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:

• Kind words that mean a lot | And another thing… – Office politics: "I admit that was a bit of a shock to the system. GB [Gordon Brown] called five minutes ago and the bottom line is… hello again, back bench!

  More later, once I’ve had a chance to ruminate.

  UPDATE at 9.40 pm: Carolyn reckons she’s worked out the reasoning behind my sacking. She’s just drawn my attention to a strapline on BBC News that says: 'Brown: We need serious people for serious times.'"

• The Gawker Guide To A Journalism Career | Gawker – "[T]here's still a huge news hole to be filled with crap. Somebody has to do it. It might as well be you. It's mostly shoveling coal for Satan, anyhow."
• Letters | The Guardian – Hat tip to Jon Slattery: "Perhaps it is the worst downturn since the second world war, but it can hardly be as bad as the war itself, and the local press came through that just as it has survived every downturn since…

  The three of us who run this group have over 125 years in local weeklies. We'll survive this problem just as we have survived all the others because we have the finest journalists and representatives and management in the newspaper industry and we give our readers what they want – local news in great detail."

• Vitamin C and cancer revisited | Respectful Insolence – “Whenever a study is reported that seems to be consistent with a use for vitamin C in treating cancer, almost inevitably it gets wide coverage. When a study is reported that suggests that high dose vitamin C has no use or–even worse–may be harmful, you hear nothing about it.

  Same as it ever was. But, then, why do I ever expect anything different?”

• The Future Of Media: Paper | MediaPost – "How big a hog is the paper business? Start with forests: 40 percent of the world's timber goes toward paper. The source fiber (either from a virgin tree or recycled paper) gets chemically or mechanically converted to pulp, then goes through a hydra-pulper. According to the EPA, the paper industry is the largest industrial water user per ton of product in the United States.

  In terms of pure energy, paper is the third largest industrial user. Finally, it's saddled with the fourth largest toxic-release inventory, three times that of plastic and nearly equal to the chemical industry."

• Q&A: Henry Blodget | CNET News – "Q: [W]hat's the smartest thing you've done in the past year?
  A: Not buying newspaper stocks."