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:

• Infomercial for Obama Is Big Success in Ratings | NYTimes.com – Television networks needed a hit, and Barack Obama gave them one.

  Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS, called the size of the audience “stunning.”

  An infomercial on behalf of Mr. Obama was a smashing ratings success on Wednesday night, proving to be more popular than even the final game of the World Series — and last season’s finale of “American Idol.”

• Jenni Russell: Editorial staff face acute difficulties when working with wilful on-air talent | Comment is free – "This problem goes much further than a single controller. It's something for which the director general and his executives should take responsibility. They are the people driving a ratings-based, competition-obsessed model, which has them signing stars like Ross and then expecting people lower down to deal with any fallout. To them, Douglas is another pawn. In such crises, the top managers go to ground, too scared to put themselves in the firing line. They evade the fact that their systems devolve all the risk and none of the reward to people at the bottom. It's monumental managerial cowardice, and it's where our outrage should be directed."
• How to Use the New Google Web Search RSS Feeds | ReadWriteWeb – "If we were interested in getting an RSS feed for Google web search for discovery, more than just reputation tracking, we might do an "advanced search," increase the results displayed from 10 to 100 and then use Dapper.net to scrape a feed of results from that page.

  All of this is more complicated than it ought to be, but once you set up even the most basic feed options then you don't have to think about it again."

• Reporters love the reporters in Frost/Nixon | Reuters – "The timing couldn't be better for such a message of uplift. Journalists, you may have noticed, are taking a beating on all fronts. There's Sarah Palin, telling us how she'd rather go directly to the American people instead of through pesky and unnecessary filters; they just get in the way. There's the Tribune Co., the debt-laden parent of the Los Angeles Times, cutting meat and bone and the entire animal. And then there's all the media themselves telling us, tendentiously, how all the other media are too tendentious to listen to.

  Amid all this, what could be more comforting than a reminder — no, a celebration — of a time when journalists mattered, when they didn't just have the courage of their convictions but used those convictions to topple leaders, and were celebrated as rock stars for doing so?"

• Puerile prank that left BBC stars and executives on the ropes | The Guardian – "There has been a trend in broadcasting to promote marketing figures to run channels and large editorial departments – the thinking goes, at least partly, that marketing skills are needed to "punch through" and have impact in our digital age. These figures, however, are left exposed when questions of editorial judgment arise."
• BBC fails the online Brand damage limitation test | currybetdotnet – 29 October, 2008 – "I'm sure the BBC's press officers have been frantically working with the national newspapers all day trying to influence what will be in tomorrow's headlines. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Licence Fee payers will have visited all of these places on bbc.co.uk, and got the firm impression that the BBC wasn't reacting to the crisis at all. In service design terms, the Radio 2 homepage, Russell Brand blog & show pages, and the search engine results are all 'touch points' that failed today to deliver the right user experience."