This is some of what’s caught my atten­tion lately:

• The Media Equa­tion — Dar­ing to Say Loans Made No Sense | NYTimes.com — “Mr. Blum­berg said that back when they first star­ted, “there were all these respec­ted eco­nom­ists say­ing that no, it’s not a bubble, and yes, there would be a cor­rec­tion, but it would be a soft-landing and I think people were too intim­id­ated to ques­tion that,” Mr. Blum­berg said.“That’s the story of my life, ask­ing the stu­pid ques­tion,” he said.”
• Is the BBC a rival or a resource? | Libby Purves — Times Online — A BBC presenter writes: “Sup­pose we didn’t have two strug­gling, over­stretched local “pub­lic ser­vices” but one healthy, care­ful col­lab­or­a­tion, serving prop­erly sized areas with news and pro­grammes for that mod­est hour a day? It would cost the BBC, but would be far closer to its his­toric task than a lot of the things on which it spends mil­lions now.” The term ‘col­lab­or­a­tion’ comes straight from BBC D-G Mark Thompson’s recent speech…
• BAILOUT — Part 1, What Crisis? | TPM­Cafe — “Journ­al­ists should be insist­ing that offi­cials make the case that there is a crisis, do not just accept that there is one because they say so. And then report­ers should ask hard ques­tions about who bene­fits from the bail­out, whether there are altern­at­ive solu­tions that would be less costly or more effective.”
• Europe’s Pub­lic Broad­casters Alarm Com­mer­cial Rivals | Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tribune — “ZDF, one of two main pub­licly fin­anced tele­vi­sion com­pan­ies in Ger­many, wants to revamp Dok­ukanal, a digital chan­nel that was star­ted eight years ago. It intends to replace doc­u­ment­ar­ies and other fac­tual fare with “fam­ily enter­tain­ment,” includ­ing soap operas, to attract a broader audi­ence. “This is the only way for us, in a digital world, to ful­fill our com­mu­nic­a­tions mis­sion and reach younger people again with our pub­lic ser­vice con­tent,” said Markus Schächter, dir­ector gen­eral of ZDF, in a state­ment on the broadcaster’s plans.” Pub­lic service…
• Neb­raska ‘safe haven’ law for kids has unin­ten­ded res­ults | USATODAY.com — “Between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Wed­nes­day, three fath­ers walked into two hos­pit­als in Omaha and aban­doned their chil­dren. One left nine sib­lings, ages 1 to 17. The men, unless proven to have abused the kids, won’t face pro­sec­u­tion under a new Neb­raska law that is unique in the nation. The law allows par­ents to leave a child at a licensed hos­pital without explain­ing why.”
• Meet the new face of satire as Hitler web craze goes viral | The Observer — The Coren spoof: “Among the latest spin-offs is ‘Chan­ging Giles Coren’, inspired by journ­al­ist Giles Coren’s irate let­ter to sub-editors at The Times, com­plain­ing after they removed a word from the final sen­tence of an art­icle he had submitted.”
• The Mad­ness of Spies by John Le Carre | The New Yorker — Full text unavail­able, but another reason to sub­scribe: “The super­bug of espi­on­age mad­ness isn’t con­fined to indi­vidual cases. It flour­ishes in its col­lect­ive form. Faith in spies is mys­tical, and they’re a pro­tec­ted spe­cies in our national psychology.”