion question, I'd like to hear about the academic preparation OJR readers had for their career. Obviously, being housed and paid for by the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California, OJR's not exactly a neutral forum for this question. One might suspect that we'd have a larger-than-expected number of j-school folk hanging around here. But we do get a fair number of readers who did not come up through the traditional journalism ranks. So perhaps that will even things out a bit. Follow the headline link to vote, and to see the results. Then, in the comments, we'd love to hear your thoughts on journalism school. Let's give some advice to the students, and prospective students, reading OJR. Is a j-school degree necessary, or even helpful, to writing or publishing online? If you don't have a j-school degree, do you wish you did? And if you do, do you now wish you'd majored in something else?

By Chris Jennewein: In architecture, less is more, and the same appears to be true for video news gathering. The simple Flip Video camcorder heralds a time when every journalist carries a video camera. I bought a Flip Video camcorder for my wife for mother's day. At under $150, it was a bargain. But the primary motivation was having a camera she sould depend upon. Our simple DV camcorder took great video, but seemed to always need charging, or a new tape, and thus wasn't available at the spur of the moment.

By Robert Niles: My friend Sree Sreenivasan asked members an online journalism e-mail list for reaction to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's interview with the Washington Post, published this morning. Specifically, Sree asked for reactions to this statement from Ballmer: "In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down -- my opinion. Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form." Okay. Here goes...

By Robert Niles: ... the industry has a problem. You'd think that journalists would be the biggest news hounds around. For the most part, you'd be right. I was talking with some of my Annenberg colleagues at a journalism conference last month, and one asked how many hours a day we each spent reading and watching the news, whether in print, online or on TV. The consensus? About four to five hours a day. But there is one exception to this potential rule: Many journalists despise TV news. They hate watching it, they hate producing it, and, given the opportunity, they turn it off and ignore it. My journalism students this semester went off on this topic in class one day, raging about the rigid format, the simplistic reporting and cynicism that they found in TV news reports. The message that I heard from my students is similar to the one I've heard from people I have met in dozens of online communities - they are fed up with traditional journalism narratives and conventions, especially ones that emphasize conflict without resolution.

By Geoff Rynex: Geoff Dougherty had had enough. No more working hard to uncover a story, sometimes for a year, only to have it pulled at the last minute. No more bosses. No more corporate interests getting in the way of solid investigative journalism. No more Chicago Tribune. After more than a decade in the mainstream media, Dougherty decided to call it quits at the Tribune last Novembver and start up his own news organization. The website he created took the name of a legendary Chicago paper: the Daily News. With the Chi-Town Daily News, Dougherty saw an opportunity to do everything he thought the mainstream media was failing to do, especially in the realm of the Internet. "That’s really where the future of the industry lies, so my thought was 'Well, rather than wait around ten years to see how that develops, why not actually be in a position to develop it?'" Dougherty said. In the mainstream media, Dougherty saw a trend of newspapers striving to meet the demands of Wall Street at the expense of the readers and at the cost of quality. He was dismayed to see newsrooms cutting staff and stories in order to maximize profits. "There’s an assumption embedded in that which is that people are so dumb that they’re not going to notice that it’s a worse product," he said. "But that’s clearly not true. They are noticing that it’s a worse product because they’re not buying it anymore." So how will the Daily News revive and innovate the news? Along with a non-profit corporate model run by PublicMedia Inc., of which Dougherty is the CEO, his plan is to include hyper-local coverage reported by citizen-journalists and to spark discussion about local issues on blogs. "To tap into that knowledge base and create a dialogue rather than a one-way flow of information I think is a great and powerful thing," Dougherty said. But Dougherty's website takes advantage of more than just citizen journalism and news blogs. The Daily News hyper-local coverage includes podcasts about Chicago sports teams and the local music scene, RSS feeds, and plans are in the works for a cooking blog. The key to the Daily News’ success however, aside from staying on the cutting edge of media, will be an unusual dedication to local news. Dougherty concedes that papers like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune will keep the market in national and statewide coverage, but believes that the Daily News will become the destination for in-depth local news in Chicago. Dougherty hopes soon to have a dedicated citizen journalist in every neighborhood of the city. "It empowers people to take action to make their lives better and the government more responsive. I think this kind of reporting is the most important kind of reporting we can do."

