Alex Tabarrok takes us back to the future, via 1900:

There is a widespread prejudice against the newspapers, based on the belief that they cannot be trusted to report truly the current events in the world’s life on account of incompetence or venality. But in spite of this distrust we are almost altogether dependent on them for our knowledge of widely interesting events….The function of the newspaper in a well-ordered society is to control the state through the authority of facts, not to drive nations and social classes headlong into war through the power of passion and prejudice.
The source? The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology (JSTOR) by one Delos Wilcox writing in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science…. July 1900.

There’s been a fascinating discussion online regarding John Kerry’s Vietnam war record statements vis a vis the media’s attention to President Bush’s Vietnam era National Guard service (Note: I’m no fan of either one). The story illustrates, however, the terrible condition of many major media organizations.
I always thought the purpose of news organizations was to inform (perhaps that’s an idealistic approach) the thinking public. Thank God for the internet, and our ability to route around these outages (the first blogger, Dave Winer, started largely because the tech press infrequently got things right).

• Instapundit – where the story started. Reynolds follows up with a useful strategy for Kerry.
• Investor’s Business Daily Editorial
  

  “The bias is pervasive. As the Media Research Center, a media watchdog, pointed out, ABC, CBS and NBC did 75 stories on charges Bush was “AWOL” from the National Guard. They did nine on claims Kerry fibbed about his war record. Biased might be too kind a description.”

• Powerline, on the Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial Process
• Jon Lauck, on the largest South Dakota Newspaper’s approach.
• Newspaper circulation problems
• Michael Barone

Ed Cone pens a timely column on our deteriorating level of political discourse.
Another useful perspective: Jason Zengerle on the state of the George W. Bush joke.
UPDATE: This link has been passed around a bit. It’s interesting to see who is having a look.

The Olympic absurdity continues. Athletes are prohibited from blogging. Support your rights. Support the EFF.
Wired covers this issue as well.
JoongAng Daily on the wrestling match between the old media and blogs at the Olympics. Via Scripting News.

Officials from several newspapers have recently confessed to fudging their circulation numbers. Slate editor-at-large Jack Shafer talks to NPR’s Noah Adams about why media officials would do such a thing, and what it could mean for public trust of the press.

Interesting South Dakota blog platform on monopoly media reform.

A useful interview with Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark.

Local Cable TV monopoly, Charter Communications reported higher-than-expected subscriber losses for the second quarter, according to Peter Grant.
I recently thought about adding direct tv or charter cable to our home – largely for the Olympics (we don’t watch a whole lot of TV). I found the direct tv customer service folks to be excellent, while my charter interactions were not great (lots of rather hard upselling). I really only wanted local channels, espn and msnbc. They don’t evidently unbundle. Bummer that unlike other parts of the world, we won’t be watching live Olympic internet streams.

Verne Kopytoff summarizes recent disclosures regarding google’s popular adsense advertising program:

Google is among the Internet’s biggest destinations for advertisers. The company had nearly $1.5 billion in revenue last year, 95 percent of which came from advertising.
Targeting the pitches
Underpinning Google’s business is AdWords, a program that allows advertisers to make targeted sales pitches alongside search results. For example, a shampoo company could choose to advertise for queries that only include the words “hair,” “dandruff” or “split ends.”
Google also runs the ads on partner Web sites including America Online, Ask Jeeves and Earthlink.

Jon Lauck spoke recently to the Souix Falls Rotary Club about media monopolies and the implications to the democratic process.