These are some of the things that have caught my atten­tion lately. It’s a more eclectic mix than just the news busi­ness, but then so’s life:

• The Future of News­pa­pers | Ian Delaney — “I talk to digital pro­fes­sion­als, and all they use is Google and RSS — they haven’t bought news­pa­pers in years, except when they take a flight or a train ride with no wireless…

  But then I talk to my step-mother, and she’s not hav­ing it. She doesn’t want to read a frickin’ screen.”

• Fal­mouth lecturer’s death shocks cam­pus | Fal­mouth Packet — “Jim Hall, course leader of the BA Hon­ours Journ­al­ism degree, died on Sunday afternoon.

  His death has shocked staff, who have said he will be sadly missed.

  Mr Hall has led the journ­al­ism course for many years and tutored hun­dreds of stu­dents that have gone on to become pro­fes­sional journ­al­ists in print, radio and television.”

• The Unspiked Files | Gawker — Satan’s shov­el­ler has an offer for you: “[H]ere’s an altern­at­ive for journ­al­ists who’ve spent weeks slav­ing on an art­icle only to see it spiked: Gawker’s unspiked files.

  By the time a magazine piece is killed it’s usu­ally too late to find another print out­let. And magazines are usu­ally too proud and com­pet­it­ive to resus­cit­ate someone else’s seem­ing rejects. We’re not. Ini­tially at least, we won’t be provid­ing fin­an­cial com­pens­a­tion (and you have already been paid a kill fee, after all) but we’ll run your art­icle in full and pro­mote in links any book or other project.”

• BBC to cut nations and regions divi­sion | guardian.co.uk — To pre­serve the broad­cast­ing union: “The BBC today announced it would axe its nations and regions divi­sion, bring­ing its Eng­lish ser­vices under its net­work news umbrella and pro­mot­ing the con­trol­lers of Scot­land, Wales and North­ern Ireland.”
• Tymoshenko showed journ­al­ists how she can’t get through to Pres­id­ent | UNIAN — Don’t pick up: “Prime Min­is­ter of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko called to Pres­id­ent of Ukraine Vic­tor Yushchenko in pres­ence of journ­al­ists from her cab­inet in the gov­ern­mental build­ing today, but he did not answer the tele­phone.
  Accord­ing to an UNIAN cor­res­pond­ent, Yulia Tymoshenko invited journ­al­ists to show them her attempt to get in con­tact with the Pres­id­ent to dis­cuss pos­sible res­tor­a­tion of the demo­cratic coalition.”
• How risk sens­it­iv­ity led to the greatest fin­an­cial crisis of mod­ern times | vox — “The pur­suit of “risk sens­it­iv­ity” led to a re-organisation of bank assets away from lend­ing on the basis of the banker’s private views about the bor­rower — reg­u­lat­ors con­sidered this hard to quantify and a little sus­pect – towards lend­ing on the basis of an external credit rat­ing. The higher the rat­ing, the lower the cap­ital banks had to set aside against the loan. Reg­u­lat­ors saw this as not only risk-sensitive but trans­par­ent and quan­ti­fi­able. Bank­ing by num­bers was oh so modern.”
• How Will Press Handle This One? | E&P blog — “Today John McCain at a rally asks rhet­or­ic­ally, “Who is the REAL Barack Obama?”  Someone in the audi­ence shouts, “Ter­ror­ist!”  McCain looks a little startled (should he have been, given the attacks of the past two days?), his wife smiles a little, many in the crowd sig­nal approval.  Then McCain says — and it’s actu­ally  unin­ten­tion­ally funny — that when someone asks that ques­tion “all you get is another bar­rage of insults.”   The NYT report on the speech by Michael Cooper does not men­tion this epis­ode at all.”
• US news­pa­pers in the Google time tun­nel: Part 1 | Mar­tin Belam — 2001, Belam’s online news­pa­per odys­sey: “I thought it might be fun to peer back through the Google time tun­nel and see how 25 Amer­ican news­pa­pers looked and ranked online in 2001.”
• What To Look For Next | Fred Wilson — “In bad bear mar­kets, like we are in, investors look to cor­por­a­tions to defend their stock and Google has not yet shown an interest in doing that. That’s some­thing to look for. When you net out Google’s cash, it’s trad­ing at US$100bn, a mere 12x oper­at­ing cash flow. That’s value territory.”
• Barry Diller on news­pa­pers | WSJ.com — “WSJ: News­pa­pers are suf­fer­ing as advert­ising moves online. You are a dir­ector of Wash­ing­ton Post Co. Do you think news­pa­per com­pan­ies will survive?

  Mr. Diller: If they call them­selves news­pa­per com­pan­ies they are prob­ably going to be toast. It will depend abso­lutely on what the product is. We’re still at such an early period to talk about the death of journalism.”

• Are Edit­ors ‘Retard’ Ser­vants To Arianna? | Gawker — Arianna Huff­ing­ton “requires her employ­ees, journ­al­ists included, to sign nondis­clos­ure agreements.”
• Beecher: Gawenda’s right, Fair­fax ruined by incom­pet­ence | Crikey — “When I was appoin­ted editor of The Age in 1997, the inter­net loomed on the hori­zon and the poten­tial threat that this thing had to ser­i­ously dam­age the paper’s clas­si­fied busi­ness was becom­ing increas­ingly clear …
  … At the same time, the senior man­age­ment at Fair­fax and the Fair­fax board lost con­fid­ence in the company’s news­pa­pers. The impli­cit — and some­times expli­cit — mes­sage was that these man­agers and board mem­bers did not really see a future for these papers.
  They were often bemused about what it was exactly that journ­al­ists did. They were bemused and dis­con­cer­ted by pas­sion for news­pa­pers from edit­ors and journ­al­ists, and even readers.”