RT @doctorow: Why #HGWells was wrong when he called #newspapers "dead as mutton" in 1943 http://tinyurl.com/2ulhrzw <-good insight
– tom_watson (tom_watson) http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/10967766454505472

The money quote here is "many newspapers still see comments as some kind of necessary evil: a bone tossed to readers to help drive traffic, but something that produces little else of value." And they wonder why their comments are a cess-pool?

If you're at all interested in how content providers might make money for their content online (with newspapers being the main focus) Jo's collected a rather good batch of links here summarizing the current thinking and positing some solutions.

Great article by Alan Patrick.

"We tend to forget that the reason for profits is unique access to bottleneck resources. In the case of the media it has been production and distribution. The 'Net changed all that of course - production and distribution is now in the hands of anyone with a PC and a 'Net connection."[...] To me the message is fairly clear - the New Bottlenecks will be Independent Thought, Editing & Curation, and Journalistic Storytelling. [...] This to me is the issue that "HobbyMedia" will face - the "Pro" media will find the new bottlenecks and spend all their time and energy in mastering them.

I've long been skeptical of Alan's view on amateur produced media but his position is becoming clear now and I think this could well be applied outside of news journalism. What are your bottlenecks?

Nice Ars Technica analysis of how the Associated Press intends to protect news. In short, they can't, it won't and the microformat technology they're planning to use doesn't even do that. One for the "sad death throes of traditional news distribution" files.

The Sunday Times published a piece of high hackery about social media, as it seems to do every Sunday with weary reliability. This one is about Twitter. I idly speculated (on Twitter, natch) that it would be amusing to report on newspapers in the same way newspapers report on us. Within a few hours I was informed Kevin Marks had had the same idea. <i>via <a href="http://www.ewanspence.com/blog/2009/02/23/the-sunday-times-is-pre-revenue-lets-twitter-that/">Ewan</a></i>

A lovely tribute to the classic era of journalism that, as someone in the comments point out, was mythical decades ago. Still, it's a evocation that makes my spine tingle. "A newspaperman wore black slacks, a bit worn. A short-sleeved white shirt and a thin black necktie. A newspaperman owned one pair of black wingtips for his entire career. A newspaperman had nicknames, raunchy, rude and unashamedly affectionate nicknames, for all of the linotype operators in the basement. A newspaperman reveled in the composing room heat, the smells of melted lead and oily black ink. But the newspaperman was most at home in the newsroom. A loud, smoky, smelly place. Wire machines. Real phones with loud rings. The morning news meeting held in the men's room, the last two stalls on the right, each editor doing his business while conducting business."

This is interesting, I think. A lot of noise occurred when Stevens was one of the first web cartoonists to get a newspaper deal on his own terms. Now he's quitting papers and sticking to his online business. You can't necessarily translate his experience to others as he has his own thing going on, but...

A very blunt keynote to journalists looking for a lifeline.

Paul Groves asks some important and interesting questions about blogs in newspapers. I should address this myself since I blog for the paper in question.

Interesting questions from the editor. My comments to follow.