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Via the McClatchy VP Howard Weaver's blog, Etaoin Shrdlu , I was stirred by the report on a column in the Macon Telegraph by Editorial Page Editor Charles Richardson, Why We Do What We Do . Richardson, responding to attacks on his paper for printing the wonderful McClatchy Washington Bureau report on the detainees at Guantánamo , accusing the editors of being 'unpatriotic': We are afraid some of our readers have a stilted view of our constitutional duty. But first a little history. Our country was founded as a nation of laws. ...Should the American press emulate the history of the former Soviet Union's Information Telegraph Agency of Russia, better known as TASS? Should the American press become the propaganda arm of the government such as "The Attack" newspaper in Nazi Germany, set up by the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels? Is that what our founders had in mind? Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

(An occasional reminiscence on the events of 1968 ) Since Dr. Martin Luther King's murder in April, investigators had been following a trail of a man who seemed to have been following King, and went by the name of Eric Stavro Galt. Although information linked him to King's murder in Memphis, it was three months before he was finally caught. Police in London arrested him June 8 at Heathrow Airport, where he was trying to leave the UK with a Canadian passport under the name of Ramon George Sneyd. James Earl Ray was extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's assassination. He would confess in 1969 and be sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted the confession and was supported in his effort for a retrial by King's family. 40 years later questions about James Earl Ray linger , Atlanta Journal Constitution. On June 10, Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland as military commander in Vietnam. At Walter Reed Army Hospital, former president Dwight...

From Howard Owens: Spare me the fancy redesigns and give me some text to read . Among the gems: Spare me the big graphics and four-column photos and color splashes. Stop trying to turn your print front page into a web page. ...If they want timeliness, they’ll go online. ...News isn’t about a demographic (as in, “How do we target women, age 24 to 35, with one child and two cats?”) ...The print product should provide context and a moment’s respite. The online product should say, “this is what is happening now.” ...Try digging into your archives and looking at your newspaper from 1971. Make your 2008 paper look like that. You know, this sounds nearly right to me. I want the background and the ads (and comics, and recipes) from the paper that I get delivered by mail late in the day, and don't expect it to give me breaking news. But I also don't want briefs about national/international stories I already know about. I need the local news, the analysis, the interesting stories about p...

The question of journalists and blogging has been debated for years, and I've linked to lots and lots of stuff on the topic. There's so much now that I don't usually link to it, but once in awhile I notice something that stands out. Today, it's a posting by Roy Greenslade, Why journalists must learn the values of the blogging revolution . He raises some interesting ideas: I have tended to predict that future news organisations will consist of a small hub of "professional journalists" at the centre with bloggers (aka amateur journalists/citizen journalists) on the periphery. In other words, us pros will still run the show. I'm altogether less certain about that model now. First, I wonder whether us pros are as valuable as we think. Second, and more fundamentally, I wonder whether a "news organisation" is as perfect a model as we might think. On a related note, I noticed another journalist/blogger spat going on in Asheville NC, where a local blogge...

Hmm. This is why I stopped doing my Miami Herald blog two years ago when they dropped my post-retirement freelance contract. Things must be different now, since Brayden Simms , who announced his own layoff in a column, says he's being paid to blog -- on life after layoff. It's not news, since Gawker and The Guardian , among others, have linked to Brayden's blog. But I just noticed a mention on Daily Pulp , who says: ...hey, if you're gonna fire a guy, might as well exploit him on his way out. ... Still a little weird and shameless on the newspaper's part.

Gene Weingarten writes that the recent Washington Post buyouts haven't affected his written product, at all: Yanks Thump Sox . (Thanks to Doug Fisher .) Note the version with errors noted finds more than I would ever have caught in a hurry.....

Some more interesting thoughts on news research and other topics... In the Wall Street Journal by Jason Fry, The Case of the Missing White Pages (link fixed). It explores the question of whether there is a directory of cell phone numbers (a question that comes up on NewsLib about once a year). A few years back there was news one was coming, but according to this story, Intelius gave up on it. Cell phone users don't want strangers getting their numbers, end of story. But it raises some interesting thoughts: That will arouse uneasy feelings that technology has once again done away with something we assumed was eternal...Those of us who remember looking ourselves up in the white pages and thinking that now we belong to a place may lament -- not for the first time -- that our real-world communities are becoming more fragmented as people spend time in online communities of their own choosing instead. (Via Resourceshelf.) Mentioned in Derek Willis' report on some sessions he attende...