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:

• Change We /Would/ Believe In | Economic Principals – A really good stimulus package would take aim at curbing America’s contribution to climate change – treating the problem not as a certainty, but as a probability, deserving of a relatively inexpensive insurance policy, pending further developments.  Its centerpiece would be a carbon tax, phased in by degrees starting in 2011, just as economic recovery is expected to begin.
   
  The vast sums to be spent by the Federal government in the next two years – as much as $500 billion in both 2009 and 2010 – should be framed mainly in terms of financing the transition to a new set of long-range national goals rather than as short-term Keynesian stimulus.
   
  That would mean smaller cars, tighter windows, better furnaces, new housing and plenty of improvements of the public infrastructure as well, starting with health care – a couple of years of intense preparation for the change.  It would mean, too, an immediate major commitment to higher education, on the order of the 1958 National Defense Educati
• THE FINTAG NEWSLETTER @ 15 December 2008 – "The USA will have to change. Obama will be forced to follow the regulation much of the rest of the world has. None are perfect – the UK's own FSA had no idea how to control the lying banks and their made up balance sheets, but at least there is a culture of regulation, compliance manuals, best practice and most important third part administrators and prime brokers. I cannot think of 1 UK hedge fund that has gone down because of fraud.

  So here is some advice. If the fund you want to invest in has independent pricing, uses third party brokers and the managers and advisers are regulated, then move onto the next stage of the due diligence process.

  If not, and you invest, you are a fool and deserve everything you get."

• Politico and Reuters Forge News-Distribution Alliance | NYTimes.com – Politico recently began offering papers a limited number of free articles, and beginning this week the papers that sign onto that service, the Politico Network, will also see the stream of daily output from Reuters, and choose up to 10 articles and 10 photographs each day to use in print or on the Web.

  Politico would gain the right to sell ads on the newspapers’ Web pages containing the Politico and Reuters articles — though not the printed pages — and would share the revenue with the papers.

  At the same time, Reuters will begin carrying most of Politico’s work on its news wires.

  “Admittedly, this is an experiment,” said Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politico. “But we’re sure there’s a need.”

• News About the News Business, in 140 Characters | NYTimes.com – Initially, The Media Is Dying was accessible only to select Twitter members, as the feed was intended to help those in the P.R. industry stay on top of the revolving entries in their address books. But requests to be included flooded the founder, who decided to go public three weeks ago. Since then, the stream, maintained at twitter.com/themediaisdying by its founder and seven volunteers from the industry, has garnered more than 3,000 subscribers.
• What Yahoo Should Do | blog maverick – Mark Cuban on Yahoo: "Yahoo should be on the warpath, vetting each and every media (yes media) and technology company it can sit down with looking for bargains.

  It should be taking Yahoo stock and finding every and any accretive investment in the internet and  media space that it possibly can. Some may argue that Yahoo stock is too cheap to use for acquisitions. I beg to differ. The speculation around a potential MicroSoft acquisition, along with a very strong balance sheet  has propped up its stock.  Compared to private and public would be targets, Yahoo stock is amazingly strong currency."

• China: Population by Age and Sex, 1950 – 2050; Proportion Elderly, Working Age, and Children – This animation of China's population demonstrates the dramatic change in the country's age structure between 1950 and 2050. While the number of children was increasing rapidly between 1950 and about 1970, it is now declining significantly, due to China's strict one-child family planning program. In the next few decades, China will experience a most serious process of population aging – as can be seen by the shrinking base of the population pyramid and the increasing numbers of people age 50 and above.
  The bars in the lower half part of the animation represent the percentages of elderly (age 60+), working age population (age 20-59) and children or young adults (0-19) in the population. For instance, it is projected that 31% of all Chinese will be above the age of 60 in the year 2050!
• A Scandal in Chicago That Justifies Investigative Journalism | NYTimes.com – Or does it? "This week, Dan Mihalopoulos, Ray Long, John Chase, David Kidwell and others at the paper continued to work every angle on the Blagojevich investigation, and follow some of their own. But some people at the newspaper, and those who have left, wonder whether The Tribune’s commitment to covering corruption is sustainable.

  Mr. Crewdson, who had worked in the Washington bureau, was not so concerned.

  In an e-mail message, he said the financial condition of his former paper would not “have kept Fitzgerald from finding out what he wanted…"

• Peter Preston | The Guardian – Let's consider the power of the press – its alleged ability to break butterflies on wheels, destroy reputations, butcher box-office hopes.

  So, what's this movie you want to drag me out for on a winter night? 'Zero fun,' say America's fiercest critics; 'a confused mess'; 'the coal in the holiday stocking'. In Britain, the verdict is the same. Try 'crass and grisly' from Philip French, 'pure ordure' from the Guardian and 'the least festive film yet made' from the Times. Not to mention the Mail's 'temptation to follow the baby in the film, whose only talent is for projectile vomiting'.

  Well, that would seem to have killed off Reese Witherspoon's Four Christmases pretty effectively, no chainsaws required. Except that it's been number one in America and the UK for two weeks running, putting all competition – including Mr Murdoch's new bush turkey, Australia – to the sword. Media power? Watch Joe Public take his seat in the stalls and squash it flat.

• Shock News? The Media Didn’t Get Us Into This Mess | FT.com – When Iceland's banking system collapsed in October, the problem was not that the media had panicked depositors. On the contrary: even as the money markets utterly lost confidence, British newspapers were claiming that Icesave offered one of the best savings products around.
• Estonia to vote by mobile phone in 2011 | The Associated Press – Parliament has approved a law making Estonia the first country to allow voting by mobile phone.
  Lawmakers approved a measure Thursday allowing citizens to vote by mobile phone in the next parliamentary elections in 2011.
  Estonians were allowed to cast Internet ballots in last year's parliamentary vote.
  The mobile-voting system, which has already been tested, requires that voters obtain free, authorized chips for their phones, said Raul Kaidro, spokesman of the SK Certification Center, which issues personal ID cards in Estonia.