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:

• A Story of Self-Induced Star­va­tion | TIME — “I quit one job after another dur­ing those four years in Bal­timore, mov­ing from boun­cing and bar­tend­ing to invest­ment bank­ing and fin­an­cial pub­lish­ing. It’s not that I couldn’t do the work… I was a good employee. In fact, I hardly ever quit until I got a pro­mo­tion. The last thing I wanted was a job that called for nice clothes, a respect­able car, and a decent apart­ment. Journ­al­ism, I figured, was my last resort.”
• Respons­ible Tweet­ing: Mum­bai Provides Teach­able Moment | Amy Gahran — “If you think this news is so time-sensitive and pos­sibly cru­cial that it must be shared imme­di­ately, take care to say that it’s an uncon­firmed report.

  This is even more import­ant if you’re a news organ­iz­a­tion report­ing what you just heard on Twit­ter. The BBC update timeline on the Mum­bai attacks included this entry: “1108 [GMT] Indian gov­ern­ment asks for live Twit­ter updates from Mum­bai to cease imme­di­ately. ‘ALL LIVE UPDATES — PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mum­bai police and mil­it­ary oper­a­tions,’ a tweet says.”

  …So far, BBC has not cla­ri­fied or elab­or­ated this point — per­haps leav­ing the impres­sion that this is reli­able information.”

• Media in dock | FT.com — “The par­lia­ment­ary probe into the bank­ing crisis will con­sider whether journ­al­ists should be gagged dur­ing an emer­gency to pre­serve fin­an­cial sta­bil­ity, writes James Mackintosh .

  The inquiry by the Treas­ury select com­mit­tee will con­sider “the role of the media in fin­an­cial sta­bil­ity and whether fin­an­cial journ­al­ists should oper­ate under any form of report­ing restric­tions dur­ing bank­ing crises”.

• Social Media & Cit­izen Journ­al­ism in the 11/26 Mum­bai Ter­ror Attacks: A Case Study | Gauravo­nom­ics Blog — “Most live-bloggers are merely post­ing news and (often pre­ma­ture) opin­ion based on the main­stream media news coverage.

  There’s value in repost­ing news, and there’s a good time to offer opin­ion, but I think that the 11/26 Mum­bai ter­ror attack was a time for first-hand ori­ginal report­ing, and the Indian blo­go­sphere didn’t quite rise to the task.

  On the other hand, micro-blogging ser­vice Twit­ter quickly became the best source for real time (cit­izen) news on the Mum­bai ter­ror attack, and the hashtag #Mum­bai quickly rose up in Twit­ter trend­ing top­ics. But the search volume for #Mum­bai quickly became too high to handle, so some people first shif­ted to geo-tagged tweets from people liv­ing close to Mum­bai, and then to such tweets con­tain­ing links.”

• Two Month Young News­cast Comes On Strong — mediabistro.com: TVNewser — “Just eight weeks into its run, the new nightly news pro­gram World­fo­cus is com­ing on strong, beat­ing its nearest head-to-head com­pet­itor BBC World News last night…
  Last night, in all mar­kets, World­fo­cus drew 328,892 view­ers, up 16% from its life­time aver­age of 283,749. BBC World News drew 312,310, down 15% from its 8-week aver­age of 365,592.

  The New York-based internationally-focused news pro­gram per­formed even bet­ter in the top 30 mar­kets, top­ping the BBC pro­gram on both Monday and Tues­day of this week.

• The Fintag News­let­ter @ 28 Novem­ber 2008 — “Tak­ing out debt is still just too easy. Sav­ing money is near impossible.

  North­ern Rock opened up some new accounts yes­ter­day and my PA went to open up a deposit account. She took two large car­rier bags of inform­a­tion that she thought they would need but of course for­got the most import­ant one. A copy of her tax return. So she failed in her quest.

  I told her to put GBP10,000 onto her Oyster card instead. Who needs banks eh? The rates of return are so low you might as well not bother. Low interest rates are not good for eco­nom­ies in the long run.”

• China Fin­an­cially Sup­ports Pub­lic Ser­vice News­pa­pers | Fol­lowThe­Media — “China is divid­ing its news­pa­pers into two cat­egor­ies – those that are pub­lic ser­vice ori­ented and those that are profit ori­ented, and the gov­ern­ment says it will fin­an­cially sup­port the pub­lic ser­vice ones.
  The gov­ern­ment says it will fin­an­cially sup­port those news­pa­pers that are key gov­ern­ment and Party pub­lic­a­tions, those that spread Marx­ist and Party philo­sophy, news­pa­pers aimed at eth­nic minor­it­ies and farm­ers, gov­ern­ment and Party bul­let­ins, and news­pa­pers tar­geted at foreigners.”
• Time Europe’s Lon­don staff suf­fer sav­age cuts | Roy Greenslade — “In effect, the weekly news magazine that has covered the globe for the past 85 years is retreat­ing to its Amer­ican heart­land. It is only main­tain­ing a skel­eton staff elsewhere.

  As one insider told me: “It is a remark­able water­shed moment because one of the greatest and wealth­i­est news organ­isa­tions in the world is say­ing that it no longer has the money to do its job.”