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:

• Barack Obama: Call­ing Bull­shit On The Obama Ring Story | Gawker — “President-elect Obama—allegedly a ‘man of the people’—is allegedly buy­ing a fancy $30,000 ring for his fancy wife, allegedly! It was in the trusty Daily Mail, and now it’s the top story on Drudge, mean­ing it is the single most import­ant news story in all the world. Elit­ist Obama drops 30K on bling for his wife dur­ing a recession—and this bling will be made out of rho­dium, the world’s most expens­ive metal! This story is almost cer­tainly bull­shit, and we will tell you exactly why.”
• “The Busi­ness Is Broken” | CJR — “I’m going to keep doing this until it’s no longer fun, or there’s no one left to hire me, and then I’ll find some­thing else.

  And right now, journ­al­ism is just too much fun to give up. Even now. I’ve seen job open­ings in other fields, but I don’t want another type of job. I love learn­ing new things. I like ques­tion­ing author­ity and call­ing b.s. when I see it. I’m nosy as hell, and paid to be.

  Amid all the gloom about the future of news, nobody seems to men­tion this: Report­ing is a lot of freakin’ fun.”

• NPIA Prac­tice Advice on Stop and Search in rela­tion to Ter­ror­ism and on the War on Pho­to­graph­ers | Spyb­log — “The Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 does not pro­hibit people from tak­ing pho­to­graphs or digital images in an area where an author­ity under sec­tion 44 is in place. Officers should not pre­vent people tak­ing pho­to­graphs unless they are in an area where pho­to­graphy is pre­ven­ted by other legislation.”
• That elu­sive Rus­bridger Cross | open Demo­cracy News Ana­lysis — “[A]dvertisers found that the impacts they had been buy­ing from ITV at top of the mar­ket prices could be bought much more cheaply else­where — so rev­enue simply drif­ted out of TV.  In this, the UK was unique — all sim­ilar mar­kets saw an aver­age 22% rise in cost per thou­sand (CPT) over the last five years, whilst the UK suffered an 11% decline…
  What adds to the pres­sure on ITV in par­tic­u­lar is the guar­an­teed strength of the BBC, which pre­vents ITV from cut­ting its spend on pro­grammes (till now, any­way — rumours are it will be cut by over 10% next year), so leav­ing it with the low­est oper­at­ing mar­gins of all sim­ilar oper­at­ors in Europe and the US.
  Com­mer­cial radio is in sim­il­arly poor con­di­tion, as the BBC inex­or­ably increases its share of view­ing off the back of a massively lar­ger pro­gram­ming budget.
  How­ever much we love the BBC, it is increas­ingly hard to deny the dis­place­ment effect of the BBC’s strength.”
• Poten­tially Uni­ver­sal Mech­an­ism Of Aging Iden­ti­fied | Sci­ence Daily — “It is remark­able that an aging mech­an­ism found in yeast a dec­ade ago, in which sir­tu­ins redis­trib­ute with dam­age or aging, is also applic­able to mam­mals,” says Leonard Guar­ente, Novartis Pro­fessor of Bio­logy at MIT, who is not an author on the paper. “This should lead to new approaches to pro­tect cells against the rav­ages of aging by find­ing drugs that can sta­bil­ize this redis­tri­bu­tion of sir­tu­ins over time.”
• The Great Crash of 2008 | Robert Reich — “[C]onsumers have gone on strike.

  Why have they gone on strike? Not because of the dif­fi­culty of get­ting credit. Most con­sumers can barely afford to pay the interest charges on the debt they’re already car­ry­ing. Con­sumers have gone on strike because their earn­ings haven’t kept up.”

• Michael Wolff’s new Rupert Mur­doch bio­graphy accepts the mogul on his own sor­did terms | Jack Shafer — “The secret of Murdoch’s strength is his lack of shame…”
• Walkley Awards and the writ­ing on the wall | Crikey — “The highest award for the even­ing, the Gold Walkley, went to Chan­nel Nine’s Sunday pro­gram, for a piece by Ross Coulthart and Nick Far­row about the “Butcher of Bega” — a doc­tor accused of abus­ing and mutil­at­ing the women in his care. The same piece won both the award for Tele­vi­sion Cur­rent Affairs Report­ing, and the award for Invest­ig­at­ive Report­ing. Yet the pro­gram – a fre­quent win­ner of Walkley Awards — no longer exists.

  Other win­ners included the ABC’s Radio Eye pro­gram (Best Broad­cast fea­ture) which will fin­ish this year, and illus­trator Simon Bosch (Best Art­work) formerly of the Sydney Morn­ing Her­ald, who was “let go” in the Fair­fax blood­let­ting a few weeks ago.

  Among those short­l­is­ted for awards were a Julie-Anne Dav­ies story in The Bul­letin, a pub­lic­a­tion which no longer exists, and an art­icle in Time magazine, a pub­lic­a­tion that has just announced the sack­ing of all its Aus­tralian journ­al­ists and the prob­able clos­ure of its Aus­tralian bureau.”

• Rupert Mur­doch tale, ‘The Man Who Owns the News,’ riv­et­ing — USATODAY.com — “If you can ima­gine Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Carol with Rupert Mur­doch stand­ing in for Ebenezer Scrooge, you should find it easy to fol­low the story arc in Van­ity Fair media colum­nist Michael Wolff’s import­ant new book, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.”
• Sharekhan recom­mends TV18; tar­get price Rs116 — Money Mat­ters — livemint.com — The news, not broken every­where: “We expect the news busi­ness’ rev­en­ues to grow by 9.4% and 11.8% in FY2009 and FY2010 respect­ively, as we expect the ad-rate growth to slow down con­sid­er­ably.
  How­ever, con­sequent to the increase in the expenses out­pa­cing the rev­enue growth, we expect the oper­at­ing mar­gins in the news busi­ness to decline from 41.5% in FY2008 to 30.5% in FY2009 and 25.4% in FY2010.
  We believe while TV18 pos­sesses an attract­ive media model with poten­tial to deliver hefty rev­enue and profit growth, the near-term per­form­ance will con­tinue to be severely impacted by the very weak macro envir­on­ment across its businesses.”