• Times of London’s Eureka Mag: Hawking says physics enough to explain creation. No god needed. Same as no god?
• NY Times: Congratulations! Your piece is the 1 millionth story on overmedicated kids!!!
• BBC – Orcas not only have tribes, but may be splitting into distinct species
• (Amended) Wash. Post: A science writer looks at Mir and finds Chile’s trapped miners
• Guardian: Big excloo – Bjorn Lomborg very worried about global warming! Some say it’s just a new book with the same old same old.
• KQED Quest: A question unanswered – what’s up with these stunted, bushy albino redwoods?
• Forbes and its blogs: A good source of medical news
• ScienceNow, Nature, BBC, etc: Comet as N. America mammoth killer takes a heavy impact – some say the idea is now deader than a ground sloth. R.I.P.
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• Journalism.org: July 30, 2010 A good 'View' for Obama This story plus Shirley Sherrod announces she will sue Breitbart, the case for why we should be thankful for WikiLeaks and William Shatner interviews the D.C. sniper top today's news. Read the …full story

• Press Gazette: Chris Cramer: Forget broadcasting, the future's narrowcasting 3 March 2009 By Chris Cramer Media organisations the world over are currently focusing on the future of their businesses. As audience and viewer attention fragments and the internet fuels a wholly different …full story

• Google Add-on: Health Conversations Medpie Interviews Crowdsource Chief Complaint Web Videos Consumer Health Watch Top Health Stories Featured Articles In the News Opinion Featured Videos Web of Health News Health Politics Featured Articles In the News Technology Featured Videos Web of Health …full story

• Read Write Web: …full story

• eclecticism: Proudly powered by WordPress and Carrington . Carrington Theme by Crowd Favorite …full story

• JMSC: New World Order Required - Soros Friday, 06 November 2009 By Doug Meigs George Soros said the American model is broken and urged China to adopt a more open society. “Hopefully, (the) Chinese leadership will rise to the occasion,” he …full story

• PBS: …full story

• Welcome to PoliticsDaily.com, a political news magazine for the general reader updated every day, throughout the day. Instead of leading off with extravagant claims about how we're the best thing since Caller ID, what I really want to promise is that we'll work hard to distinguish ourselves the old-fashioned way, with heavily reported, well-written stories. We'll offer a mix of straight news and opinion -- and a mix of views in our reported commentary. And I can't tell you how grateful we all are that AOL (yes, Alec Baldwin, deal with it!) is willing to take this gamble, and fund a small team of old pros committed to traditional journalistic values.rn …full story

• There are more updates to spot.us than I can really fit into a MediaShift IdeaLab post. For the list-y version of recent milestones - scroll down to the bottom.rnrnBut first, I want to highlight a very specific example of forward momentum both for Spot.us and the notion that news organizations don't try new things. I try and avoid the "new media v. old media" debate. What I often say is "I have constructive criticism for both sides."rnrnDetails on new media criticism: It needs to mature and blossom.rnDetails on old media criticism. It must learn to be agile - fail early and often.rnrnRecently Spot.Us and the Oakland Tribune have come together to partner and the collaboration can be an example on how both sides can address their weaknesses. rnrn …full story

• Some journalism academics may be even more scared of new technology and more resistant to change than the worst print "dinosaurs" working in media today. But Web 2.0 has made getting online so simple that there are no more excuses for being disconnected. While some reporters see journalism education as a potential refuge from the rapid pace of change in the 21st century digital newsroom, journalism schools should in fact be among the first places to adapt to new technology if they're to train the journalists of tomorrow and remain relevant today. rnrnI have been working to integrate blogs and other social media into my teaching, but traditional academia's inherent resistance to educational experimentation -- as well as fears around defamation litigation, autonomous student publication, and public relations fallout -- can make embracing the journalism of the digital age even more difficult in the classroom than in the newsroom. rnrn …full story

• From time to time, I'll give an overview of one broad MediaShift topic, annotated with online resources and plenty of tips. The idea is to help you understand the topic, learn the jargon, and take action. I've already covered blogging, citizen journalism, political polling sites and other topics. This week I'll look at alternative business models for newspapers.rnrnIntroductionrnIt's easy to see the problems plaguing the business of daily newspapers in America. The Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Christian Science Monitor said it would publish weekly in print instead of daily. Detroit newspapers announced they would be cutting home delivery to three days per week. Layoffs are rampant and newspaper company stocks are down in the dumps.rnrn …full story

• There was a great exchange on the O'Reilly editors' backchannel the other day, so illuminating that I thought I should share it with the rest of you. We've been discussing the fast-track development we're using to produce The Twitter Book. (We're basically authoring the book as a presentation, after I realized how much more quickly I am able to put together a slide deck to make my points than I am a normal book. Twitter is also such a fast-moving topic that we need to be able to update the book every time we reprint it.) rnrn …full story

