Four in the afternoon

1. Using social media to report on Egypt. Mashable

2. The Burbank Leader has followed through on its pledge to sue the city of Burbank for merit-based bonuses paid to city employees. Burbank Leader

3. The nonprofit California Watch has launched a new partnership with several newspapers across the state. CFIR

4. Facebook is making an aggressive push to get in the comments game on media websites - especially startups. CNET

Investigative reporter wanted for press events

Mashable, a social media website, has a job opening for a "seasoned" investigative reporter to cover the Bay Area. The job comes with three key responsibilities, only one of which strikes me as having anything to do with investigation or reporting. See if you can guess which one:

*Sourcing original stories about the tech and social media world
*Taking regular meetings with companies in the area and going to press events
*Speaking at events and participating in press interviews

To get the job, candidates must have at least two years "at an established news organization doing investigative reporting."

Facebook releases Persian version

Much has been made about Iranian protesters' use of social networking tools such as Twitter to communicate and organize in the wake of last week's disputed presidential election. That led Facebook to release an test version of its site in the Persian language.

From the company press release:

Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared on Facebook related to these events has been in Persian – the native language of Iran – but the users have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.

Today we’re making the entire site available in a test version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.

Persian was already in translation before worldwide attention turned to the Iranian elections, but because of the sudden increase in activity we decided to launch it sooner than planned. This means that the translation isn’t perfect, but we felt it was important to help more people communicate rather than wait.