links for 2007-01-02

“Want to scare the bejesus out of a seasoned newspaper editor? Show him or her a list of the most-viewed stories on the paper’s Web site.”

“As the news cycle slows every year at this time, journalists who are looking for stories start looking to the blogs and then attack with abandon.”

“The Missouri blogosphere has won praise from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for breaking some of the biggest political stories in the state this year, and politicians aren’t too thrilled by the development.”

A useful academic paper from 2005 in which Fred Turner of Stanford University suggests applying Actor-Network Theory to the sociology of news production.

A German paper asks: Do US-style computer-assisted reporting investigations based on public registers of sex offenders deputise journalists into doing the work of law enforcement?