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:

• Truth in edit­ing | FT.com — “It’s all in the edit­ing, you see. Film­ing Dragons’ Den takes all day. Some entre­pren­eurs are grilled for a couple of hours, or more. The ques­tion­ing is mainly meas­ured, and calm.

  Then comes the magic of tele­vi­sion. Lon­gueurs are removed. The aggro is accen­tu­ated. And the polite, reas­on­able Ms Meaden becomes A Dragon.

  I should have known. I’m not above the odd bit of select­ive quot­ing myself.”

• Don’t Buy It | washingtonpost.com — “The Brit­ish psy­cho­ther­ap­ist Adam Phil­lips calls bore­dom the rest­less state of wait­ing to desire. Con­sump­tion gives us myriad names for incho­ate desire — and ready objects to allay it. Take away shop­ping, and you’re left with the restlessness.”
• The death of con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing [Online Advert­ising] | Val­ley­wag — Battelle’s dream of con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing has turned into some­thing more like the schlocky endorse­ments radio hosts get paid to do. By fall­ing so short of his rhet­oric, Federated’s exper­i­ments have mostly ended in embar­rass­ment, both for him and the blog­gers he represents.
• The Truth is Elu­sive? Nah, Not in Our Busi­ness | Watch­dog Blog — “The con­tents of today’s paper should be treated with care. The inform­a­tion col­lec­ted and presen­ted was done so under cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions that are error prone. The news­room budget and funds avail­able to assure accur­acy are con­strained by the corporation’s fidu­ciary respons­ib­il­ity to stock­hold­ers. Con­sequently, the reader is advised to seek mul­tiple sources of inform­a­tion and to be sure to read the paper tomor­row for any cor­rec­tions or cla­ri­fic­a­tions or for new devel­op­ments needed to put today’s news into per­spect­ive. While we can­not war­ranty that all inform­a­tion in today’s paper is accur­ate, we do war­ranty that our edit­ors and staff prac­tice no inten­tional decep­tion, and we do abide by an affirm­at­ive duty to pub­lish cor­rec­tions promptly and fully.”
• The Fin­an­cial Times and “the worst online redesign I have ever seen” | Curry­bet — I like it, but Mar­tin Belam has a sug­ges­tion: “[O]né tweak I would make to the Fin­an­cial Times design would be in the area of the pink back­ground. I under­stand it is an import­ant ele­ment of the print brand­ing, but I’d also like the site to be easy on the eye when read­ing from a screen.”
• Hey, that’s my idea | John Robin­son — “Now that every­one can pub­lish — and so many are — the pos­sib­il­ity that a num­ber of people have the same good idea seems likely. That you might write it first, but be over­looked by oth­ers, seems likely, too. Even if you build it, they might not come. All of which argues for tak­ing full advant­age of all of the social net­work­ing aspects of the Web. When you think you have a good idea, let people know.”