How Twitter has transformed political journalismThe Independent on Sunday’s chief political commentator John Rentoul enthuses about the “joy” of Twitter. More than a social network, more than breaking news and a great way to learn about Welsh Jelly Mini-Cups regulations.
Future of news
Why does James Murdoch hate public libraries?
James “Son of Rupert” Murdoch has hit out at the British Library and its evil information sharing ways. Roy Greenslade has a memo for him: libraries don’t care about your bottom line.
must read 
How Google will save the news
The media moguls may be pining the murder of the news industry on Google, but they couldn’t have it more wrong, says James Fallows: the search giant is actually working overtime to come up with strategies to save it. Read what the big G has in store for the future of the media.
Could sports reporters be replaced by robots?
Computers can now write sports reports as well as any journo — and they’re faster, cheaper and more accurate to boot. Is it time to bench sports writers?
Why can’t we watch American TV online?
Good question: TV news outlets in Australia, the UK and the Middle East allow anyone to stream their content online — so why do all US broadcasters lock the rest of the world out?
NYT vs. WSJ: the last great newspaper war?
The Wall Street Journal is muscling in on the New York Times’ territory, launching a local New York section. Is this really the last great newspaper war, or just the first great battle of the online news age? asks Wired.
The future of Facebook unveiled
Facebook is going to turn the web into “one big cocktail party”, says CNN, with the company just announcing its new platform, Open Graph. Watch CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address here.
CJR: It’s time for the media to stop arse-kissing Apple
While news outlets are busy holding Apple and its iPad up as the saviour of news, the company is increasingly strengthening its grip over what actually gets published. We need to wrestle control back, before it’s too late, warns the CJR.
How blogs are becoming more like newspapers
Now that blogs and online news sites have become Serious Business, lax fact-checking, vague headlines and poor sub-editing just won’t cut it. To defeat newspapers, they have had to become them, says Ravi Somaiya.
Death of the “instant book”
There has long been a lucrative market in “instant books” — hastily cobbled together tomes that pop up after major world events. But the real-time nature of the internet has made them obsolete, says Roger Donway.
Google: How can newspapers survive? Ditch the “papers” bit
Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian offers some advice to newspaper publishers: paywalls won’t cure your financial woes — going big online will. Forget costly printed news: news outlets must go 100% online to survive.
Facebook: the world’s newspaper
Forget aggregators and e-readers, the real digital news revolution is taking place on Facebook, which is now the fourth largest source of traffic for media. Do we now only read what our friends tell/want us to read?
The death of the Washington Post
The once great Washington Post is crumbling: plagued by ethics scandals, dwindling finances and lacking any strong identity, the paper is scrambling for a way forward. The New Republic chronicles its demise.
Why Murdoch and Google are fighting on the same side
Contrary to popular belief, Rupert Murdoch and Google aren’t at odds over their visions for the future of the news, says Mark Day: both know a big game changer is looming in the near future, and it’s called the e-Reader.
The rise of the Social Media Director
With hundreds of “social media directors” now working at newspapers, magazines and TV stations, it’s officially journalism’s hottest job, according to Forbes. But are media outlets taking a big gamble by putting their futures in the hands of Twitter?
The future of online news: the ‘living story’
Google is experimenting with a concept in online news: the ‘living story’, where stories are unified on a single page, which is updated as new developments occur. It needs some work, says Margaret Simons, but it could still be a game changer.
must read 
Google: How we can save newspapers
Frustrated newspaper executives need to stop blaming Google for their woes, writes the company’s CEO Eric Schmidt: Google News provides their sites with billions of clicks every month — and it wants to work with them to build bigger audiences and make more money.
In defence of paywalls
We can’t go on pretending that quality online journalism costs nothing, says journalism professor Tim Luckhurst. Thousands of journalists have already lost their jobs — paywalls are the industry’s only hope to restore some sanity.
AOL to replace human editors with robots
AOL — owner of big-name websites like TMZ, Politics Daily and Popeater — is creating an algorithm to automatically assign stories and pay rates to freelancers, based on web searchers and stats.
Rival publishers unite to create iTunes for magazines — but who’s buying?
Magazine publishers Hearst, Time Inc and Conde Nast are joining forces to create an “iTunes for magazines” — a online storefront for digital versions of their titles and articles. But they can’t sell a product that’s already free… are those paywalls we can see looming on the horizon?
What will it take to get people paying for online news?
There’s movement at the station: Rupe is dumping Google, Journalism Online has 1200 publishers on-board, and Time is creating an iTunes for magazine articles. What’s next on the path to making paywalls prosperous?
Tim O’Reilly: The War for the Web is just getting started
Murdoch’s threat to take News Corp content out of Google’s results in just the beginning, says tech publisher Tim O’Reilly: big players like Facebook, Apple, and, yes, News Corp, are breaking off bits of the Web for themselves — and they won’t always want to share.
Dear Rupert, this is how the internet works. Google it.
Rupert Murdoch may be rich, clever and influential, but his plan to remove News Corp content from Google’s index is just daft. If he wants us to read his stories, let alone pay for them, we have to be able to find them first.
Imagining life behind the pay-wall
The year is 2012 and the news is no longer free: Michael Wolff is in prison, Fox has renamed itself The Glenn Beck Channel, a NYT sub costs $7000-per-year, and a cultural divide has formed between the news-haves and news-have-nots…
Future of the ABC: less broadcaster, more webmaster
The shift in the ABC’s Arts programming from TV and radio to the web heralds a much larger metamorphosis for the broadcaster, in which the web is its primary form and other mediums just exist to feed it content, writes Karl Quinn.
