Media stories of note for Thursday, March 28, 2013:

Danny Sullivan, writing for SearchEngineLand, notes that Google has weighed into the controversy involving content sponsored by advertisers that commingles with news. It wants publishers to segregate this non-news content carefully so that it does not end up as part of what Google News ranks. If they don't, Google is threatening to exclude their organizations from Google News, a measure that would significantly affect their traffic and referrals. 

Add Portugal to the list of countries whose news organizations are asking Google to compensate them for running their content through its search engine.  News organizations in Portugal are suffering their worst economic results in 40 years. Google has rejected the initial demands, Reuters reports, but negotiations are continuing. Google has struck support deals in other European countries in recent months.

R.B. Brenner, writing for Poynter.org, provides a tip sheet on how newsrooms can create plans to deal with breaking news. He cites editors' ideas, among them: focus on roles, not personnel; think across platforms and how you want information to flow from the newsroom; be iterative; look for non-journalistic help; practice the plan; conduct postmortems.

Some media stories of note for Wednesday, February 20, 2013:

James Jenega, writing for Poynter, discusses five ways for journalists to engage more with audiences. His basics: take corrections seriously, discuss the newsgathering process, hold public events, engage in conversations with the public, and take social media seriously.

Mark Sustern, a venture capitalist and former tech entrepreneur, is reading into the recent success of the Harlem Shake phenomenon an online trend in video production and consumption. He predicts a more participatory model, with audiences determining plot twists and a diminution of the one-way transmission of content.

Digiday's Josh Sternberg notices that publishers, particularly the smaller ones, are opting out of chasing sheer page views and are turning their attentions to more mindful pursuits of custom content. In many cases they are creating content deals with sponsors and attempting new business models based on targeted messaging to audiences.

The announcement today that Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock organization has been purchased by MSNBC.com has prompted Alan Mutter to post on Reflections of a Newsosaur a lament.

In short, it's along the lines of: How did publishers miss the opportunity to buy it instead? And, by extension: How do they not realize MSNBC is going to come and try to eat their lunch?

Everyblock is a powerful source code that aggregates local data on crime, construction, civics and consumption, everything from restaurants to break and enters, and yields the data according to zip codes and blocks.

The good news is that the source code is open for others to use. The catch is that whatever you create you must let others use, too.

Mutter suggests Everyblock has the potential as a Cragislist-like competitor for local advertising. He wonder why newspapers didn't see this coming and construct the deal themselves.