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 Independent goes free…in Muswell Hill at least | currybetdotnet – 8 February, 2009 – It looks like the credit crunch is beginning to bite around Muswell Hill, and this week we lost our branch of the Fine Burger Company.

  That didn't deter The Independent's distribution team, however. This week, despite the country grinding to a halt under the weight of the snow, the newspapers have continued to get through to the branch.

  I suppose it is one way of keeping the bulk distribution numbers up for those all important ABC numbers. I can't help feeling, though, that the fact you can pick the paper up for free off FBC's doorstep might be hampering Indy sales in the newsagent 3 doors down.

• A new paid-journalism model, but it needs work | LA Times – It's hard not to root for Cohn, 26, who had the chutzpah to try something new, the tenacity to get it off the ground and the maturity to know that it might not work.

  God and Google know the old, monopolistic print advertising model will never make a full-scale comeback. So more power to any endeavor trying to push serious journalism into a new era.

  Yes, there is a "but." To wit: The site's platform outperforms its product. Spot.us stories simply need to be better. The four I checked out — three written and one a radio report — did not particularly engage, incite or entertain.

  A three-part series on how Bay Area communities are planning for a booming elderly population let experts drone on, while giving almost no voice to its actual subject: old people.

• Niger jails journalist for story on Chinese deal | Reuters – A court in Niger sentenced a journalist to 3 months' jail for publishing false information about a business deal between a Chinese company and the W African nation, lawyers said on Friday.

  Soussada Ben Ali, editor of L'Action, an independent weekly paper, was arrested after a Jan 13 article that accused the Finance Ministry of irregularities in awarding a contract worth over US$1.56m to a Chinese firm.

  The ministry denied the allegations over its deal with SMI, a Chinese state-owned company that supplies medical goods, and the prosecution had asked the judge to jail Ben Ali for 6 months.

  Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, has close ties with China. The state-owned China National Petroleum Co. has signed a $5bn deal to produce crude oil in Niger and build a refinery and a 1,250-mile export pipeline.

  Human rights groups in Niger have criticised that deal, saying it is unclear how the money, including a US$248m signature bonus, will be spent.

• Davos 2009 – History Resumes | Tom Glocer – PM Putin was less restrained, to the point where it seemed quite evident that this was personal payback time for the perceived humbling of the great Russian state after the fall of communism.

  …I thought the more remarkable performance was when Putin responded to a question about the incident the following day. Towards the end of a long description of Russia's recognized scientific prowess, he got on to the subject of technology export controls imposed by certain western govts. Putin said that these were outdated and ineffective because (i) it is in the nature of the scientific process to publish and share findings at international conferences and (ii) in any case, even during the Cold War, the Russian intelligence services were able to obtain all the technology they wanted. It is perhaps not surprising that this former siloviki holds his intelligence services in high regard, but it struck me as unusually forthright.

• Can newspapers transition to digital? | Reflections of a Newsosaur – "The Poynter Institute, which rightly is esteemed as a major thought leader in the newspaper industry, owns Congressional Quarterly, which is exactly the sort of profitable and growing niche publication that a publisher would be thrilled to operate.

  But the Poynter Institute also owns the St. Petersburg Times, which, like other newspapers, reportedly has been losing money as a result of the long-running secular decline in advertising and the particularly nasty downturn in the economy in Florida.

  So, what does Poynter do? It puts the profitable and growing CQ up for sale to raise money to subsidize the newspaper.

  Because the Poynter Institute is organized as the sort of non-profit foundation that so many people think can save newspapers (a belief I do not happen to share), the institute’s charter may leave its directors no choice but to sell CQ to support the paper."

• Kicking Around The New York Times, Rupe Cheers Up (NWS) | AlleyInsider – "I'm extremely happy with all our newspapers. There's never been a greater appetite for news in the community. I've got great faith. If we continue the way we're going we may even be lucky and not have so much competition at the end of it all."
• The Death of Newspapers? Part I | Throwing Sheep – Five years ago when I was running the National Post, the advertising department was over-staffed with old-style “order takers”. We had dozens of advertising reps sitting in cubicles waiting for the telephones to ring. The senior advertising managers meanwhile were building good will in the old three-martini-lunch tradition. As Editor-in-Chief, I was dragged out to annual golf tournaments, pressured to make rubber-chicken speeches before clients, and arm-twisted into attending countless sales meetings because, I was told, big clients are always impressed when the top guy from “editorial” is in the room.
  That was in 2003. The Web was exploding all around us. And yet I don’t think these grinding advertising sales rituals had changed much since the 1950s. I knew that the industry’s revenues were shifting online, and kept saying it. But nobody was listening. We didn’t even have editorial control of our own website. I logged on one day and punched in “George Bush”. This is the response the c