As I was leafing through the Guardian on Saturday morning I came across an article with the rather alarming headline Google news tax could boost local papers, report says Google and other websites that carry news they do not produce should be taxed and the money generated used to prop up local newspapers, says a [...]

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“In every newsroom there’s a power center, and the reporters know where the power center is and they will follow it,” says Ken Sands, former online publisher at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. “I can’t think of one regional paper that is run by a Web person. You have [print] people running them who have [...]

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In my own life I’ve seen it a thousand times, where there was the old rock’n’roll establishment beating up the punks, which I was part of, or it was the Aid establishment beating up Band Aid and Live Aid. But the reality is that there was room for the Rolling Stones and the Clash; there [...]

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The appearance of Google Knol seems  to be causing some consternation in the J-bloggashpere.  The general tone is that the search giants new ‘encyclopedia’ is a step too far. Danny Sanchez frames his (very balanced) take with a quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt We’re in the advertising business – 99% of our revenue is advertising-related. [...]

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The Guardian has an article outlining BSkyB’s plans to build an itunes killer in partnership with Universal. The new service, scheduled to launch this year, will combine an unlimited on-demand jukebox service with a set number of monthly downloads that can be saved, even if users stop subscribing, for a single monthly charge. There are [...]

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The law. It’s a legal minefield isnt it? (always start with a bad pun) As a journalist time was you only had to worry about libel and contempt and anything else got referred up. Now, the law for journalists, is as much about access to information. And that’s not just about getting access to information. [...]

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Isn’t twitter great (when it’s working). Mark Comerford shared a link to a report on an EU report – no, no, keep reading, honest it’s good (and not about the Irish referendum.) The report goes under the title of DRAFT REPORT on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union (PDF link) that’s [...]

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A number of browser tabs to consume already today – damn the reader. But rather than tag them all to delicious I thought I would give them a bit more discussion (a la Mark and his Daily squibs) Speaking of things ‘a la’. Richard Titus over at the BBC internet blog has been thinking flattery [...]

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