Hidden --- some might say suppressed --- in my resume is the long-ago work writing about music. I made my way through school largely earning money writing about rock, and eventually it led me to the part-time (but full-time fun) role as the Canadian Editor for Billboard Magazine for nine years.
One of the people I got to watch carefully was Bryan Adams. I saw him again this week and wrote about it today for my paper, his hometown paper, the Vancouver Sun.

News organizations have been struggling to sort through the challenges of social networking and their applications to conventional media. Newsrooms I know use Facebook and MySpace for gathering content, and I belong to Linkedin and other social and professional networks for their excellent connective purposes.
The allure is the interactivity and functionality of sharing content and using generated content. But the downside is, well, no one's really making money on the model.
This week's Economist has a compelling take on how social networks may be a big part of the Internet, but not really a business model.

Trust me, in being new to this experience, I have hardly established great ground rules on how to blog.
But in the early days I am finding a few things about this media management blog:
1. A number of regulars are using it daily.
2. It is vital I keep the Web served with fresh research, so I have a routine of blogging at one of three times in the day --- before work, during lunch or after work. I am trying to blog daily. I want to keep it regular.
3. I want this to be a resource, not a source of ranting. Partly it's because of the role I have at a media company, but mainly it's because I am tired of the faux critics who don't work in complex positions in media talking all about the complexities of media.
The other rule I have is that I don't expect to become rich and famous doing this. It's there for an outlet to circulate research, perhaps to let me say a few things about some fairly non-controversial things.
Today's New York Times has a good guide on becoming a blogging star. The advice in it is pretty grounded in reality.

It should not be surprising that older people feel less trusting of Internet content and advertising. But a new Burst Media report of some 13,000 adults in the U.S. indicates that older people feel content is largely tilted to younger people. In essence, they're yearning for age-relevant content.
Young people, on the other hand, feel the content is directed to them. They're happier.
The report shows people are surfing more widely than they did a year ago and have tried a lot of new sites as they troll the Web. Local news is the first choice among those aged 35-54. But there's an underlying dissatisfaction among older users, which Burst surmises is an opportunity waiting to be seized.

Newspapers are now newsrooms and in some cases newscentres. Their steady momentum to the end of the day and the print deadline has been replaced by an incessant humming of the 24/7 digital priority.
It is a news manager's challenge to help reshape the culture, and one of those cultures is the layered editing that often improves and occasionally blandizes the reporter's copy.
The Washington Post has done as much as any North American media to operate across platforms in the last decade. Its washingtonpost.com functions separately from the newspaper, in a different state, and while the two complement each other, they have distinctive qualities that make for a slightly different content organization and hierarchy --- and thus a different consumer experience.
In recent days the Post's executive editor, Leonard Downie, has outlined changes to the production of the newspaper to put it on a more aggressive footing in the new environment. His memo  (available through Slate.com) is an insightful elegy to different days and a clear signal that times have forever changed. In particular it is instructive to read how some non-local desks are being merged, how the rhythm of the newsroom will change to adapt to earlier consumer expectations in the day, and how the newsroom will reduce the number of "touches" on a story (they found as many as 12 editors --- yikes --- had handled a story in one instance).

There is always sage work inside the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report, and its trend analysis this time has much to offer the craft in how its work is being used.
It points out that news is no longer a product, but a service, and that news organizations or their Web sites are no longer final destinations. The report is quite negative on the qualities of user-generated content. And there is some pat-on-the-back observations of the innovation taking place in newsrooms.
The more troubling signs for journalism are that the agenda for American news media is narrowing.
And, as if media aren't their own worst enemies, the advertising business is having enormous trouble reshaping itself.
A particularly interesting report within the report is on the future of advertising, and I'll post more on that in the time ahead.

The fifth annual State of the News Media report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism was released this morning. While its examination is of U.S. print, broadcast and online news, there are implications worldwide of its findings.
It's a long read and it's early to divine the conclusions, but the first message you take away is that the crisis in journalism isn't necessarily the loss of audience but the uncoupling of news and advertising as media migrate into a digital model.
The traditional media are actually more dominant in the online space than they have been in so-called legacy media. But advertising isn't following.
The good news: Newsrooms are innovating.
The not-so-good news: The paid search function online isn't a priority for news sites, and that's where the money is.

A laid-off sports columnist, Paul Oberjuerge of the San Bernardino Sun, has written a savvy primer on adapting to the new realities of the newsroom and surviving a purge. It's a little tongue in cheek, but not terribly extended tongue in cheek. I hope the piece will help get him rehired soon.

In my little neck of the woods, everyone is fretting over the future of the newspaper. But the data indicates the biggest impact of the Internet is on the time spent with the television screen. Print reading is stable, radio listening is a little off, but TV viewing is down significantly as Internet use increases.
Into this discussion in recent days went Bill Gates, who needs no introduction. He's predicting the future of TV will be the Internet --- that the over-the-air, cable- and satellite-delivered channels will be more readily provided online (or via its derivatives). His presentation to the Northern Virginia Technology Council was partly a pat on the back to Microsoft, but also insightful on the emerging technologies and their likely interactive qualities --- tablets, surfaces, and so on to make our lives easier. He's also being tough on the U.S. government, noting that some the best and brightest propelling technology can't get work permits and have to go elsewhere.

I'm an occasional participant in the weekly At Issue panel on CBC's The National. It's a real privilege. I've worked as a host on CBC Newsworld with Chantal Hebert  and as a colleague at Southam News and National Post with Andrew Coyne, who now makes his home as national editor at Macleans.
This week, as our live discussion on political accountability was starting, construction drilling began at CBC Vancouver. It's not quite like having firecrackers let off in the studio, but it was loud enough that Peter Mansbridge was scarcely audible.
Friends tell me I wasn't rattled by it, but I seem to recall jettisoning my best lines to simply answer coherently. Apologies for the seeming brevity.
Watch for yourself.