links for 2007-01-25

Seamus McCauley on “Goodbye Gutenberg”: “If journalism is not to be disintermediated by the ability of anyone with a laptop or a mobile phone to tell a story, it need to hold on to its unique selling point – being trusted to tell us what is true.”

Heather Brooke’s speech from the launch party for the second edition to her FOI handbook, Your Right to Know.

St Albans citizens objecting to the expansion of a Tesco are organising onlnie, using a Blogger blog, Yahoo e-mail groups and Flickr. They have published podcasts on NowPublic.com and videos on YouTube.

Richard Sambrook, reports a quote from the Davos Media Leaders Council: “Bloggers suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, journalists suffer from Attention deficit disorder.”

“The Politico, a new weekly newspaper [in Washington] that will provide in-depth coverage of the political/lobbying scene, launched [on Wednesday] to modest fanfare.”

Nicholas Carr looks at Richard Rosenblatt’s idea for “a company that generates its own traffic, generates its own content, and monetizes itself.” Is it really “the perfect lazy-man’s media company”?

Paul Conley on CNET’s long history of innovation in online journalism,and its recent introduction of pay-for-performance journalism.

The AP is equiping its reporters with pre-printed release forms so that they can obtain the rights to citizen journalists’ snaps on the spot while covering a story.

Since last month, the CIA “has been using Facebook.com … to recruit potential employees into its National Clandestine Service. …”

Following the news that Westminster Council may ban free papers because of the litter they cause, Mark Hamilton looks at the environmental impact of dead trees and wonders whether this will become a factor in the demise of print media.