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:

• Are we building newsrooms for Google News? | CounterValue – Google News and our response to it as an industry are seriously distorting our web-based publishing models. There is a risk that resources are poured into producing highly commodotised, superficial articles while higher value channels – areas where we can actually make money online, something that is unlikely to happen in news – are left to whither or are stripped to feed the newsroom beast.
• 2009 – The Year of the Fall of the West | Cynicus Economicus – A non-economist writes: "[I]n the UK (and the same could be said of the US), there had been no real growth in what I considered to be wealth creating assets over the last ten years which could explain GDP growth; manufacturing, commodity extraction, export of services, and tourism (no net growth).

  Instead I pointed to the growth in debt, and asset inflation (real estate) as the source of all of the GDP growth of the last ten years. This debt, in conjunction with the multiplier effect, along with upwards levers such as immigration, created an illusion of growth in wealth. It led to the 'post industrial', 'service economy'. My argument was that this was completely unsustainable, and that a collapse in asset prices would signal a self-reinforcing downward spiral in the economy, driven by a collapse in consumer sentiment (a massive belt tightening) leading to the collapse of the service economy, higher unemployment, more belt tightening and so forth into a downward spiral."

• Gaza Appeal – Sky’s Decision Explained | Sky Editor’s Blog – "[T]he nature of an appeal is that it sets out to provoke a specific response from the viewer. We don't believe that broadcasting such an appeal on Sky News can be combined with the balance and context that impartial journalism aims to bring to the highly charged and continuing conflict in Gaza.

  "Unlike some other UK broadcasters, Sky News is widely viewed across the Middle East. In order to continue to serve all our audiences, we must ensure that our journalists can continue to operate effectively in difficult conditions. This must remain the first priority for any news organisation."

• Why the future of news brands hinges on net neutrality | Eat Sleep Publish – Getting rid of net neutrality is re-working the technology to bring back old economics. If internet service providers are allowed to give preferential treatment to the data coming from customers who pay—essentially making “access to people” a biddable commodity—then the level playing field disappears instantly.

  Only larger news organizations would be able to afford the additional cost of ensuring that their web pages display on people’s home computers. Effectively, the cost of publishing goes back up.

  And if the cost of publishing goes back up, then media companies get to have their monopoly back on widely-distributed media, and then, the advertising revenue comes flooding back in, as other doors are closed again.

• French-style aid for U.S. press would cost $8B | Reflections of a Newsosaur – The French rescue package is equal to 15% of the $5 billion in revenues generated by the country's newspapers in 2007. Applying the same ratio to the $54.5 billion in advertising and circulation sales booked by U.S. newspapers in 2007, then the price tag for a like-sized package here would come to $8 billion.
• Twitter = Telegram 3.0, sort of – Twitter messages are broadcast (one-to-many); telegrams were generally one-to-one messages. The other big difference is that the cost per bit has fallen to zero since the days of the telegraph. So instead of being used to send urgent messages, as telegrams were, tweets tend to be used to send trivia. Once you have near-instant point-to-point messaging, you can’t get any faster — just more verbose and trivial.