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:

• Can Micropayments Save Newspapers? | The Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com – The new aphoristic debate: "Clay Shirkey, the author of “Here Comes Everybody,” has been writing about the Internet since 1996, and wrote extensively about micropayments a few years ago, when the several companies, like the ones Isaccson mentions above, were trying to make the concept work in connection with online content. In response to Isaacson’s remarks yesterday, Shirkey tweeted: “MicroPay talk appears whenever a biz is dying.”
• The Wall Street Journal Blew a Chance to Expose Madoff | gary-weiss.com – A bombshell is buried in Harry Markopolos' prepared testimony to a House panel today: he contacted the Wall Street Journal on the Bernie Madoff fraud three years ago, and the newspaper did nothing.

  It seems that the Journal missed an opportunity to achieve one of the biggest scoops ever, win a Pulitzer Prize and all that other good stuff–and extinguish the biggest fraud in financial history.

• Lost in Transition: Q&A – Outgoing State Dept. Official Offers Diplomatic Advice | National Journal Online – President Obama is not the first president to appear on Al Arabiya. President Bush appeared several times going all the way back to 2004. He's also talked directly to the Iranian people a year ago on New Year's, and so this is nothing new. But people see it as a fresh start, the world sees it as a fresh start. The world is paying much more attention, so he's going to get much more bang for the buck than Bush ever got
• Taiwan, South Korea muzzle pessimistic brokers | The Economist – Shooting messenger time: "In December the Taiwan Securities Association, a trade body, reminded brokers, on behalf of the government, that the press must receive the firm’s approval before quoting research.

  When critical brokers’ opinions are cited in newspapers, regulators now want “explanations”. On February 4th CLSA, a regional broker, issued a report saying Taiwan’s economy had deteriorated sharply. The press jumped on the report, and the government jumped on CLSA, which quickly issued a statement. The report was intended for clients alone and CLSA had not changed its investment opinions. Regulators have insidiously suggested that investment firms take a harder line by suing media outlets that report on their opinions."

• The case against foundation ownership of the New York Times | Jack Shafer – Missing from the nonprofit debate is any mention of why enough paying customers can't be found to support these news-gathering institutions if they are so vital to our "democratic constitutional system" (Coll) and "our democracy" (Swensen and Schmidt). The implication seems to be that political coverage, foreign dispatches, and investigative work are inherently noncommercial. If that's the case, has the publication of thousands of foreign, political, and investigative news stories ("quality coverage," to put it in shorthand) over the decades been an act of philanthropy by newspapers?
• Newspapers need an antitrust exemption | Los Angeles Times – The collusion solution: "That's where the antitrust exemption would come in: It would allow all U.S. newspaper companies — and others in the English-speaking world, as well as popular broadcast-based sites such as CNN.com — to sit down and negotiate an agreement on how to scale prices and, then, to begin imposing them simultaneously.

  That, in turn, would set the stage for tackling the other leg of this problem — how to extract reasonable fees from aggregators like Google and Yahoo, which currently use their search engines to link to news that newspapers and broadcasters pay to gather."

• Gawker’s Branded Site Takeovers Make Your Banners Look Sad | Alley Insider – [W]hat's Gawker doing right? Nick tells us that sponsored posts have been nice and sticking Google ads in clever spaces has helped, but that the major revenue driver has been branded site takeovers.

  You've seen them. Built by Gawker's in-house graphic designer, Chrissie Lamond, they are the site re-skinnings wherein Gawker re-shapes the entire look of its sites after a advertiser's brand or product. On the site's navigation bar, it says that the title is "sponsored by" or "presented by" the advertiser. Sometimes the blog's own logo changes to the brand's colors.