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:

• We must plan a survival strategy for our species | New Scientist – "If we don't want the anthropocene to end in a conflagration that engulfs us, we need some fresh and integrated thinking – fast.

  Too many scientists still plough their own research furrows without thinking what it's all for.  Science is meant to be useful, and right now what we clearly need is something like the IPCC, but with a much wider brief to bring scientific thinking on sustainability and fulfil the promises made in Rio.

  We need an intergovernmental panel on sustainability — to track a survival strategy for our species."

• The Faces of Mechanical Turk | Waxy.org – This is what Mechanical Turk looks like…
• In Britain, outwitting strict laws against libel | International Herald Tribune – Reporting on what cannot be reported is something in which the British have much more experience.

  "In the U.S., the starting point is that you have the right of freedom of expression," said James Edelman, a law professor at Oxford. "There are ways it can be curtailed, but that is the starting point. It is almost the opposite in the U.K."

• Filling the gap in health journalism | International Herald Tribune – Two years ago, Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, established the news service as the foundation's priority for expansion.

  "I just never felt there was a bigger need for great in-depth journalism on health policy and to be a counterweight to all the spin and misinformation and vested interests that dominate the health care system," he said. "News organizations are every year becoming less capable of producing coverage of these complex issues as their budgets are being slashed."

  With assets of about $500 million and an annual budget of about $40 million, the Kaiser foundation has been a major force in health policy research, analysis and communications.

• Demand for financial news booms, but advertising doesn’t | International Herald Tribune – "Pearson, the publisher of The Financial Times, was already moving to lessen its exposure to advertising before the financial crisis intensified this autumn. It raised the price of The FT, sold newspaper holdings in Spain, France and Germany, and acquired businesses that rely on subscription fees, like Mergermarket, which reports on the mergers and acquisitions business Advertising has been reduced to less than a third of revenue at the FT Group, which includes The Financial Times, Mergermarket and other journalistic businesses, from more than 50 percent in 2000."
• Who’s watching the watchdogs? Schwartz et al. 337 (191): a2535 | BMJ – "Doctors should be wary of the increasing entanglement of medical journalists and the drug industry, warn Lisa Schwartz, Steven Woloshin, and Ray Moynihan."