Four today

1. Hello walls. The Belo-owned Dallas Morning News is charging for online content: Newsonomics; The New York Times is set to launch it's own paywall: MarketWatch; and Gannett now wants to charge, too: Bloomberg

2. James Fallows embraces inevitability. Atlantic

3. A way to rescue investigative pieces from stagnation? Nieman Journalism Lab

4. Actor seeks intern to help with new job hunt. Internships

Four in the morning (the Huffington Patch edition)

Did AOL just pay Arianna Huffington $315 million to figure out how not to pay its writers? This and other questions mulled in today's AOL Way-HuffPo roundup:

1. Huffington and her cohorts say the deal will change nothing and everything, "it will be like stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet." Atlantic

2. Ken Auletta on Tim Armstrong's "Hail Mary Pass." New Yorker

3. Nick Denton calls the Huffington Post "remarkably ugly" (scroll to bottom of Q&A). Atlantic Wire

4. Gawker makes fun of the whole thing. Gawker

Groupon envy turns minds mushy

Advertisers love stories that conflate what they do with journalism, and the Atlantic's Elizabeth Weingarten delivers in her column about the Groupon academy - where writers learn to produce compelling ad copy and then tell themselves they're doing "hybrid journalism-advertising". From the story:

"Groupon really functions like a newspaper," said [Groupon Editor Eddie] Schmid, who worked briefly at the Chicago Sun-Times. "And that's really invigorating. There are dedicated stages, and teams that are really focused on making sure things are factually accurate, transparent, and funny."

But unlike most newspapers, Groupon is expanding rapidly. This year, the site expects to bring in more than $500 million in revenue. It might be the fastest growing company in the history of the Web, sending a clear sign that there's a market for creative writers -- and the type of hybrid journalism-advertising prose Groupon has perfected.

First off, newspapers could stand to learn how to be more funny and transparent (and, in some cases, accurate).

That said, just because the two enterprises use the written word as their means of communication and try to be accurate does not mean they have a hybrid relationship. Police reports also use written words and try to be accurate, but that doesn't make what I do hybrid journalism-law enforcement work.

Social media and the social consequences

Most people involved in social media are trying to create a social network large enough to realize a meaningful payoff. But some, like political analyst Marc Ambinder, formerly of the Atlantic, have a network that's large, engaged and sometimes brutalizing. C.W. Anderson explores the upside and downside over at Nieman Journalism Lab.

Four in the evening

1. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark thinks NPR is the future. Atlantic

2. NPR's Twitter followers want more hard-hitting, breaking news. NPR

3. Former LA Times executive editor John Arthur is now vice president and executive editor of the Bakersfield Californian. BC

4. Greg Sargent at the Plum Line is satisfied that Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell fibbed about attending England's Oxford University. Plum Line

Do young people still become old people?

In an interview with the Economist, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen explains the dilemma all newspaper face as succinctly as I've ever heard :

The cost of changing settled routines seems too high, but the cost of not changing is, in the long term, even higher. A good example is the predicament of the newspaper press: the print edition provides most of the revenues, but it cannot provide a future. I know of no evidence to show that young people are picking up the print habit. So if the cost of abandoning print is too high, the cost of sticking with it may be even higher, though slower to reveal itself. That's a problem.

Currently, old people keep print alive. Yet, young people inevitably turn into older people. I wonder if there is any evidence to show young will pick up the print habit when they gray? Or has too much changed? Perhaps our massive technological revolution has made it impossible to predict what younger generations will do. Maybe we'll return to print as a way to ground ourselves in the tangible; or maybe print is simply too inflexible to carry the news in way we'll want to ingest it.

On another note, Rosen is asked to list media outlets that are practicing journalism the right way. Here's his answer:

Particularly good at what they do: Advertising Age. Gawker. Wired. Voice of San Diego. The New Yorker. The Economist. (Disclosure: You're The Economist!) Rachel Maddow. Frontline. The New York Times. West Seattle Blog. Texas Tribune (Disclosure: I'm an advisor there). "To the Point" with Warren Olney. The Atlantic. "This American Life". The Guardian. Jon Stewart. There are probably some regional newspapers doing a great job that I simply don't read, but fewer than before.

