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:

• The forecast for 2009: James Montgomery of FT.com on the economy | guardian.co.uk – "The search for new sources of revenue to supplement advertising – from conferences, e-commerce and commercial publishing – will intensify. Subscription will come back into vogue, as the question becomes: what would Apple do?"
• Samuel Huntington, 81, political scientist, dies – International Herald Tribune – Missed this: "Samuel Huntington, a political scientist best known for his theory of a clash of civilizations, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure and complications from diabetes, on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, Harvard University announced over the weekend. He was 81."
• Why I Avoid Blogging About Israel (updated) | Opinio Juris – It is sad that a post about IHL and ICL in which I specifically avoided arguing that any of Israel’s attacks on Gaza were disproportionate — largely because, as I said, I think proportionality arguments are essentially useless — would lead to such vitriol.  Proof positive that intelligent dialogue about Israel issues is nearly impossible.
• Dershowitz on Israel and Proportionality | Opinio Juris – Proportionality is not measured by comparing the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas attacks to the number of Hamas “terrorists” killed by Israeli attacks; it is determined by comparing the number of Palestinian civilians killed by a specific Israeli attack relative to the military advantage gained by that attack.  As Article 51(5) of the First Additional Protocol says, an attack is indiscriminate — and thus prohibited by IHL — if it “may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”  Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute is worded similarly, although it requires the incidental damage be “clearly excessive,” not just “excessive.”
  Whether an Israeli attack is disproportionate, therefore, is completely independent of the lethality of Hamas’s attacks.
• THE FINTAG NEWSLETTER @ 05 January 2009 – The financial services industry should implement MOTs. This would involve once every three years (and not every year as it would slow everything down) a more detailed and thorough audit than the accountants currently do when signing off an institutions statutory financial statements off every year. As we have seen, these yearly audits are a waste of time.
• Blogging, a new journalistic genre? | The Monday Note – Starting as little more than populist rants, blogging has already transcended its origins and grown into a fresh new journalistic genre, one that is likely to become the main engine of modern news sites.
• Digg This, Huffington Post: What’s $200 Million Now Worth? | The Media Guy – [T]here's a residual assumption that HuffPo must be worth at least tens of millions, especially given Oak's $25 mil investment for an undisclosed stake. Just after December's Oak round, for instance, The Wall Street Journal's "BoomTown" blogger Kara Swisher quoted an unnamed source who put HuffPo's valuation just "south of $100 million." Clearly those Palo Alto VCs are hoping that the blog's expansion plans — last summer's launch of a Chicago HuffPo edition, for instance — will some day pay off.

  So how'd I come up with my $2 million figure?

• Monmouth’s news & arts weekly | triCityNews – "The triCityNews is an alternative newspaper focusing on the arts, culture and politics in eastern Monmouth County, New Jersey. Distribution is from Atlantic Highlands to Belmar. The triCityNews publishes every Thursday.

  Our mission is to identify and promote the creative and alternative throughout the area. We have placed particular emphasis on promoting the restoration of Asbury Park to its rightful place as one of the great progressive and multicultural small cities in this country. In Red Bank, we advocate for the creative businesses and groups which are threatened by the creeping conformity of that town's economic boom. And in Long Branch, we search diligently for a spark of creative life, focusing on that city's West End as a beacon of hope in an otherwise suburbanized waterfront community. And throughout the region, we uncover interesting artists, businesses and characters of all stripes.

  Why do we do it? To defeat that most pernicious enemy we all face out here in suburbia."

• Former newspaper rivals cooperate as jobs are cut | Boston.com – Just a dozen years ago, newspapers on either side of Arlington, Texas, fought fiercely for every reader in the fast-growing city, spending millions of dollars to expand their staffs and cover the smallest meetings and sporting events.

  So it came as a surprise that The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram started sharing photos and concert reviews in November.

  But these are unprecedented times.

  As readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet and the stumbling economy cuts deeply into revenues, news organizations are redefining what it means to compete. In recent months, papers around the country have tried to mitigate their staff cuts by forging partnerships with former rivals.

• Online Or Bust: Why 2009 May Be The Nail In Newspapers’ Coffins | paidContent – [T]here's a strong case for saying 2009 will mark a shift from seasonal, sensible belt-tightening to the long-term shrinking of the newspaper industry in Britain