By Robert Niles: Just curious here, but under what conditions would a professional newsroom ever have need to block its journalists' access to a website? Kevin Roderick details how the Los Angeles Times is blocking newsroom access to certain websites here and here. (On the topic of blocking websites, the state of Kentucky appears to be blocking on state computers liberal websites that have been critical of its GOP governor, too. It's not the news business, but certainly that's a significant and emerging national news story.) Certainly, businesses have the right to control what information its employees access using company property (including computers and networks). And I'll concede that a news business might want to restrict non-editorial employees' access to sites that contain illegal content or services or that promote a hostile work environment. But journalists need access to information. All information. I'd love to hear from OJR readers their experiences with -- and opinions on -- newsroom Web filtering software.

By Micah Ailetcher: New search engine Kosmix.com is taking a different approach to the typical Internet search by categorizing its results. Rather then presenting search results in a standard list form that can be thousands of answers long, the results are organized and sorted into different categories. The goal, according to product manager Mark Johnson, is to provide better answers. By presenting the search results in categories, Johnson feels that they have an advantage by allowing the user "to see the data in a lot of different ways." In this way, they see themselves more as a "compliment to something like Google or Yahoo" rather than a replacement. For example, Kosmix’s U.S. Politics search engine categorizes its results as "Conservative," "Liberal," "Libertarian," or "Political News." The site currently hosts five different search engines: Health, Video Games, Finance, Travel and U.S. Politics. Kosmix started with its Health search engine. A query in this engine, for example, for breast cancer produces results that are identified as "Basic Information," "Expert Information," "Message Boards," "Blogs," "Alternative Medicine" and over a dozen other categories. The right side of the results page presents Websites in the familiar search engine format, which includes the individual Website’s category in Kosmix in addition to the Website’s summary so users will know before they navigate away to a web page whether it is classified as a "Quiz" about breast cancer or as the findings from a "Clinical Trial." On the left side of the results page is a list of links that allows the user to display the search results by a specific category. For example, this can be helpful if a user only needs to view the results for breast cancer that are categorized as "Symptoms." With its patent-pending algorithms, or as Johnson calls it, their "secret juice," Kosmix crawls the web and classifies different sites by the different "signals" that they provide. There is an amount of subjectivity involved in classifying sites as "Liberal" or "Expert Information," but once a classification is made, the algorithm moves on to classify new sites by looking at things such as what classified sites the unclassified site is often linked to. "When you are dealing with a very nuanced subject, like politics, there are always going to be gray areas," Johnson said. These "gray areas" are exactly where Kosmix sees itself coming into play by helping the user to sort out the type of Website that they are looking for in the search stage. "In some cases, the algorithm can do a much better job than we can in figuring out [a Website’s] subtlety," Johnson explained. Kosmix hopes to add more categories to its search results. For the U.S. Politics engine, one consideration is a "Green Party" category. The Video Game and Finance engines are the latest additions to the site, but Kosmix is hoping to add more diversity to their search engines. "The endgame is clear," Johnson said. "The goal is to categorize the entire Internet. Eventually, no matter what query you type in, we will have the categories that are appropriate for it."

By Robert Niles: Deadlines come next week for two major journalism awards. Entrants for the Knight-Batten Awards must get their snail-mailed application to the University of Maryland by June 15. The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism are administered by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. The deadline for the Online News Association's Online Journalism Awards is also June 15, but those entries are submitted online, allowing journalists and extra few days to get their entries together. The Online Journalism Awards are administered by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, which also publishes OJR.

