The Fox Street Journal

David over at my 2 cents got me thinking about newspapering again today - as if I need a reason. He shares good news about online readership, particularly with the elusive 18-24 and 25-34 year old age groups. I love good news! Believe me, the newspaper business doesn't celebrate enough of it.

In addition, a brief that caught my eye this morning. Drinking coffee and eating a banana...sorry no bear claws today :)...I noted somebody wants to plunk down $5 billion for Dow Jones, the publishing company for the Wall Street Journal. I'm not a reader of WSJ but the bid made Page One - a prime piece of real estate. Columbia Journalism Review covers it here - darkly I might add. The Christian Science Monitor does a nice job here. MediaPost Publications gives it some play right here. Whether it comes to fruition or not, Rupert Murdoch buying THE brand in US financial news is a little bit creepy. Why does this guy - who already owns Fox News (using "news" lightly) and the London Times - want more?

Marketing Rag touches on the "conventional" wisdom. Which is that online revenue projects huge increases in the next 2-5 years and he wants to make more dough. Can't disagree and the guy was pretty shrewd buying MySpace but does MySpace generate the revenue of advertising dollars that newspapers do? Somebody tell me, please. Newspapers are a bargain right now. Advertising in them, too. Ask Google.

Here's the main issue for me - as more independently owned newspapers are gobbled up the balance of news tilts too far toward one voice. Thats a bad thing in a democracy. Call me old fashioned but Thomas Jefferson said it best:

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

of course he also said:

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

I'm not too sure what happiness has to do with it :)

Heres a spoof on what we can expect from the new WSJ.

I added a new widget - rate this post. I'll see how it plays.

Page of Flakes

When Steve Woodruff at StickyFigure sent me an email about a marketing portal and use flake in the same sentence...well, I thought he was getting a little personal :). But seriously, he has put together a terrific little nugget to keep track of some favorite blogs. You can chew on it right here. Yum-m-m-m! I am seriously humbled to be in the company of this group. I like how Steve has broken out the categories. He placed One Reader in the Social Media tab. Mike Sansone at Converstations compares the page to a bear paw - or is that bear claw? I like Mike's thought on using the tool as a blogroll.

It leads me back to a reflection of the importance of keeping regular with posting on a blog - this one in particular. Just like breakfast - its an important part of the day! You see - and some of you know - I've been on vacation. Yes, it was nice - thank you! We had a terrific time in Seattle. Kicked back and did a whole lot of nothing - except walking, talking and generally crowd watching. As a result, valued readers and friends have come by and seen a stale post. Albeit a good one ;). Now its time to ramp it up for I found 3 things I missed - my guitar, my bike, and blogging. Jamming on Sunday took care of my music jones. Rode my bike into work today so my heart rate went up! And now a brief post. Were it not for the encouraging email from Steve, Mike's post on the new breakfast and a visit to PageFlakes - I'd still be engaging my time with the drudgery of work rather than being amazed at the creativity and inventiveness of my fellow humans!

So what do you think - blogs for breakfast? better than oatmeal? or into the night? when is your favorite blog time?

Link to TechCrunch all about pageflakes