links for 2006-12-14

I missed this earlier this week: Telegraph.co.uk’s Shane Richmond on ABCe and online readership metrics.

“A league table will be published tomorrow … by the Information Commissioner revealing which British newspapers have paid private detectives to help them to obtain information on people in public life.”

“Operation Motorman showed that a huge undercover market in obtaining and selling on confidential information lies hidden under the surface of legitimate data sales,” Computeract!ve reports. Expect details newspapers implicated in this tomorrow.

Heather Brooke, writing in Information World Review, looks at the consequences for academics if the Government’s planned changes to the Freedom of Information Act go through.

Traffic to the Ipswich Evening Star web site is rocketing as people seek updates on the serial killer story.

Peter Bale: “We have to move into news in a way where we avoid commoditisation. Where if we have something special to say, something worthwhile, we’ll try and say it.”

Nick Douglas: Asking Craigslist to fund local newspapers, as one journalist recently did, is “like demanding that video resurrect the radio star or asking Gutenberg to please fund the monks.”

A Philadelphia Daily News journalists suggests Craigslist should make lots of money and then give it to the journalists affected by the disruption he is causing to the American newspaper business. I don’t even know where to begin.

The DCA has published a document giving details of the consultation it will undertake regarding the controversial proposals for changing the Freedom of Information Act fees regime.

“Noting its acquisition this month of the UK Press Gazette, Wilmington said it may require investment this financial year ‘to restore its position as the leading magazine for journalists’.”

Rageh Omaar: journalists in Britain “define their sense of being liberal, being Western, against Islam.”

Kevin Anderson explains effective niche blogging to big media: “Feed the geeks, and by that I don’t mean just the people who are passionate about technology. Feed the foodies, the wine officianados, the travel buffs, the video gamers, the greenest thumb g