By Cameron Bird: Scott Stevens may be best known (or unknown) as an Idahoan meteorologist turned conspiracy theorist, but his online labor of love, Weather Wars has transformed him into an Internet-stationed social activist. The simply-designed site is a collection of links to news stories and personal entries that revolve around a seemingly fringe message. Stevens’ claim: that The Powers That Be harness the technology to control the world’s climate and with it, are engaging in international warfare. "I’m using the site as a tool to point out the obvious," he said. "I have to present the information in a simple manner because the manipulation of our weather is obvious once you choose to look." Stevens said he doesn’t expect people to take his word for it, but rather, for his claims to trigger a sense of "intellectual curiosity." His own inquisitiveness drove him to quit his day job as a local weatherman last year and commit full-time to research and Webmastering. After this transition, and even more so after he attributed Hurricane Katrina to Japanese weather-manipulation weaponry, Stevens started to turn heads in the media. He’s been a guest on Coast to Coast AM, The O’Reilly Factor and some 30 other shows. He has also been the subject of print media news features. The response of personalities and journalists has been hesitant, he said, but ultimately affirmative. "They’re always a little skeptical at first, but once I give them the clues that I use to follow the rabbit down the hole, then they come out going, 'Oh my, there is something to this.'" Stevens said he hopes to gain as much readership as possible and for believers in his proposed theories to put more pressure on the government to take weather-manipulation seriously. He cited a bill moving its way through Congress that would establish a national weather modification policy without oversight from experts and a realistic view of how advanced the technology currently is. "There are not many topics that affect as many people at the same time as our environment. It’s absolutely essential that if we can control our environment that it’s done for the betterment of mankind ... I suppose I’m the right messenger for the right message," he said.

By Robert Niles: The Guardian reports that the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune has cut a deal with South Korean grassroots journalism site OhMyNews to feature OhMyNews headlines on the IHT website and, possibly in the future, articles in the paper. From the Guardian report:It is not yet clear whether such articles will be treated in a similar manner to those from established news agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press, but sources close to the negotiations believe it is likely that the newspaper itself could run such stories in the near future. OhMyNews claims more than 40,000 contributors and is said to be negotiating syndication deals with other media companies.

By Robert Niles: A California appeals court has overturned a ruling that would have forced bloggers to turn over to Apple Computer the identity of sources that leaked information about upcoming Apple products. The Mercury News provides initial coverage. The court rejected the lower court judge's ruling that California's trade secrets law trumped its shield law, and went further to refuse to draw a distinction between people publishing news via blogs and those who publish in newspapers or on TV. "We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes 'legitimate journalism,'" Justice Conrad Rushing wrote for the court. "The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here. We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news."

By Heather Hart: After seven years online, Grist Magazine is known for its in-depth coverage of environmental issues -- and its tongue-in-cheek humor. Bringing humor to the headlines was "a late-night, fevered, overworked idea, but now it’s kind of become our signature," said David Roberts, a Grist staff writer. Based in Seattle, Washington, Grist began as an alternative to the stuffy sources of environmental news that existed at the time. "There’s just so much bad news and ... fear and angst out there that it causes a lot of people to tune out. A lot of people have actually expressed relief." Roberts started working at Grist nearly three years ago with very little formal training in journalism. He said that helped him bring a fresh perspective to both journalism and environmentalism. "People get stuck in that old-fashioned, formal style of journalism and they can’t see past the inverted pyramid. There’s great value in that kind of traditional journalism, but it just doesn’t always fit with online. Our readers are younger, they skim a lot and have less patience for that," he said. "At Grist, we attempt to balance formality and keeping things sounding personal while still maintaining trust and keeping our facts straight," Roberts said. Roberts spends most of his time working on Gristmill, the site’s blog, but also occasionally contributes stories and columns. Aside from Roberts and "muckraker" columnist Amanda Griscom Little, Grist relies on submissions from freelance writers for much of its content. In just the two years since Roberts started working at Grist, the online magazine has grown by leaps and bounds, doubling their monthly traffic – now about 600,000 visitors a month – and nearly tripling the staff. "We’re trying to speak to a younger generation" in order to get them interested in preserving the environment, Roberts said. Online is the future of the news media, according to Roberts. "All major print media outlets are aggressively moving online. In the next two to three years it looks as though their online operations will be more important than the traditional print medium." Online journalism is still a relatively new and untested medium, Roberts said, so it will still be a long time before it will realize its full potential. In the coming years, he predicts that online journalism will "continue diversifying. It looks as though it will become much more community-based with a lot more multimedia, allowing more interaction from readers and minute-by-minute accounts. Online has the benefit of moving much faster than traditional outlets, even TV." The publishers of Grist have also been turning their eyes to the future, said Roberts. "It’s tricky to keep what works and what people like and also evolve with the changes" in the medium, he said. But the future of Grist will probably include a lot more community involvement and multimedia and adding more impromptu and spontaneous elements to the blog. "Even with all of that, though, I don’t think we’ll ever really lose that tight, old-school, heavily sourced and fact-checked style of magazine writing. There’s a certain credibility and more trust that comes with that kind of journalism."

