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 Idea | International Quarterly – "We want to know better, and we want you to be involved. INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY will be published for a general audience, but it will have at its heart a club of supporters – individuals and businesses – who will gain access to our writers and subjects.

  We want to build a bridge between the best international writers, broadcasters and thinkers, and those who are most curious about the world. We propose that the two sides should meet and make things better."

• WAN: Traditional media has five years growth left | Press Gazette – "The over-50s are helping to sustain traditional media, and also in many of the emerging markets there is still plenty of room for traditional media. The death of traditional media is exaggerated, at least in a five-year context."
• When Do Immigrants Learn English? Likely, not when you think | Greg Laden’s Blog – "German continued to be the primary language in numerous Wisconsin communities, and some second- and third-generation descendants of immigrants were still monolingual as adults. Understanding this history can help inform contemporary debates about language and immigration and help dismantle the myth that successful immigrant groups of yesterday owed their prosperity to an immediate, voluntary shift to English."
• The wrong scapegoats | Peter Wilby – "Why do papers that have millions of readers on modest incomes get more enraged about poor people receiving state help than about bankers pulling in annual bonuses that exceed, many times over, what their readers earn in a lifetime?

  The proper Marxist answer is that the corporate-owned press and its lickspittle journalists are trying to direct the workers' anger away from the bourgeoisie towards members of their own class. The depressing truth, however, is that newspapers are giving readers what they want."

• John Simpson on TV News | The Guardian – "The BBC will have money taken away from it. You'll just see more and more stories not getting reported. We'll be back to Sky News and ITN levels where there isn't enough money to cover certain stories and take a risk or two."
• Paid-for-free papers: the mirage of the hybrid models | Monday Note – "[W]e know that the “one-size-fits-all” doesn’t work in the media sector — especially as audiences become increasingly segmented). At least it won’t fly without a major product adaptation and segmentation."