In truth, few can offer the breadth of service of Associated Press. In truth, few need it.
The dispute at the moment involving about 100 newspapers and AP focuses on rates, on tiers of service and how they're defined, on ownership of content and how it can be shared, and on a general upset among papers that in their darkest moments AP isn't bending sufficiently to help them weather what looks like a protracted storm.
In a few isolated cases --- by no means common in the industry --- some papers are beginning to form regional alliances to share copy and serve notice they'll live without AP some time in the future (AP requires a two-year severance notice, so the revenue will keep arriving until 2010).
But CNN has sensed an opening and stepped in with an offer to provide a text service to complement the extensive audio/video elements it now sells to television, radio and online media. It has invited papers to come see the proposed expansion this week in Atlanta, and the New York Times provides an overview.

In watching the C3 blog for some time now, it's been impressive to see the openness of its creator, Chuck Peters, as he tries to lead his Iowa media company through the changes all of us are experiencing.
He takes stock after seven months to write on what he's learning, what he's reading, and how it's bound to change the way he's operating his business. Clearly the changes include moving from a cash-generating broadcaster to an elegant organization able to serve much more defined needs --- serving communities of interest, for example, instead of geographic communities. But it's also not a matter of simply linking out and holding seminars about change.
"We need to change the tasks, titles and organization so that we are doing new tasks, in new ways, and making the results of our efforts available immediately to our communities as we begin the larger task of organizing all this information elegantly."

We relaunched vancouversun.com today after a few months of collaboration, negotiation, reconsideration and all of the usual processes that go into a large project and a healthy number of smart people.
Our last design was 2005, another era or two ago. Since then we've brought the site wholly into the newsroom and changed the culture to reflect our increasing emphasis in the digital sphere.
Quite important to us in the design changes were a few principles:
1. We wanted a wider tableau.
2. We wanted more legible and friendly body type.
3. We wanted plenty of space for multimedia, community content, and special features.
4. We wanted better navigation.
5. We wanted more ways for users to share our content.
We were creating a lot of content but didn't have the platform to exhibit it. Our journalists operate in a Web-first culture and wanted a site of their own making. Now we have one.
The redesign was chain-wide  and you'll notice other Canwest publications have adopted variations on this wireframe. We were very pleased that our initial proposal looked strikingly similar to what we rolled out today, so we weren't far off our instincts on what users would want (the site has been tested extensively).

Alan Mutter lays it on thick in his latest post on Reflections of a Newsosaur about the latest financials from the U.S. newspaper business: revenues off some $2 billion in the quarter just ended, year over year, and a staggering 31-per-cent plunge in classified advertising. Even more troubling is the second straight quarter of online revenue decline.
Posted the Newspaper Association of America data about this yesterday, but Mutter has a pretty strong summary for those with strong stomachs.

Om Malik posts about the segregation of media into two distinct branches: the raw stream of dispatches from such services as Twitter, and the old media stream of more reflectiveness.
No question, a lot of self-congratulatory Tweets ran around this week as the terrorism in Mumbai was witnessed and committed to Twitter. But the question Malik poses is one many of us wonder about: In the age of breathlessness, where is the calmer assessment going to fit?
We found in our research earlier this year that consumers enjoy the breaking-news nature of online media, and that if we can supply it well, so much the better. But they had a need in their lives for context, reflection, analysis, even considered (as opposed to visceral and immediate) commentary, and so the newspaper (if it could reshape itself) would serve well. And, interestingly, they didn't seem eager to get that contextual depth online --- perhaps the user experience of the backlit screen, with its limited portability and lines of definition for type and images, didn't live up to that hard-wired ink-on-paper experience.

The third-quarter results for the U.S. newspaper industry are in and the news is gruesome: an 18 per cent decline year over year.
Even the online portion is down three per cent, the second straight quarter of that decline.
The results have shown a decline for ten straight quarters and the rate of decline is accelerating, too.

Roger Ebert, the venerable film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, known probably even more for his longlasting stint on television, tears a strip off Associated Press for pronouncing a 500-word limit on entertainment stories, then proceeds to connect it to the deterioration of criticism and ascension of the cult of celebrity in newspapers.
"They want to devote less of their space to considered prose, and more to ignorant gawking."
No point it trying to reflect the column. You have to read it for yourself. But its kicker is interesting: "The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small."

The World Internet Project, led by the USC Annenberg School of Communication, has released its 2009 report. The project has been instrumental in tracking the usage and attitudes about the Internet in several countries.
Of particular interest this year is the ongoing issue of online credibility and how that compares with other media. In this year's report, a majority still feel that only about half of the information they consume online is credible. Having said that, people said the Internet is an important source of information, in particular about health. But online purchasing isn't prevalent yet.

Richard Addis, best known in our neck of the woods as the former editor in chief of the Globe and Mail, but longer known as a U.K. journalist of significance, has posted five reasons for journalists to be cheerful. He'll elaborate, I'll condense:
1. There's a growing public demand for good journalism.
2. Owners will need to support good journalism.
3. It's an open field on who can create good journalism.
4. Attractive populism is a real possibility for good journalism.
5. Print has a future.

Apart from largely acknowledging he's not an acknowledged expert, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark does his best to fend off pointed questions about the future of the newspaper from the Los Angeles Times in this recent exchange.
He does suggest there is a future in paid-for subscription content among the upper-middle-class and up. Hardly cheery prospect, but at least he (and others recently) open the door to business models emerging for print in the digital sphere.