links for 2007-03-10

CFOI’s summary of the Government’s proposed changes to the FOIA (via Martin Rosenbaum).

“The recent controversy over premium rate phone in votes to television programmes in the UK not being tallied properly underlines the point that audiences will eventually question, then turn against, participation for participation’s sake.”

“Mayor Martin Winter has launched a scathing attack on the Free Press labelling us a “riff-raff” newspaper.” … following a story based on an Freedom of Information Act request…

Some Twitter users’ feeds are being indexed by Technorati … and Google News.

“To take money for touting products in a blog and not disclose it — prominently, and in context — is not ethical. No amount of thumb-sucking justifications can change that.”

“It seems that every few months, in casting about for something to write, media critics get themselves all in a twist over this question when in fact it just might be the single most overblown issue in contemporary journalism.”

It had to happen: A futures market for predicting the news.

Adrian Monck whips out his calculator: “The BBC gets a billion pageviews a month. On the figures above, that would bring in about $12.5m per annum – or about 50,000 licence fee payments.”

“News International has become the first national UK newspaper to join the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).”

“Most of what is needed in newsrooms is pretty basic at this stage. What’s needed for most newspaper business apps is pretty basic. This isn’t rocket science.”