It appears to be Pick On News Web Designers Day today. This comic -- poking at news sites' unwillingness to link, misuse of thumbnails, and addictions to share buttons, among other things -- made the rounds of Twitter, to the point of crashing cartoonist Brad Colbow's site.

But even more talked about, on Hacker News anyway, was web designer Andy Rutledge's unrequested redesign of the website of The New York Times.

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Under the heading "necessity is the mother of invention," investigative reporting nonprofits have popped up like journalists at a magazine-sponsored soiree offering free hors d'oeuvres and alcohol.

Using industry-renowned editors and staffers, the nonprofits take on in-depth investigations that newspapers no longer have the time or the staff to conquer. The larger nonprofits generally report on any number of public policy issues with the goal of exposing wrongs and making corporations and institutions -- governmental and nongovernmental -- accountable.

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We all know that regional publishers are currently in transition. On the one hand, driven by a growing interest in local web content, the online audience for regional papers grew by nearly 25 per cent over the second half of 2010. On the other hand, print circulations are dropping, along with corresponding advertising revenue.

Most regionals realise that innovation and new services are the keys to digital success, which is why they are experimenting with a raft of new ideas to attract and retain consumers and drive revenues.

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Just a few short months ago the arrival of the iPad was being hailed as the saviour of the newspaper and magazine business. After the initial enthusiasm the realisation that apps are not a simple quick fix for the media industries malaise has led to a rapid growth in cynicism and caution. It reminds of the early response of the magazine industry to the emergence of the web: "It's interesting but there is no money in it - so we will wait and see."

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AS long as we have had tabloids, we have had tabloid scandals.

Weighing in on the spate of scandals plaguing the British tabloid press, one commentator in 1936 acidly condemned what he called "the almost unbelievable indecency of the intrusion of the tabloid newspaper into people's private lives." Surely only the most degraded, low-minded people, he claimed, could produce this kind of news.

Continue reading in the New York Times

Facebook has a war on its hands, and Mark Zuckerberg knows it. Practically overnight, Google+ has gone from a rumor to a thriving community with over 10 million members. With some 700 million members of its own, Facebook is thinking less and less about how to grow that number and more about how to get current users to live more of their lives within its virtual walls.

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As more people buy e-readers and download books through digital stores, some news organizations are finding they can capitalize on their expertise and archives of information by quickly publishing e-books related to big stories.

The Washington Post and ABC News each generated books about the killing of Osama bin Laden shortly after the news broke.

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Social networks have proved to be incredible distribution platforms for real-time news and continue to fascinate journalists as communication tools. It's no surprise that many media professionals have jumped quickly on the Google+ band wagon to explore its potential for journalism.

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By Vadim Lavrusik, Journalist Program Manager & Betsy Cameron, Data Analyst

To enable journalists to better utilize Facebook in their distribution, reporting and storytelling, we conducted a study looking at how people were engaging with Journalist Pages on Facebook. We hope that the findings, which focus on post dynamics, engagement and activity, will provide journalists with some best practices and insights on optimizing their engagement and distribution on Facebook to better reach their audiences.

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by Julie Moos

Aggregation has been core to this website's success for the last decade. Our most popular feature since 1999 has been a blog that earns its iconic place in journalism by highlighting the most interesting and important news for a passionate audience. (In case you haven't caught on, that blog is Romenesko.)

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Defending the motion
Jay Rosen
Author, blogger and journalism professor at New York University
The internet is improving journalism by driving towards zero the costs of getting it to people, and by vastly reducing the capital requirements for quality production. This has opened the market to more players, allowing more ideas to be tried.

Against the motion
Nicholas Carr
Author, blogger and writer-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley
The internet, by altering the underlying economics of the news business, has thinned the ranks of professional journalists. Has the net created other modes of reporting to fill the gap? The answer, alas, is equally straightforward: no.

Access the debate on Economist.com