Romenesko

Los Angeles Times
That would be the best way to reassure the public that its journalists aren't being unduly influenced by special interests, says James Rainey. "Shouldn't readers be informed if, for example, a foundation that supports bullet trains paid a hefty speaking fee to a transportation reporter?"

Newsday
U.S. District Judge Arthur Spatt says it's "especially troubling to me" that the pictures of Nassau County legislator Roger Corbin handcuffed were used after his arrest on tax charges when Newsday and News12 could have used other pictures taken during Corbin's long political career. "Courts do not get [into] telling the media what to publish," the news orgs' lawyer told the judge.

Boston Phoenix
Boston editors debated that after it was learned that the subway driver (left) who crashed a train while allegedly texting his girlfriend is a female-to-male transsexual. The Globe initially decided the transgender status wasn't relevant, but "because many of the facts that we were getting about him involved his driving record, and it was right there on his driving record that he was transgender -- the proper thing to do was point it out, but not play it up particularly high in the story," says metro editor Brian McGrory.

New York Times
Lawyers opposed to the death penalty have in the past provided the broad outlines of cases to reporters, who then pursued witnesses and unearthed evidence. Now, lawyers tell Tim Arango, they have to do more of the work themselves and that means it often doesn't get done.

Minneapolis Star Tribune
The MediaNews-owned paper wants a pay freeze, a freeze of pay increases tied to years of experience, a freeze in the company's 401(k) match, the elimination of extra pay for night shifts, the elimination of merit pay, and a cut to base wages.
> Firm says it's owed $775K for storing Ridder case evidence
> Star Tribune has lost $6 million so far this year

FT.com
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the company has discussed buying a newspaper or using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status, but is now unlikely to pursue either option. The potential acquisition targets are too expensive or carry excessive liabilities, he tells FT.com.

WashingtonPost.com
"The math doesn't work in our favor," say Post managing editors Liz Spayd and Raju Narisetti when asked why the paper doesn't try to get more subscribers in Baltimore. More from their chat:
* "We get criticism from both the left and right, so that's some measure of balance."
* "We have no plans to curtail any area of coverage, and consider accountability, investigative, political and local journalism central to what we do."
* "We're looking at various options that would help raise revenue, including asking people to pay for specific content. ... In the meantime, keep enjoying for free."

> Denton: Gawker content isn't "edgy"; it's what people expect
> Downbeat, the grand-daddy of jazz journalism, turns 75
> "Google doesn't kill newspapers. People kill newspapers."
> FTC to hold news-media-in-Internet-era workshop
> American City Business Journals now runs Portfolio.com
> Why Twitter won't save journalism -- or kill it
> Ryan Blethen named Seattle Times editorial page editor
> Topix claims the big story in Northbrook, IL comes out of Evanston
> Family-owned Baton Rouge Advocate lays off 49 employees
> Fred Friendly Award | Heywood Broun Award | Utne Awards
> Niche Media pulls the plug on Trump's vanity magazine

Sacramento Bee
McClatchy on Wednesday announced a five-point sales strategy that emphasizes the Internet and seeks to reconnect the company with former advertisers, reports Dale Kasler. That strategy includes emphasizing the web instead of newspapers when it comes to selling help-wanted ads.

Hartford Advocate
He's Jeff Levine, director of content for the Courant and Hartford's Fox affiliate. "Levine's job is to marshal the Courant reporters and editors left standing and fuse them with Fox 61 to form a reinvented news-gathering operation that can do print, TV and online news with equal ease -- and for maximum profitability," writes Andy Bromage. "Levine's appointment begs the question: Is a marketing guy the right person to reinvent the way the Courant does news?" (Note: This piece runs in a Tribune-owned publication.)

Los Angeles Times
"Who knew that France plans to lower the tax rate on restaurant food and drinks by 72% and that the tourist-lure would mean savings of $7.05 on a $50 meal?" writes James Rainey. "I gobbled that appetizer up. In the coming weeks, Newsweek knows it will have to deliver the whole meal, if it wants customers to keep coming back."

Raleigh News & Observer
The weekly paper plans to use the money to expand its staff and headquarters, and increase its press run, from 6,000 to 10,000. "It is problematic that a news organization would ask a government agency for a loan," says Poynter's Kelly McBride.
> Newspapers can't cover governments to which they're indebted

Philadelphia Inquirer
"When you see a Circuit City go out of business and the carmakers, both national and international, cut back on their spending, you have to replace that with something," notes a Philly media buyer. "The big success this year has been the Snuggie. You'll see more ads like that, and hanging tomato plants, and watering globes. You'll see more products like that in areas and day parts [where] you wouldn't have traditionally seen them."

Chicago Reader
Lorraine Swanson and her reporters will be covering several Chicago neighborhoods on their lakeeffectnews.com . "I want to put out a news product people can rely on as a record for the neighborhoods," she says. "I'm not slamming citizen journalists, but I want to treat this as a news product. ...We can handle the competition. We'll get the Tribune and we'll get the Sun-Times -- they're ten miles back trying to catch up."

MediaBistro
Or small towns, says veteran newsman Larry Kramer. "There's nothing wrong with it -- small towns need coverage too. But the fact of the matter is, if you're a good statistician, you should go to Washington and work with one of the investigative groups that are using stats to break stories. ... If you have the heart and soul and you're interested in covering something, you can go to any one of these new media places and in three weeks be as knowledgeable and up to date as everybody there."

Editor & Publisher
Lawrence Roberts, investigations editor at the Washington Post since 2004, is leaving the paper to head Huffington Post's new Investigative Fund. "His experience as a business editor is perfectly aligned with the Investigative Fund's initial focus on covering the economic crisis," says Arianna Huffington.

Columbia Journalism Review
"It’s the people entering the profession now who are going to create the publishing models, the business models, that are going to shape journalism in the 21st century," Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall said at Columbia's Journalism Day. He told the young journalists to consider not only what they can do to shape journalism in the future -- but also to re-imagine it entirely.
> Marshall on the Maureen Dowd plagiarism flap: "I never thought it was intentional. Dowd and the Times quickly corrected it, which I appreciated. And for me, that's pretty much the end of it."
> Scocca and Sicha on "the Scandal Of The Century Of The Moment"

Politico.com
"MSNBC cannot go an hour without mentioning me or playing video of me or having me discussed,” says Rush Limbaugh. He challenges the network to go thirty days without mentioning him. "No video of me, no guests commenting on me. See if you can do it."

New York Observer
Bill Keller considers Google an ally, not a parasite. "I think there're a lot of places you can level that allegation at," the Times executive editor tells John Koblin. "Google isn't particularly one of them. Google News generally runs a headline, maybe a first line of a story from The Times and a link. On balance, they're driving a lot of traffic to us. I don't think most of what Google does in that regard could be described as parasitism or piracy."

New York Observer
Matt Bai turned down Politico's offer to work on an Obama book and decided to write "The Great Distraction," a book about how the baby boomer generation, in the realm of politics, "simply failed to meet the challenges that were pressing in on them" during the past 25 years.
> Michael Gross: Where's the coverage of my latest book?