By Laura Ybarra : On The Tranquilo Traveler, Joshua Berman blogs his 16-month around-the-world trip and extended honeymoon. "The blog is a fun way to connect with people — other writers and travelers, long lost friends and new readers," Berman said in an e-mail interview. "Ultimately, I hope the content will serve as raw material for a book about this trip," Berman said. "It also serves as a way to further brand myself as a writer, to build an audience." After traveling to Paris, Dubai, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, Berman says the Hunza Valley in Pakistan stands out. "The Pakistan Himalaya, or the ‘Roof of the World’ has had very few foreign visitors since 9/11. We spent two weeks in Karimabad, drank dood chai with the Mir of Hunza, and trekked across glaciers and into a tribal shepherds’ village where a ram was slaughtered in our honor," Berman said. Although the blog doesn’t make money, Berman said he’s been contacted by editors which, in turn, has led to writing sales. "If you do strange, extraordinary and scary things, you’ll have strange, extraordinary things to write about," Berman said. "Next is learning how to play the game: how to contact editors, where to publish for free, how to get your name out there. I talk about this more on my FAQ page." Berman said the BootsnAll Travel Network helps him support the site. "In addition to hosting and including me in their massive network of traveler, they provide excellent technical support. Very low-key and friendly," Berman said. Berman said he uses the latest version of Moveable Type. He admits to tweaking some details since the blog launched in May 2005, but says he likes the current structure. "The ‘scheduled post’ feature is nice, where I can post future entries on an assigned date, in case I know I won’t have access for a while, like during my 10-day meditation retreat in Bodhgaya, India," Berman said. As for dealing with technology, Berman offers this advice: "If you’re planning on putting any amount of serious time into your blog, bring a laptop, digital camera, and several USB flash cards—especially if traveling to less developed parts of the world." WiFi is a "rare treat" that is found in capital cities, and broadband ports are "increasingly available," he said. The trip will end this August in Colorado where Berman hopes to start a writing fellowship.

By Robert Niles: The Online News Association and the USC Annenberg School of Communication (publisher of OJR) will open the annual Online Journalism Awards for entries, starting Monday, May 15. The entry period will close on June 15 and the awards will be presented at the ONA's annual convention, in Washington, D.C. this fall. This year's awards include a new category, the first to pay a cash award. The $5,000 Knight Award for Public Service will honor the use of journalistic resources, digital techniques and public information that produces compelling coverage of a vital issue and engage a geographic community. "While the online world allows people to form virtual societies divorced from geographical limitations, this prize acknowledges the power of digital news media to move citizens to improve the physical communities that still define their democracy and their day-to-day lives," the ONA said in a statement. "As more Americans receive their news and information online, it remains critical that online journalism be held to the highest standards of the profession. We are delighted that Knight Foundation continues to support outstanding journalism and look forward to using this award to spotlight the best online journalism that serves its readers and the public at large," Michael Parks, director of the School of Journalism at USC Annenberg, said. For more information about the awards, or to enter, starting Monday, visit http://www.journalist.org/awards/

Air freight companies are profiting from the war as the Pentagon increases its investment in logistics, reports Michael Fabey for Air Cargo World. "Contracts and contract modifications for companies flying cargo and passengers to the war zones in 2006 and...

