Link Banana

Marc Ambinder points out that the venerable Christian Science Monitor is going to stop being a daily newspaper in April — it’ll become a weekly in print — and spend more time focusing on it’s web presence.

I’d buy this:

The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.

But the time for launching this strategy is growing short if it has not already passed.

And I think this is undeniable:

I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

Altogether, a worthy read.

(via Magnetbox)

Speaking of newspapers, Felix Salmon defends Alfonso Serrono interesting idea for ownership of the New York Times (or any paper):

Personally, I think this is a really good idea: give every print subscriber one Class B voting share of NYT stock, and then give them one more share every three months thereafter, assuming their subscription is still in good standing. The securities would automatically convert to Class A shares if they were sold or transferred, or if the subscriber let his subscription lapse.

(via Snarkmarket)

This is a pretty interesting little tool. It maps how (geographically) the world is seen by some prominent newspapers and their editors-in-chief.

(via Boing Boing)

Unlike Wired’s Chris Anderson who counter-intuitively argues that it’s greener to read that magazine in print, Slate’s Green Lantern says — as do I — that’s unlikely.

The greener choice would be to read the paper online, correct?

The Lantern believes so, but the environmental difference between dead-tree newspapers and their online editions is a lot smaller than you might imagine. In fact, there are learned experts who contend that traditional newsprint ultimately comes out ahead, at least in terms of net carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the Lantern disagrees with some of the assumptions these contrarians make, it’s worth exploring their arguments in order to better understand how hard it is to calculate a product’s cradle-to-grave impact.

Having put all their very old paper online, the New York Times — who has the best website of all American newspapers — went a step above to create TimesMachine.

TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.