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:

• Jail­ing journ­al­ists | Haaretz — In the Falk­lands journ­al­ists were “jailed” in the liv­ing quar­ters of war­ships, and in the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq they were con­fined to the cab­ins of APCs, their field of vis­ion nar­rowed to the width of a peephole.

  In Gaza, journ­al­ists are being held in mod­est media facil­it­ies on the bor­der of the coastal ter­rit­ory. Their pos­i­tions have been filled, report­ers and pho­to­graph­ers alike, by troops of the IDF Spokesman’s Office. The move is meant to present a sterile pic­ture of war, to pre­vent Israeli media out­lets from show­ing images of death, destruc­tion and hor­ror com­ing out of Gaza. But this is a short­sighted approach, one driven by the “ostrich policy” of plant­ing our heads firmly in the sand.

  In the age of the inform­a­tion super­high­way, Israel and the world still see the same images and hear the same voices broad­cast on most of the for­eign TV sta­tions. The IDF’s manip­u­la­tions of the media, which will­ingly cooper­ates, may be good for the army, but it’s very bad for Israeli democracy.

• New Web-based news agency going live on Monday | AFP Medi­awatch — [W]e needed to find a way to engage qual­ity freel­ance for­eign cor­res­pond­ents with an offer that was attract­ive to them suf­fi­cient to make them com­mit to us and that would also allow us to build the busi­ness. We offer a guar­an­teed cash pay­ment (US$1,000) every month, we sign a longterm con­tract with our cor­res­pond­ents and we give them shares in the company.
• Gideon Levy: My hero of the Gaza war | Haaretz — My war hero is Ayman Mohyeldin, the young cor­res­pond­ent for Al Jaz­eera Eng­lish and the only for­eign cor­res­pond­ent broad­cast­ing dur­ing these awful days in a Gaza Strip closed off to the media. Al Jaz­eera Eng­lish is not what you might think. It offers bal­anced, pro­fes­sional report­ing from cor­res­pond­ents both in Sderot and Gaza. And Mohyeldin is the cherry on top of this journ­al­istic cream. I wouldn’t have needed him or his broad­casts if not for the Israeli sta­tions’ black­out of the fight­ing. Since dis­cov­er­ing this wun­der­kind from Amer­ica (his mother is from the West Bank city of Tul Karm and his father from Egypt), I have stopped frantic­ally chan­ging TV stations.
• Write away, stu­dent journ­al­ists | Los Angeles Times — Not so long ago, a journ­al­ism found­a­tion sur­veyed Amer­ican high school stu­dents and found about half believed the gov­ern­ment could leg­ally cen­sor the Inter­net. Three-quarters expressed ambi­val­ence toward the 1st Amend­ment. More than a third said it went too far in guar­an­tee­ing our most basic rights.

  What’s afoot in the land of Ben Frank­lin and Thomas Jef­fer­son? We’d like to be nur­tur­ing the next Edward R. Mur­row, but it sounds like we’ve got a bunch of kids audi­tion­ing to be Robert Mugabe’s inform­a­tion minister.

• How the city hurts your brain | Boston.com — [T]he dens­ity of city life doesn’t just make it harder to focus: It also inter­feres with our self-control … the brain is also assaul­ted with tempta­tions — car­a­mel lattes, iPods, dis­coun­ted cashmere sweat­ers, and high-heeled shoes. Res­ist­ing these tempta­tions requires us to flex the pre­frontal cor­tex, a nub of brain just behind the eyes. Unfor­tu­nately, this is the same brain area that’s respons­ible for dir­ec­ted atten­tion, which means that it’s already been depleted from walk­ing around the city. As a res­ult, it’s less able to exert self-control, which means we’re more likely to splurge on the latte and those shoes we don’t really need. While the human brain pos­sesses incred­ible com­pu­ta­tional powers, it’s sur­pris­ingly easy to short-circuit: all it takes is a hec­tic city street.

  “I think cit­ies reveal how fra­gile some of our ‘higher’ men­tal func­tions actu­ally are,” Kuo says. “We take these tal­ents for gran­ted, but they really need to be protected.”

• Teach­ing Intel­li­gence Ana­lysts in the UK | Cent­ral Intel­li­gence Agency — [W]e have devoted one ses­sion in each course to examin­ing how the ser­i­ous media now oper­ate. Stu­dents have been fas­cin­ated to talk to the for­eign editor of a lead­ing journal and to a lead­ing BBC cor­res­pond­ent to learn first hand about how the pro­cess of ser­i­ous report­ing is man­aged, open and private sources handled, and edit­or­ial dis­cre­tion exer­cised, since in journ­al­ism, as in intel­li­gence ana­lysis, to edit is to choose. Writ­ing accur­ately and clearly, to a tight dead­line, is a skill that both pro­fes­sions have to exercise.
• Tools for News — Tools for news
• 10 Golden Rules for Video Journ­al­ists | Richochet — Wash­ing­ton Post video journ­al­ist Travis Fox shared his 10 guidelines for mak­ing video reports.

  Golden Rule 10: Get “X-roll.” X-roll is when you get your interviewee’s money quotes in their nat­ural envir­on­ment.
  Golden Rule 9: Shoot within 180 degrees around a sub­ject. In other words, don’t walk around your sub­ject when inter­view­ing them.
  Golden Rule 8: Sequence your video with a vari­ety of detail, tight, medium, wide shots as well as cut away shots. 50 per­cent of shots will be tight, 25 per­cent medium and 25 per­cent wide
  Golden Rule 7: Remem­ber 80:20 ratio (80 per­cent should be b-roll and 20 per­cent should be inter­views)
  Golden Rule 6 Get close to the sub­ject when inter­view­ing them for audio pur­poses
  Golden Rule 5: Stay quiet when shoot­ing
  Golden Rule 4: If you do not get the shot, you do not have it.
  Golden Rule 3: Do not move the cam­era when shoot­ing (unless you are an advanced video­grapher)
  Golden Rule 2: Hold every shot for 10 seconds
  Golden Rule 1: Wear headphones

• Time to start a news­pa­per | Seth’s Blog — “What should not-so-busy real estate brokers do?

  Why not start a local news­pa­per?” Or a mar­ket­ing blog?