An inspection by the U.S. Department of Education revealed that "D.C. school administrators can’t verify that their special education teachers are certified to serve the city’s most vulnerable and costliest student population," reports Dena Levitz of The Washington Examiner. The...

An investigation by CNN's Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost discovered that FEMA gave away $85 million of new supplies meant for Hurricane Katrina victims. The items, ranging from clothes to cleaning supplies, sat in FEMA warehouses for two years before...

An inspector general's report shows the Federal Aviation Administration is hiring more air traffic controllers than it can effectively train, reports Michael J. Sniffen of the Associated Press. "The Transportation Department's inspector general said the Federal Aviation Administration is so...

A report by Kent Garber of U.S News & World Report shows that U.S. farming policy, which is leading to record crop sizes, is having a negative impact on marine life. With more land being planted, more chemicals are leaching...

An investigation by Michael Fabey of Aerospace Daily and Defense Report delves into the selection process of the Boeing HH-47 (CSAR-X), the U.S Air Force's replacement for its Combat Search and Rescue helicopter. Interviews with experts and the review of...

Mary Beth Pfeiffer and John Ferro of the Poughkeepsie Journal compiled a two-part report examining overtime at the Dutchess and Ulster county governments. The report found correction officers and deputies at the Dutchess County Sheriff's Office earned $3.9 million in...

An investigation by reporter Larry Lebowitz of The Miami Herald shows that local taxpayers were promised massive improvements to the county's mass transit system when they approved a sales tax six years ago, yet those promises have not been fulfilled....

An investigative series by The Columbus Dispatch analyzed the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis in central Ohio, as well as the future impact to the region. "A wave of foreclosures during recent years has pushed property values downward for...

Michelle Breidenbach and Tim Knauss, of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.), examined the previously undisclosed accounting of the National Grid fund, a little-known fund run by the power company. It spent $25 million of its customers' money on economic development projects...

DENVER -- Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Source: Brian Ross, ABC News

BANGKOK - Protesters who stormed Thailand’s Government House, a TV station and key ministries went too far in their bid to oust the administration, newspapers said on Wednesday, suggesting the movement has lost public support. After three months of predominantly sympathetic coverage of protests by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a motley group of royalist businessmen and academics, Thai- and English-language media changed their tone sharply.

Source: Reuters, MediaChannel

The Bloomberg financial newswire decided to update its 17-page Steve Jobs obituary today — and inadvertently published it in the process. Some investors were undoubtedly rattled to see, as our tipster did late this afternoon, the Apple CEO's obit cross the wire and then suddenly disappear. Jobs's battle with pancreatic cancer, and speculation over his health, jarred Wall Street earlier this year and continues to be the subject of speculation.

Source: Gawker

Last academic year's struggle between the editorial staff of the university-controlled Quinnipiac Chronicle and the Quinnipiac University (QU) administration has birthed a new independent paper, The Quad News. Once Chronicle editor-in-chief Jason Braff and his editorial staff announced their plans to form an independent, online publication, all twenty QU students who had applied for editorial posts at the Chronicle withdrew their applications.

Source: Peter Bonilla, The Fire

NEW YORK Based on leaked court documents, The New York Times reports today that in March or April 2007, three U.S. Army non-commissioned officers (a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic) "killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.

Source: Editor and Publisher

A press freedom organization is accusing Denver police of roughing up journalists covering a protest at the Democratic National Convention. Reporters Without Borders says it is unclear what prompted police to step up their level of force during a demonstration that began outside the Pepsi Center on the opening night of the convention.

Source: United Press International

Chicago Sun-Times Editor in Chief Michael Cooke issued the following statement today regarding the resignation of sports columnist Jay Mariotti: The Chicago Sun-Times had the best sports section in the city before Jay Mariotti came to town -- that's why he signed up with us -- and his departure does not change that...

Source: Posted by Jim Romenesko, Poynter Online

The ASNE Reporter, a newspaper project that for two decades has provided students of color with real-world journalism training as they wrote for an audience of the nation's newspaper editors, is suspending publication next year. "We decided we would not try to do it off-site next year and try to get back to it in better times," Scott Bosley, executive director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, told Journal-isms on Wednesday.

