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It may be a niche publisher, but the International Data Group has been working out the answers to some big mainstream questions. The biggest one: Can print media survive the transition to the Internet?

Press freedom: Instead of journalism by experts, we now prefer self-expression and the democratised interactivity of blogs and wikis

Is the web 2.0 revolution making us more co-operative, or is it turning us into vulgar narcissists who can't relate to one another? Three recent books offer differing views of what technology is doing to our humanity Andrew Keen

Matthew Ricketson reviews Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-1976, edited by Douglas Brinkley and Hooking Up: essays and fiction by Tom Wolfe.

The Napster bloodbath damaged music more than Lennon's murder

How many more years will we have to watch foreign correspondents parachute into a region and pretend they know what's going on? How many more reports coming out of the Middle East from hotel rooftops will be delivered by people who do not speak Arabic, or know what "the Green zone" in Iraq was called before coalition forces arrived?

It all sounds so … uncomplicated, doesn't it? Boozy lunches at Michael's and evenings at Elaine's, unlimited expense accounts, stories that took months to report and longer to write, maybe a ramshackle house in the Hamptons to complement the musty, book-clogged apartment on the Upper West Side. But above all, there was the sense that magazine writing was at the center of a vital intellectual universe, with New York as its capital, and vaunted writers and editors such as Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Willie Morris, Harold Hayes, Lillian Ross, Clay Felker, Norman Mailer, David Halberstam, Nora Ephron and the like as its reigning princes and princesses, with salaries and perks and moist-eyed acolytes to match. Not to mention scandals, sodden confessions and rumors that could be safely traded and tucked away among trusted friends, with no danger of being scattered like seed spores across cyberspace. Gossip was community-building, not community-busting.

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism -- a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.\n"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism.\n\nIn the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra. The legendary singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts, and unwilling to be interviewed. So Talese remained in L.A., hoping Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and he began talking to many of the people around Sinatra -- his friends, his associates, his family, his countless hangers-on -- and observing the man himself wherever he could. The result, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism -- a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction. The piece conjures a deeply rich portrait of one of the era's most guarded figures and tells a larger story about entertainment, celebrity, and America itself. We're very pleased to republish it here.

A lot of us who go into journalism are completely sheltered and naive about what it actually entails, disillusioned by unrealistic portrayals in movies that lack the actual two-weeks-standing-on-your-feet-and-Photocopying and ulcer-inducing insecurity that we face in our pursuit of a byline. I myself have a long history of being boondoggled by pop culture: I applied to NYU because I thought it'd be just like Greenwich Village in the 1950s, all beatniks in berets, poetic and artistic and sipping coffee over a dog-eared Village Voice. Naive, right? (I hope charmingly so.) For the most part, that fantasy has resurfaced as the gold ring to strive for in my albeit short career as a professional journalist.

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's Courant, it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.

As magazines and newspapers hunt for the new thing they need to be to thrive in the Internet era, some find that part of the answer lies in the old thing they used to be. Publications are rediscovering their archives, like a person learning that a hand-me-down coffee table is a valuable antique. For magazines and newspapers with long histories, especially, old material can be reborn on the Web as an inexpensive way to attract readers, advertisers and money.

Rupert Murdoch wants his Wall Street Journal to displace The New York Times as the world's paper of record. His ambitions could be good news for the newspaper industry- or another nail in the coffin of serious journalism.

What the Internet is doing to our brains

A 61-year-old woman elbows her 5-foot-2-inch frame to the front of the crowd mobbing Bill Clinton after a campaign event in South Dakota. As Mr. Clinton shakes her hand and holds it tight, she deftly draws him into a response to an article on the Vanity Fair Web site that examines his post-presidential life.

The New York Times has certainly embraced blogging, but it was striking to see in this post from The Lede just how much they've embraced link journalism: