Video link (MSNBC), and YouTube link (for folks in places where the official source is region-blocked.)

This, my friends, is why we have television. Man, but Rachel Maddow kicks all kinds of ass. Here, she interviews former US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on revelations that the "Terror Threat Level" system was manipulated for political purposes during the Bush Administration. — Read the rest

Here's a snip from a blog post by Ethan Zuckerman about lessons learned from many hours on the phone with reporters doing "social media in Iran" stories:

It's been an interesting few days for people who study social media. As the protests over election results have continued in Iran, and Iranian authorities have prevented most mainstream journalists from reporting on events, there's been a great deal of focus on social media tools, which have become very important for sharing events on the ground in Iran with audiences around the world.

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

Time for some radical thinking in journalism business models, right? OK, try this thought experiment (wait a second while I put on a flame-retardant suit):

What would happen if some top English language journalism organizations simply merged and started charging for their breaking news and commentary about policy, economics and and other national/international topics. — Read the rest

Regarding today's post on the Media Bloggers Association, whom the AP and New York Times said would "represent bloggers" in negotiations over whether the AP would be able to charge $12.50 for quoting five words from a news story (and only if you promised not to criticize the AP!), — Read the rest

The Associated Press has promised to meet with some organization I've never heard of called "The Media Bloggers Association" to work out the details of its frankly insane proposal to sell licenses to quote five or more words from AP stories. — Read the rest

Snip from Placeblogger.com's "about" page:

What's a placeblog?
A placeblog is an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time
It can be done by one person, a defined group of people, or in a way that's open to community contribution
It's not a newspaper, though it may contain random acts of journalism
It's about the lived experience of a place

Placeblogs are sometimes called "hyperlocal sites" because some of them focus on news events and items that cover a particular neighborhood in great detail — and in particular, places that might be too physically small or sparsely populated to attract much traditional media coverage.

Donna Wentworth from the EFF says:

Online journalism has friends — lots of them. Jack Balkin, Eugene Volokh, Feedster, Gawker Media, Joi Ito, Gothamist, Rebecca MacKinnon, Groklaw, Jay Rosen, Groklaw, Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. "Instapundit,"), Markos Moulitsas (a.k.a. "Kos") and many, many more filed a joint "friend-of-the-court" brief (PDF) today supporting the journalists in Apple v.