SearchEngineLand's Danny Sullivan posts an extensive interview with Josh Cohen, the business product manager for Google News and the most public face of the company on journalism content.

It's a revealing entry, in that Cohen tries to reassure the news business that Google can offer much more than it can take away. Here are some of the other kind of takeaways from the session:

1. Journalism ought to be written for more than print. To date, Cohen says, that isn't happening often enough.
2. The Fast Flip feature recently introduced is an experiment, not an initiative to save journalism.
3. The personalized experience needs to be pursued. And Google can help.
4. The "read state" of a story needs to be quantified. Otherwise we won't know how effective online journalism is.
5. The "living URL" and Wikipedia-style paper are interesting options to evaluate.

An earlier part of the interview is here.

Leah Betancourt posts a strong argument on Mashable concerning the initial impact of Google Wave on journalism. As she sees it, legacy media are learning immensely already.

She cites four principal areas:
1. Using Waves to generate engagement.
2. Using Waves as public squares.
3. Using Waves as planning tools for newsrooms.
4. Using blog posts to generate public Waves.

"Although it’s still invitation only and in preview, the real-time wiki collaboration platform is being used by some media companies for community building, real-time discussion, crowdsourcing, collaboration both inside and outside the newsroom, and for cross publishing content<" she writes.

Only a couple of weeks ago one blogger suggested that Google and Microsoft might very well start bidding for news organizations' content.

Well, the suggestion is real. Microsoft is going to pay news companies to take their content off Google's search engine.

The aim would be to give Microsoft's upstart Bing search engine some bragging rights, in essence to build a bit of an engine war not unlike the browser wars of old --- except in this case, content would only be available with it.

Among the organizations in discussion with Microsoft: News Corp. which is looking at taking its content off Google. The terms and conditions of Bing's exclusive pacts are not yet clear.

A double-bylined item in the New York Times asks if a tipping point has been reached with broadcasting: Is its business model broken?

The ratings decline, the advertising squeeze, the expense growth --- all are making it much more difficult for networks and stations in the conventional broadcast sphere to earn sufficiently.

The story cites several observers who believe the Internet's distraction is one of the last straws.

Forget the Web-first approach, says veteran newsman and consultant Steve Buttry, and focus on mobile-first strategies.

Buttry makes a very strong argument in his latest post for news companies to drop their "fighting the last war" approach of Web-first and rivet on the mobile market.

"We need to figure the best ways to deliver news and conduct commerce effectively on mobile devices: text messages, email, mobile applications, tweets, easy-to-use mobile web sites, podcasts, location-based news and commercial information."

He lays it out rather directly: "Whatever your role in your media organization, consider how you would change your work, your priorities and your thinking to support a mobile-first strategy. This will either be our future or our next squandered opportunity."

In the Online Journalism Review, Robert Niles argues that the news business needs the 21st century equivalent of Walt Disney to inject vision and imagination.

Niles decries the existence of the "no, because" manager and suggests there needs to be more "yes, if" managers. Mainly, though, his complaint is with the lack of way-out-of-the-box thinking.

As for principles to reconnect the business, Niles has three:

1. Divest and diversify. He thinks companies should sell some properties to new, more creative owners to shake up the business.
2. Call the pioneers home. Niles believes the industry isn't lacking for talent, but some of it is in repose. He suggests summoning the veterans for the latest mission.
3. Put the audience's needs first.

The Digitimes technology site is reporting that Apple's much-anticipated new tablet will have to be much-anticipated much longer. Its March release is now more likely to be pushed back to the second half of 2010.

And the price tag is taking some shape: about $1200-1500 U.S., which is a slight cry from the earlier notions of an iPod-priced, iMac-powerful device.

The indications are there will be two versions, one with a 9.7-inch screen and one with a 10.6-inch screen. The device is Apple's entry into the e-reader market, and given its shrewd marketing history, it is expected the company's thrust could be a game changer.

Technology has arrived in great measure in the last two to three years to permit a vast new array of techniques for journalism.

Unquestionably it requires a lot of focus to keep up and learn, but British freelancer Robin Brown has smartly assembled a list of 30 such tools and some primers on using them.

The usual suspects are there: Twitter, Flickr, Digg Delic.io.us and the like. But there are also some good off-to-the-side tools for mashups and other work. It's a good resource that serves a core curriculum for the student of new media.

The respected technology consultant Rob Durst is of the belief that mobile can save the newspaper industry from rampant decline.

Durst talks of the industry's "Tarzan" syndrome --- of swinging to the next branch without losing the grip on the first vine --- and believes it's possible to transform in time. But it requires a new thinking.

Mobile is the central concept. He thinks newspapers need to stop thinking of themselves as "broadcast" models and move to "interface" models.

"Magazines and newspapers should stop treating their publications as fixed products and start thinking about them as valuable, branded interfaces to online content and services," he tells the Columbia Journalism Review. "They can do this using mobile codes, which are essentially printed barcodes that readers “click on” using a camera phone—kind of like clicking on a Web link with a mouse."
 

IIn the United States newspapers and their Web sites continue to hold their audiences well in the face of competition for attention.

The Scarborough Research study of readership --- distinct from reports on actual circulation --- suggests some 74 per cent of Americans (about 171 million people) consumed the print or online content of a newspaper in the last week.

The report suggests 79 per cent of white collar workers, 82 per cent of those in households earning more than $100,000 and 84 per cent of those with post-secondary degrees were among that readership.