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 New Journ­al­ism: Blogs For­cing Com­pan­ies To Come Clean | Sil­icon Alley Insider — “At SAI, by the way, it has been inter­est­ing to watch com­pan­ies go through the tra­di­tional PR steps to try to shape our coverage:
  Ignore us
  Be nice to us
  Threaten us
  Accuse us of stabbing them in the back (“We gave you access, and this is how you repay us??”)

  These tac­tics work with tra­di­tional media and tra­di­tional source-channels, because access to top man­age­ment is so crit­ical to a news organization’s gain­ing a com­pet­it­ive advant­age over a hand­ful of other com­pet­it­ors. In the new world, how­ever, where there are thou­sands of poten­tial out­lets, some of the most valu­able inform­a­tion we get comes from mid-level employ­ees, who often pick up scut­tle­butt long before the com­pan­ies’ formal com­mu­nic­a­tions teams do.

  We’re always happy to have rela­tion­ships with senior man­agers: They make our cov­er­age and ana­lysis smarter and more com­plete. But if senior man­age­ment refuses to talk to us, that’s fine, too. We’re doing just fine hear­ing from every­one else.“

• In a Twit­ter Age, Even Bad News Like Lay­offs Is on the Com­pany Blog | NYTimes.com — “In the age of trans­par­ency, the lay­off will be blogged.”
• Hazel Blears: Nihil­istic new media | Com­ment is free — A politi­cian writes: “There are some inform­at­ive and enter­tain­ing polit­ical blogs, includ­ing those writ­ten by elec­ted coun­cil­lors. But mostly, polit­ical blogs are writ­ten by people with a dis­dain for the polit­ical sys­tem and politi­cians, who see their func­tion as unearth­ing scan­dals, con­spir­acies and per­ceived hypocrisy.Unless and until polit­ical blog­ging adds value to our polit­ical cul­ture, by allow­ing new and dis­par­ate voices, ideas and legit­im­ate protest and chal­lenge, and until the main­stream media reports polit­ics in a calmer, more respons­ible man­ner, it will con­tinue to fuel a cul­ture of cyn­icism and despair.”
• U.S. News Will Become a Monthly Magazine | NYTimes.com — “Less than a year ago, U.S. News still pub­lished weekly, but this year it began pub­lish­ing less often, and in June, it announced that, come Janu­ary, it would pub­lish every two weeks. Exec­ut­ives con­ceded then that the magazine had ceased to be a new­s­weekly com­pet­ing dir­ectly with Time and Newsweek.But appar­ently even that plan has been deemed too ambi­tious, and has been declared dead before it could be put into place, accord­ing to employ­ees of the magazine, who said they were informed this week that U.S. News would go monthly.”
• News­pa­per rivals look to share bur­den | FT.com — “[L]ocal news­pa­pers have been pum­melled by online prop­erty sites such as Right­move, as well as by ultra-local clas­si­fied web­sites such as Gumtree. News­quest, the UK arm of Gan­nett News­pa­pers of the US, recently announced that some areas of its clas­si­fied advert­ising, prin­cip­ally cars and prop­erty, had fallen by up to a half year-on-year.But Lord Fowler, chair­man of the Lords com­mit­tee, said on Tues­day this par­lous pos­i­tion did not neces­sar­ily mean mer­gers should be allowed.”
• Daily Mail Hits New York Jan. 1; On-Demand Edi­tions For Big Apple | paidContent:UK — Fear and loath­ing hit the Big Apple: “Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT) will begin same-day print­ing in the Big Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) from Janu­ary 1. News­pa­per dis­trib­utor and remote printer News­world Cor­por­a­tion got the con­tract in July and has now agreed a deal with New Jersey-based AlphaGraph­ics to bring use print-on-demand tech­no­logy to for the news­pa­pers from January.”
• What I’ll miss when the campaign’s over | John Robin­son — “The elec­tion sucked all the air out of DC and Amer­ic­ans dis­covered they hadn’t missed any­thing. Yeah, for a brief few days when the eco­nomy tanked, Wash­ing­ton politi­cians got the cam­eras back and see how that has worked out. Mr. Pres­id­ent, let’s make Con­gress more like the [North Car­o­lina] legis­lature — a part-time job.”