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:

• Chicago’s newspapers facing troubled futures | AP – [A]t a downtown Starbucks sat the possible future of news — and the source of much of the newspaper industry's troubles.
  Michelle Kurlemann plugged her laptop computer into a wall outlet and thumbed away at her BlackBerry. The 24-year-old interior designer said the closing of either paper would be "really sad," but she wasn't reading one of them, not in print anyway.
  "I get my news online, and when someone I know sees a good newspaper article, they message it to me," Kurlemann said. "Still, I suppose that if the newspapers close, it'll hurt things online, too."
• Steve Sando, Formerly of CBS News, Dies | TV Newser – RIP Steve Sando.
• Simple Social Media Truths | Matt J McDonald – 1. Everyone thinks they are a social media expert.
  2. Everyone is not a social media expert.
  3. Not every company should have social media initiatives.
  4. We’re all still figuring this out.
  5. Conversations are important, but not as important as some people will have you believe.
  6. Traditional advertising isn’t dead and won’t be for a while, if ever.
  7. Blogging is hard work.
  8. Twitter will not make or break you.
  9. Don’t always cave to the mob.
  10. The barriers to action are now so low that it’s incredible easy to act without thinking it through.
  11. If you speak your mind, you are going to piss someone off eventually.
  12. There’s no excuse to not be listening to the conversations online.
  13. If the words “unless we get caught” are part of your plan, quit now.
  14. Purists, Pessimists, and Doomsayers are almost always wrong.
  15. The wrong way to do things is always the easiest.
  16. There is still a ton of potential in this space.
• The World’S Best-paid Journalists are in Madrid | INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS – El Pais: "The average salary of more than $132,000 makes this newsroom the most expensive in the world."
• A simpleguide to the biggest moments in Indian Blogging History – Great State of the Indian blogosphere post: "Here goes a list of most notable moments in Indian Blogging History, some inspiring, some, umm, may be not. Enjoy…"
• Why newspapers should consider local social media sites – the AIM Group – Duh? Why just limit yourself to geography? "Newspapers and media companies looking to build traffic should strongly consider creating niche social network sites.

  An EMarketer report this morning cites Children with Diabetes, a Johnson & Johnson-owned ad-supported social network for families who have children with diabetes. Nearly one-half of the site’s traffic comes from search, according to Joseph Natale, vice president at Children with Diabetes.

  Children with Diabetes has some 32,000 pages of content optimized with words like “children,” “diabetes” and “juvenile diabetes.”

  A newspaper could create a similar site but focused on the publication’s local community."

• A Chill on ‘The Guardian’ | The New York Review of Books – British libel laws—with the burden of proof on the defendant, conditional fee arrangements, the ability of lawyers to ratchet up eye-watering costs, and a still uncertain degree of qualified privilege protection for "responsible" journalism—remain a formidable weapon in the hands of claimants, whether rich individuals or powerful corporations. Before putting journalism on trial, a more responsive standard of public interest should surely be applied. If a news organization is self-evidently seeking to publish material of high public importance—matters to do with corporate responsibility, government, fiscal risk and management, health, science, security, and so on—then the law ought to find better ways of protecting it.
• Music industry looks to internet for revival | FT.com – Industry members had hailed deals struck with YouTube last year as a new way of driving profits from the popularity of professional music videos and the soundtracks to amateur efforts on such user generated content sites.

  However, some are now questioning whether either side has made much money from arrangements which require YouTube to share advertising revenues and, in many cases, pay a few tenths of a cent to the music company each time a video is streamed, regardless of how much advertising is sold.

  Universal Music, the industry leader, has said that it makes “tens of millions of dollars” from YouTube.

  Warner Music failed last week to agree a new deal with the site, however, saying it was not being adequately compensated and demanding that the site take down its artists’ videos and amateur content using songs from its publishing arm such as “Happy Birthday To You”.

  Representatives of two music companies, who would not be named, said they were in discussions with Hulu…

• TV News Winds Down Iraq Operations | NYTimes.com – In Baghdad, ABC, CBS and NBC still maintain skeleton bureaus in heavily fortified compounds. Correspondents rotate in and out when stories warrant, and with producers and Iraqi employees remaining in Baghdad, the networks can still react to breaking news. But employees who are familiar with the staffing pressures of the networks say the bureaus are a shadow of what they used to be. Some of the offices have only one Western staff member.

  The staff cuts appear to be the latest evidence of budget pressures at the networks. And those pressures are not unique to television: many newspapers and magazines have also curtailed their presence in Baghdad. As a consequence, the war is gradually fading from television screens, newspapers and, some worry, the consciousness of the American public.