• The Roland S. Martin Apology Tour began with a visit with GLAAD’s Herndon Graddick, who also helped Tracy Morgan express public contrition last summer. Martin, a lot of people have noted, defended Morgan after that flap. But so did Louis CK.
• James Risen’s attorneys are trying to keep the New York Times reporter from being compelled to talk about his sources in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling. “The brief for Risen,” writes my former colleague Josh Gerstein, “also makes a more direct plea to the appeals court to uphold the basic principle of reporter’s privilege, a legal protection many courts have recognized to keep journalists from being forced to testify in many civil and criminal cases.”
• Toronto’s National Post and The Grid are two of the world’s best-designed newspapers, says the Society for News Design. Another of the winners is Copenhagen’s Politiken, whose design editor, Søren Nyeland, was a judge in this competition. Another discovery from this press release: German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung has a pretty good URL. That could have gone very differently.
• In a poll of advertisers, People magazine, FoxNews.com and ABC were among the “Highest Rated Media Brands.” Perhaps related, and very interesting: “How ABC News built a top social media presence with a small dedicated team.”
• Speaking of polls, business journalists are optimistic about the economy. But weren’t optimistic business journalists something of a problem not too long ago?
• What is the long-term value of longform journalism? Felix Salmon makes a case that as magazines ease their archives online, their tentpole pieces will retain value. “[T]he supply of attention, when it comes to long magazine articles, is far from fixed,” he writes. “Nowadays especially, in the days of Instapaper and Longreads, people are reading more long-form journalism, from more outlets, than they ever did before. And there’s no indication that the rise in long-form consumption will level off any time soon. The more that magazines feed that demand, the more the demand will rise, in a virtuous cycle.” (With any luck, though, the title of this column will be lost to history.)
• Freelancers in Brooklyn may soon get their own clinic. An artisanal clinic, presumably.
• I’m outsourcing future roundups of Rupert Murdoch’s horrible days to Dylan Byers.
• Big ups to my coworker Steve Myers for actually reading the AP suit against Meltwater.
• Today is “Support Your Media Day,” in which two dozen independent news organizations try to raise funds. Caution: When you click the link above, a video starts blaring.
