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:

• Lauren Rich Fine: Sav­ing News­pa­pers By Push­ing Read­ers Online | paidContent.org — “Some power­ful national brands are try­ing to push con­sumers online. If the goal is to pre­serve qual­ity journ­al­ism, diversity of views, invest­ig­at­ive report­ing and the like, some­thing rad­ical has to hap­pen. Elim­in­at­ing dis­tri­bu­tion, pro­duc­tion and paper costs vir­tu­ally reduces the costs to what is essen­tial, the voice. How­ever, while traffic is up at most news sites and news­pa­pers can claim their fare share, some­thing is still get­ting lost in the trans­la­tion. The amount of time spent on these sites is well below the time believed to have been spent in the print counterpart.”
• Fea­ture films com­ing to You­Tube | CNET News — For months, Google, YouTube’s par­ent com­pany, has been talk­ing to the major film com­pan­ies about launch­ing an ad-supported, stream­ing movie ser­vice, two execs with know­ledge of the nego­ti­ations told CNET News. “It’s not immin­ent,” said one of the exec­ut­ives. “But it’s going to hap­pen. I would say you can expect to see it, if all goes well, some­time within the next 30 to 90 days.”
• Should MPs inter­view new supreme court judges? | Times Online — “We live in an age where demo­cracy is regarded with almost reli­gious rev­er­ence and the more act­iv­ist the judges, the more pres­sure there will be for them to have demo­cratic legit­im­acy and accountability.”
• Al Jaz­eera Eng­lish elec­tion cov­er­age: Another missed oppor­tun­ity | Arab Media & Soci­ety — Larry Pin­tak reviews AJE Elec­tion night: “At times, it all had the feel of a Jerry Lewis Telethon. The low point came when Foster urged view­ers to email their friends in the U.S. to tell them to watch online. Memo to staff: Don’t beg.”
• State aid: Com­mis­sion con­sults on revised rules for state fund­ing of pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing | EU — “The European Com­mis­sion has pub­lished, for pub­lic con­sulta­tion, a draft Com­mu­nic­a­tion lay­ing down the rules that it intends to apply to state fund­ing of pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing. Mem­ber States and stake­hold­ers now have the oppor­tun­ity to sub­mit their views on the pro­posed text. Com­ments should be sub­mit­ted by 15 Janu­ary 2009. Key issues for dis­cus­sion include more flex­ib­il­ity for pub­lic broad­casters to meet the chal­lenges of the new media envir­on­ment, the prin­ciples under­pin­ning the defin­i­tion of the pub­lic ser­vice remit by the Mem­ber States as well as super­vi­sion of pub­lic ser­vice activ­it­ies at national level. On the basis of the com­ments received, the Com­mis­sion could adopt a mod­ern­ised Broad­cast­ing Com­mu­nic­a­tion in the first half of 2009.”
• Hard News Journ­al­ism | One Man and His Blog — Journ­al­ists. Don’t drink and talk.