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Twenty-nine of those deaths came in a single, politically motivated massacre of reporters and others in the Philippines last November, the worst known episode for journalists, the committee said.

Various studies have shown that the major reasons people do not have broadband are: the cost of Internet services and the cost of computers; not knowing how to use a computer; and not understanding why the Internet is relevant.

Last week, Mr. Genachowski outlined a plan to transform the $8 billion Universal Service Fund, most of which comes from consumers’ telephone bills nationwide, from subsidizing telephone service in underserved areas to expanding broadband access in those areas. He said Tuesday that some of the money from this fund could be used to help expand computer classes in libraries.

The $7.2 billion plan in the last stimulus package was approved without significant debate. The program is intended to extend broadband service to what is known as the “middle mile,” which can connect to institutions like schools and hospitals, and the “last mile” — homes and businesses — that big Internet providers have bypassed because the expected revenue was too small to justify the big investments needed.

For some of the beneficiaries, the program will mean the difference between isolation and being connected to the rest of the world.

The stimulus law requires that all the money in the program be allocated by Sept. 30.

the latest incarnation of a decades-old legal maneuver known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or Slapp.

meritless defamation suits filed by businesses or government officials against citizens who speak out against them. The plaintiffs are not necessarily expecting to succeed — most do not — but rather to intimidate critics who are inclined to back down when faced with the prospect of a long, expensive court battle

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

“The technology is rewiring our brains,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world’s leading brain scientists. She and other researchers compare the lure of digital stimulation less to that of drugs and alcohol than to food and sex, which are essential but counterproductive in excess.

The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment,

Like most technologies, our new electronic digisphere is made up of good and bad. How we use it is, as always, up to us.

relies on software algorithms to collect technology news in real time into what is essentially the front page of an ever-changing industry newspaper.

turns to humans to filter the ever-growing number of articles and blog posts published online each day

Mediagazer, a new sister site for media industry news.

Speaking to investors last month, Mr. Murdoch said that the News Corporation was in “final discussions with a number of publishers, device makers and technology companies” about digital delivery of news and entertainment. “We will soon develop an innovative subscription model that will deliver digital content to consumers wherever and whenever they want it,” he said.

As The Times and its Sunday sibling challenge the Internet orthodoxy that readers will refuse to pay for general news online, some of the conventions of newspaper Web design are already tumbling. Freed from the imperative to generate clicks and to lure search engines, The Times and Sunday Times have taken a novel, reader-focused approach that minimizes distractions.

advertisers are most interested in audiences who actually care about what they read or watch, rather than the casual Web surfers.

The new Sunday Times site is particularly striking visually, with a heavy emphasis on photography. Clicking on an article brings it up in a separate box, with everything else on the page shrouded in a dark gray screen that makes for easier reading.

in the current digital news ecosystem, having “week” in your title is anachronistic in the extreme, what an investor would call negative equity.

in a publishing landscape filled with the lame and infirm, weeklies are the most profoundly challenged. A weekly schedule, with its tight turnarounds and frenzied production, is costly as a matter of course. Monthlies can still do step-backs for readers who don’t expect to see what happened five minutes ago, and daily newspapers have co-opted the newsweekly formula to build in real-time analysis.

It is axiomatic that in the current epoch, it is much less cost-intensive to build out a new brand than to try to walk back the cat on a legacy business.

Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households.

little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.

few children whose families obtained computers said they used the machines for homework. What they were used for — daily — was playing games.

When you pick up the paper, with its solid reporting on local politics and strong point of view, you know what to expect. A well-defined sensibility, deep local roots and a focus on its one and only market give the publication staying power.

In the Internet era, there are plenty of options for those attracted to an alternative sensibility. But even if the Salons of the world capture some of that audience, there’s still a place for the distinctively local approach — and chains, by their nature, find that harder to cultivate.

But a strong local voice and brand identity are key to possible new strategies in areas like live events production and participatory journalism. Even on the Internet, where scale matters, local coverage remains a promising frontier.

YOU can tell when a print journalist has lost his full-time job because of the digital markings that suddenly appear, like the tail of a fading comet. First, he joins Facebook. A Gmail address is promptly obtained. The Twitter account comes next, followed by the inevitable blog. Throw in a LinkedIn profile for good measure. This online coming-out is the first step in a daunting, and economically discouraging, transformation: from a member of a large institution to a would-be Internet “brand.”

For many Americans, having high-speed access to the Internet at home is as vital as electricity, heat and water. And yet about one-third of the population, 93 million people, have elected not to connect.

the overwhelming majority of people who have Internet access have broadband.

“Now we’re at a point where, if you want broadband adoption to go up by any significant measure, you really have to start to eat into the segment of non-Internet-users.”

By mid-2010, there will be 6.8 billion humans on this planet. According to United Nations estimates, there also will be five billion cellphone subscriptions.

The top editor of The Times, Russ Stanton, and several of his deputies vigorously opposed the ad before it was published, but they were overruled by the paper’s business executives, according to people with direct knowledge of the dispute,

Mr. Conroy noted that however unorthodox the ad may be for print, it mirrors a common practice online of having an ad cover part or all of a Web site’s home page for a few seconds.

“It’s taking a concept that we normally apply to new media and reimagining it to a concept in a newspaper,”