• Tools like search engines, RSS feeds, and email alerts have aided people in navigating the web more efficiently, but most would agree there are still challenges – whether it be finding quality information or simply having time to visit all sites of interest. Given the breadth of this information problem, it is no surprise there are currently many companies attacking the issue, from the giants like Google to many startups like WebPartner. CTO Randy Cox is well aware that his company is far from alone in trying to address this problem, but does believe WebPartner offers a unique approach.rnrnrnRather than focusing on having users set search criteria or key words to seek out information, users are responsible for setting the sources of interest and WebPartner’s technology monitors these sources to identify any updates or changes in the content. Available sources can include web pages, specific areas of a web page, or RSS feeds. Once a user sets up a list of sources to be watched, known as WatchPoints, WebPartner aggregates the information in a “channel” displaying it as a single feed. Along with creating their own channels, users also have access to channels created by Cox and the WebPartner team, as well as those created by other users to which they can subscribe via RSS or view at the WebPartner site. The company is also working on additional options to distribute the information aggregated in a channel including Twitter (recently added for the Colorado Startup Channel) and email alerts.rnrn …full story

• Thomson Reuters has announced plans to launch a broadband video platform for traders and investors that its head of multimedia believes will be 'the future of news dissemination'.rnrnThe global news agency has hired more than 100 journalists and technical staff to work on the project, codenamed Reuters Insider, ahead of a full launch this summer.rnrnThe video service will be delivered by broadband direct to 500,000 subscribers' desktop terminals, providing both live and on-demand access to markets coverage, analysis and breaking news.rnrnrnViewers will be able to tailor the service to suit their needs, adding personalised channels and opting to only receive stories about a particular market sector, such as commodities.rnrnThomson Reuters said it was looking to create partnerships with other content providers, allowing them to add their own video content to the service.rnrnWriting for Press Gazette this morning, Thomson Reuters global head of multimedia Chris Cramer said: "We believe Reuters Insider is the future of news dissemination - delivering focused, fast, intelligent and relevant information to make our clients and customers smarter and more successful. Not broadcasting, but narrowcasting."rnrn …full story

• The newspaper industry is in a downward death spiral, having been severely impacted by new technologies, the ubiquity of internet access, and a rise in citizen journalism. Here in the U.S., some papers are filing for bankruptcy, others are close to doing the same, and there's even a proposal to give the newspaper industry a bailout plan of its own. Elsewhere in the world, it's more of the same. In Japan though, the country's high population of elderly citizens is keeping the papers afloat...for now, at least. But like everywhere else, they will soon have to face the future: young people don't do newsprint. rnrnAs noted by the Washington Post in October of 2008, Japan's newspaper industry is still "surprisingly spry." The country's five big national dailies have kept nearly all their readers, only slipping 3.2 percent in circulation during the last decade. Compare that with the drop of over 15 percent in the United States, for example. Still, the industry in Japan is just as worried as everyone else because they can see the future ahead of them.rnrn"I am in a dying industry," said Kenichi Miyata, a senior editor and writer at the Asahi newspaper, a daily with a circulation of 8 million. "Young people do not read newspapers, and our population is getting very old very rapidly."rnrn …full story

• According to Scott Karp from Publishing 2.0, The New York Times is increasingly embracing link journalism - the idea that online journalism should heavily rely on one of the Web's main attributes, hyperlinking, to increase a story's editorial value.rnrnKarp has been grappling with the idea of link journalism for some time (see his posts here).rnrnThe Times' Lede blog makes intensive use of 'link journalism'. In one of its posts, it links back to several external sources including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, USA Today, and an independent blogger.rnrnBut according to Karp, 'link journalism' extends far beyond the simple act of hyperlinking: rnrnThe Lede's posting "isn't just lazily linking to these stories -- he's read them, compared them, identified shortcomings, extracted key facts and issues, and connected the dots.rnrn"In a traditional newspaper article, all of these facts and analysis would have been synthesized, but the reader wouldn't have had the opportunity to read for themselves the source material. This post does what journalism is supposed to do -- empower people with facts, understanding, and perspective about important issues."rn …full story

• “Link journalism,” a term coined by Scott Karp, formerly director of digital strategy at Atlantic Media and founder of journalist social network Publish2, refers to sharing and picking up links from other media outlets and bloggers in order to fully cover the story.rnrnIt’s the antithesis of the traditional media approach, in which a media outlet was expected to offer its own version of a story (even if that version provides little else from stories already out there). On the Web, however, content ownership is a much looser idea. Publishers are starting to grasp that “every page is a home page,” because readers aren’t necessarily coming through the front door but more often directly to stories from search and social networks. rnrn …full story

• If NBC TV stations can link to other sites, if the Washington Post can connect you to competitors, and if the New York Times can write about “link journalism,” then by golly, gosh darn, I can do it too!rnrnrnLink journalism is the practice of linking to other news sites and services. It’s something that used to be frowned on in journalism because it drives your readers or viewers to a competitor, but is now being embraced by news outlets that recognize they need to be both content producers and content aggregators.rnrn …full story