Source: : Richard Prince, Journal-isms

The secret-spilling site Wikileaks announced this week that it's acquired thousands of e-mails belonging to a top aide to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. But don't look for them online. In a departure from its full-disclosure past, Wikileaks is auctioning off the cache to the highest bidder.

Source: European Journalisn Centre

New York Times Co.'s revenue slipped again last month as the newspaper publisher continued to struggle with the economic slowdown and the shift from traditional print media. The company, which publishes its flagship newspaper, as well as the International Herald Tribune and the Boston Globe, said Tuesday its revenue from continuing operations fell 10% to $235.9 million from a year earlier. Advertising sales decreased 16% and circulation revenue slipped 0.5%.

Source: Shirleen Dorman and David Benoit, The Wall Street Journal

I'm glad to report that CNN, unlike MSNBC and Fox News, decided to carry Martin Luther King III's speech. I'm less happy that they decided to cut away from the podium to show Morgan Fairchild in the crowd having her picture taken with fans while the speech is going on. Wikipedia reports that Fairchild is "active in raising awareness...

Lefties left behind wish desperately they were among The Fifteen Thousand Witnessing History in the Mile High City. Instead, they have to rely on said Fifteen Thousand to bring them coverage of the Convention and on Talking Points Memo Café to give them a soapbox. TPM Café, which normally serves as a communal blog for TPM readers—an open mic...

It’s perhaps worth noting, courtesy of the NYT’s Caucus Blog, that the Democratic National Committee has Got The Media’s Back. No, I'm not talking about the Starz Green Room. The committee is thoughtfully providing a parting gift—a “survival kit” for those reporters who will, poor souls, move far away from the massages, smoothies and...

Nick Kristof dedicates his column today to a discussion of the difficult decisions journalists often face when covering events where the truth is swathed in shades of gray. He first offers an apology to scientist Steven Hatfill, who was initially fingered in the anthrax investigation. Kristof called for greater scrutiny of Hatfill as a suspect; he was later...

If you like media bait, you would like Denver. There is plenty of it here, so much so that, at times, the streets near the Pepsi Center resemble the least exuberant Mardi Gras celebration in history. Over the past few days, I have seen many good examples of this. You have probably seen them too: -Two men holding a gigantic...

John Kerry gave an effective speech at the DNC last night that skillfully bridged his friendship with McCain, with a critique of his policies. The speech has gotten many tablespoons of gooey praise—here, here, and here (and here and here and <a...

It was nearing 10pm in Denver and the mood grew confessional on the CNN set. Coming back from commercial, Anderson Cooper chitchatted that during the break, Wolf Blitzer had shared with his co-anchors a little tidbit from his past and perhaps he might be coaxed into sharing it with the viewers. Cut to Blitzer looking none-too-pleased. And then,...

The Boston Globe has had Massachusetts delegates blogging throughout the convention. The New York Times has interviews with delegates about what they hope to hear Obama address in tonight’s speech at Invesco Field. How useful have they been? The Globe’s blog, called “Mass Voices,” has been interesting to read, because the delegates have been responding to the...

For confirmation of the rumors of the new, more tightly controlled McCain, look no further than this interview by Time magazine's James Carney and Michael Scherer. The cringingly awkward transcript contains interactions as tense and uncomfortable as this: There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also...

On Monday, I mentioned the latest television commercial featuring Harry and Louise—the infamous TV couple who periodically take to the airwaves and opine on the state of American health insurance. I noted that Harry and Louise also appeared eight years ago, promoting solutions for health care reform identical to those we hear from politicians and interest groups today—build on the...

Philadelphia Daily News

morrisj@phillynews.com 215-854-5573 "Would you be comfortable seeing people losing their jobs?" Diane Mastrull asked a crowded membership meeting of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia last night. "Could you go home at night knowing that was happening?" Mastrull, an Inquirer reporter and unit chairperson for the Guild, and other union officers appealed to the members to vote for a postponement of a scheduled $25-a-week raise, due Monday, as a cost-cutting measure requested by Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, which owns the Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer.