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:

• New York Times Co. in Talks With Carlos Slim on Preferred Stock Investment | WSJ.com – The New York Times Co. is in discussions with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim about investing in the newspaper publisher to help ease its financial problems, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Can CNN, the Go-to Site, Get You to Stay? | NYTimes.com – As newspaper revenue collapses and television revenue stagnates, every media company is rushing to reformat news for the digital generation. To that end, they are placing expensive bets in the hope of answering two pointed questions: How will news organizations continue to sustain themselves? And what will the digital newsroom of the future look like?

  To a greater degree than most other media companies, CNN, the cable news channel of record, has figured it out. Using page views as a metric, Nielsen ranked CNN.com as the No. 1 current events and global news Web site last year, with a monthly average of 1.7 billion — half a billion views more than its nearest competitor, MSNBC.com.

  Analysts say the Web site represents the fastest-growing part of CNN’s revenue, reflecting the sharp increase in online consumption.

• Israeli-trained Gaza doctor loses three daughters and niece to IDF tank shell | Haaretz – Israel News – Strategic communications: "Throughout the war, Abu al-Aish had put a face on the Palestinian suffering, making regular reports by cell phone to Israel's Channel 10. He is a rarity among Palestinians, a Hebrew-speaker who trained in two Israeli hospitals – the Soroka hospital in Beersheba just 18 miles from Gaza, and Tel Aviv's Tel Hashomer hospital.

  His tragedy prompted numerous calls of concern to the station, many from
  people who know him.

  "We all know and love him well at Soroka, and we really hope the situation gets better," Dr. Shaul Sofer, head of the ER at Soroka who taught Abu al-Aish."

• Liam Halligan: The rescue has failed – it’s time to fess up, reboot and start again | Telegraph – In the UK and US, in particular, the banks aren't playing ball. They think they're more powerful than our elected officials, and for the last six months they have been getting away with hiding losses and burying mistakes while screwing many billions of pounds out of taxpayers.
  Look at the cause of this latest spasm. Opposition politicians point to the Government's decision to lift the ban on short-selling – allowing traders to pile pressure on bank stock. That misses the bigger picture.
  Bank shares collapsed on Friday because of renewed fears that said banks have simply enormous liabilities on their books that they're still trying to hide.
• MI6 informant Wang Yam found guilty of killing millionaire author to steal his identity | The Times – The personal qualities of confidential informants: "A leading Chinese dissident who worked as an MI6 informant was convicted yesterday of murdering a millionaire author to steal his identity.

  Wang Yam battered Allan Chappelow, 86, to death at his villa in Hampstead, North London, before trying to plunder his bank accounts. Yam, 47, insisted throughout the police investigation and two trials that he had been framed by “men with no allegiance to this country”.

  Most of the evidence was heard in secret after MI6 requested that the press and public be excluded for almost all of the case.

  Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, agreed to a Public Interest Immunity certificate, making it the first murder trial covered by a secrecy order on the ground of national security.

  Before the order was granted it was reported that Yam was a “low-level informant” for the intelligence services and that “part of his defence rested on his activities in that role”."

• Update to Times of London question | Megan McArdle – I just received the following from someone identifying himself as Mike Harvey of the Times of London, though it comes from a "Googlemail" address…
• Can This Org Chart Save Newspapers? | HarvardBusiness – There are not print customers and digital customers, just customers. As a result, print and online units can both be stronger if they work together.

  Those on the inside of newspaper organizations, engulfed of the strain of organizational upheaval, can no doubt enumerate dozens of reasons not to change. However, bringing print and online under common leadership, and finding ways to better serve customers by selectively joining print and online processes, is healthy and sensible.

  The historical antagonisms between print and online will no doubt make this process tough to navigate. It will, inside some newspapers, take the form of a emotional print vs. online power struggle. The companies that perform best over the next 3-5 years, however, will be the ones that just get over it. They will adopt a "platform agnostic" mindset and focus on what is best for the customer.