MEDIA & JOURNALISM

Journalists are being tarnished by the activities of professional privacy invaders - Brian Cathcart dissects News of the World phone hacking scandal, plus examines the case of public interest v intrusion 

List of 60 useful sites/tools for digital media/journalism.

But while Google is an unusual company in many ways, when you boil down its business strategy, you find that it's not quite as mysterious as it seems. The way Google makes money is straightforward: It brokers and publishes advertisements through digital media.

In fact, one of the greatest joys a white person can experience is to catch a grammar mistake in a major publication. Finding one allows a white person to believe that they are better than the writer and the publication since they would have caught the mistake. The more respected the publication, the greater the thrill. If a white person were to catch a mistake in The New Yorker, it would be a sufficient reason for a large party.

Google is motivated by something much larger than its congenital hatred of Microsoft. It knows that its future, both as a business and as an idea (and Google's always been both), hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the usefulness of the Internet, which in turn hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the capabilities of web apps, which in turn hinges on rapid improvements in the workings of web browsers.

IT'S been more than eight years since "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" made its first foray into presidential politics with the presciently named Indecision 2000, and the difference in the show's approach to its coverage then and now provides a tongue-in-cheek measure of the show's striking evolution.

The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate.

How I investigated a suspicious alt weekly.

A lot of research can go into a piece of reporting, and in print the value of that research can only be passed on through brief quotes or references. But on the web, no longer limited by finite column inches, newsrooms can create huge value for readers by providing links to the source material that journalists have gathered.

For the past week, I've been fielding calls about Google's new content play, called Knol, "killing" Mahalo. Knol stands for "unit of Knowledge" and it's a very well-designed Wikipedia/Mahalo style content publishing play. It's very similar to the New York Times' forgotten About.com, Seth Godin's spam-filled Squidoo, the flawed-but-fascinating Wikipedia, and of course my new project Mahalo.com.

Think you've got the gift of foresight? The Washington Post has partnered with Predictify, an online polling service, to create a "Prediction Center" that allows readers to vote on possible outcomes for selected stories. Users will be able to leave their predictions and discuss their beliefs on an integrated comment thread, with the most accurate participants appearing on a leaderboard. You can access the main Predictify hub here.

Hunter S. Thompson died as he lived.

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.

Mobile phones are changing the future of news, reports Stephen Quinn.

If you are a photographer with high-quality images posted on Yahoo's Flickr service, you may soon get an e-mail inviting you to become a paid contributor to Getty Images, the world's largest distributor of pictures and video.

The problem with the AP isn't really about linking, it's about quoting. And the problem with quoting is that, now that anyone can publish any thought or idea on the web, and anyone can link to it or reproduce it, the whole notion of quoting and citation has been completely turned on its head.