Wedged in between the Texas Tribune and The Atlantic... annoyed to follow Rachel Maddow, gratified to proceed "This American Life."

The Kinsley test

Michael Kinsley at the Atlantic says the New York Times story about Silver Lake's "walking man" is the most boring article ever published in a newspaper. Atlantic

The Wikileaks leak

Has the Wikileaks, an online source of confidential documents, changed the nature of news by releasing 92,000 pages of secret U.S. military logs about the war in Afganistan to the New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian? Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic explores the question and pulls this from NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen:

Rosen calls WikiLeaks the first "stateless news organization" in an excellent post on this episode."In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it," Rosen writes. "But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new."

Al Qaeda prefers print

The Al Qaeda terrorist network has launched a new English-language magazine called "Inspire" that includes such varied content as "The Cartoon Crusade," "From Usama to Obama," and "Open Source Jihad." There's also a how-to section that promises to show readers how to "make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom." Marc Ambinder has some pages posted here.

To be young and struggling

National Journal and Atlantic writer Ron Brownstein will be on the UCLA campus Tuesday, along with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, to talk about economic challenges facing the so-called Millenial generation (people born between 1981 and 2002). Brownstein summarizes here a recent poll that explores the ways young people are experiencing the economic meltdown and how it is shaping their views.

The program runs from 9 to noon and will be held in the California room at the UCLA Faculty Center, 480 E. Charles Young Dr. To RSVP, visit thenexteconomy.eventbrite.com.

Four in the morning

1. James Rainey profiles "Roger the Scanner Guy," Santa Barbara's police blotter phenom. LA Times

2. The military denies a reporter entry to a murder trial because the reporter won't sign away his rights. Fayetteville Observer (via Romenesko)

3. What the Intertubes have done to our fragile brains. Atlantic

4. Politifact's Truth-o-Meter goes on down to Georgia. PolitiFact

The "like" revolution

Facebook users probably have noticed the recent explosion of "like" buttons on various Facebook pages, and now a new "like" plugin is popping up on other media sites. When clicked, the reader's interest in whatever he's reading or seeing will be automatically posted to his personal Facebook page.

From Time:

Facebook wants every page on the Web to have a "like" button, which they released at the conference. Each time you indicate you like something, that information is fed back to Facebook and then to the website you're on. Enough of your friends like the same restaurant on Yelp? You'll see that on Yelp.com and when you login to Facebook. Like this article? Click the like button on it and your friends may see your recommendation when they come to time.com.

What you "like" will also be shared with other databases, giving the web a way to read your preferences. This, of course, raises concerns about privacy. From the Atlantic:

Facebook will allow website developers to collect and use our information when we connect to a site. When I press the "like" button, that goes into a social clearinghouse of information. Other sites can see the articles I like on CNN, the music I like on Pandora, the food I like on Yelp ... and that's in addition to any information I make public on my Facebook profile. The Facebook team calls this application "Open Graph." You can call it the future of marketing.

Given Facebook's preeminent popularity online, this web within the Web could have Google-like implications for how information is shared and online ad dollars flow.

And since every website wants to be liked, expect to be inundated with overtures to share your attention and approval... Like this one I just got in my email box from ABC News: "Like ABCNews.com? Like Facebook? Check out our new integration: http://bit.ly/bEmqQ8"

All the world is a popularity contest.

Misery's company

Maybe you were up late last night obsessively going over your lede in your head, or wondering if the verb you chose to describe a politician's decision on a controversial item truly captured the audacity of the moment without stepping over a line.

Was it an "avenue" or a "boulevard"? Was he accused of three felonies or four? Should that quote have gone higher up in the story?

Well, Jack Shafer at Slate does a good job describing something that most non-journalists don't get about the job and it's worth sharing. It's from a piece on Politico and The Atlantic publishing a memo they could not authenticate.

Not to let Politico and the Atlantic off lightly, but show me a journalist who has never published something he later regretted, and I'll show you a piker or a liar. The conscientious journalist—no matter whether he does his work on the Web, in print, or via broadcasting—goes to sleep every night with the dread, boiling in his belly, that he didn't check this thing or that thing closely enough before he filed his story.

Enjoy the glamor, citizen journalists.

Andrew's ankles

Atlantic magazine asked conservative firebrand Andrew Breitbart what he's reading. Apparently, he has a "secret wire" that's three minutes faster than everyone else's and a nose for email-inbox gold.

Also, if you've had a Twitter spat with Breitbart, it's only because he thinks he's better than you:

I use Google Alert for my name to start fights with people in comment sections or on Twitter. It's clear that Keith Olbermann's strategy to get noticed was to attack people above him. I have precisely the opposite strategy: to go after the mosquitoes that bite my ankles. I'm not sure it's a good business model but I'm a petty enough man to indulge them.

Breitbart also labels Gawker as an ankle-biting enterprise - which it is, but this seems a bit of a pot-kettle thing.

Flashback to '97

In 1997, freelancer Matthew Hahn interviewed Hunter S. Thompson at Owl Farm and asked him how the Internet would affect journalism. How does the answer hold up 12 years later?

Here's the exchange:

MH: The Internet has been touted as a new mode of journalism -- some even go so far as to say it might democratize journalism. Do you see a future for the Internet as a journalistic medium?

HST: Well, I don't know. There is a line somewhere between democratizing journalism and every man a journalist. You can't really believe what you read in the papers anyway, but there is at least some spectrum of reliability. Maybe it's becoming like the TV talk shows or the tabloids where anything's acceptable as long as it's interesting.

I believe that the major operating ethic in American society right now, the most universal want and need is to be on TV. I've been on TV. I could be on TV all the time if I wanted to. But most people will never get on TV. It has to be a real breakthrough for them. And trouble is, people will do almost anything to get on it. You know, confess to crimes they haven't committed. You don't exist unless you're on TV. Yeah, it's a validation process. Faulkner said that American troops wrote "Kilroy was here" on the walls of Europe in World War II in order to prove that somebody had been there -- "I was here" -- and that the whole history of man is just an effort by people, writers, to just write your name on the great wall.

You can get on [the Internet] and all of a sudden you can write a story about me, or you can put it on top of my name. You can have your picture on there too. I don't know the percentage of the Internet that's valid, do you? Jesus, it's scary. I don't surf the Internet. I did for a while. I thought I'd have a little fun and learn something. I have an e-mail address. No one knows it. But I wouldn't check it anyway, because it's just too fucking much. You know, it's the volume. The Internet is probably the first wave of people who have figured out a different way to catch up with TV -- if you can't be on TV, well at least you can reach 45 million people [on the Internet].

(found via Marc Cooper)

All apologies

Politico's story catching the Washington Post with its ethics down has caused repercussions inside and outside the newspaper. Post publisher Katharine Weymouth wrote a long letter to readers apologizing for a flier that promised corporate-sponsored off-the-record meetings between editorial staff, White House officials and paying lobbyists. She's also asked for an internal review of what happened and talked with the newsroom staff.

All the hullabaloo inspired Talking Points Memo to report that the Atlantic magazine has been holding corporate-sponsored salons since 2003. Atlantic Media publisher David Bradley responded with a long letter of his own.

Police clash with Iranian protesters

Iranian authorities are trying to clamp down on the now daily protests in Tehran. Here's a few options to keep up to date on what's going on:

Borzou Daragahi and Romin Mostaghim are still in Tehran for the Los Angeles Times.

Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish is scouring Tweets from Iran.

The New York Times is filing reports from inside Iran.

Robert Mackey at the NYT's Lede blog is also following updates from social networking sites.

Updates from Tehran Bureau, an independent site with original reporting, commentary and citizens.

Washington Post has a reporter in Tehran.

Nico Pitney from Huffington Post is live blogging the protests.

The United States has Super-poked you!

If world leaders were Facebook friends.

Remaking America in the Great Recession

The corporate titans that once stood as symbols of America's economic might are faltering and the Great Job Purge of 2008-09 has spread from sea to shining sea, signaling a massive reshaping of the American economic landscape is underway. So what will the new America look like when the recovery finally comes? It's too big a question to answer, but one we're wrestling with at "To The Point." Here's a first attempt at getting our head around the issue.

Douthat asks

Is the McCain campaign playing to stereotype?

Also, ABC News finds that the lines of attack on Obama have left the McCain camp looking out of touch on the issues in the eyes of registered voters.