Here’s a new LA media blog: L.A. Observed, by Kevin Rod­er­ick. The lead item today con­cerns a memo by L.A. Times edi­tor John Car­roll on lib­eral bias. I’ll be adding it to my blogroll in the com­ing days.

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Steve Out­ing in E&P: News­pa­pers’ Taste Stan­dards Get Loose Online. Some Web Sites Push the Enve­lope. It opens with my back­yard paper:

When the “Bay to Break­ers” com­mu­nity road race in San Fran­cisco was cov­ered this year, SFGate.com, the Web site of the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle, ran a photo of nude male run­ners — show­ing their bare back­sides — promi­nently on the home page. The print edi­tion of the Chron­i­cle took a more con­ser­v­a­tive approach, pub­lish­ing pho­tos of run­ners wear­ing under­wear and fake fig leaves. This news­pa­per Web site and oth­ers apply far dif­fer­ent taste stan­dards online than in print — even though the sites are oper­ated by the same news­pa­per com­pa­nies. It’s part of an effort by pub­lish­ers to attract younger audiences.

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Oh, no. The NY Times is fol­low­ing the lead of the LA Times and end­ing its free news tracker ser­vice. Just got this notice from the Times:

As of June 13, 2003, Times News Tracker will be avail­able to pay­ing sub­scribers only and the orig­i­nal free ser­vice will be suspended. …

The fee for the enhanced ser­vice is $19.95 per year.

I liked the old ser­vice just fine, thank you. But gotta keep those share­hold­ers happy!

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Inter­est­ing devel­op­ment with Apple and its iTunes Music Store. Today’s NY Times car­ries a story about Apple’s deci­sion to pull the plug on Rendezvous:

… [I]t would not be an online suc­cess story with­out a com­pli­cat­ing twist. That com­pli­ca­tion came this week when the specter of the music indus­try, which has been pub­licly sup­port­ive of iTunes, began to loom over Apple. The suc­cess of iTunes, after all, depends on coop­er­a­tion from the music busi­ness, which con­trols the songs that iTunes wants in its col­lec­tion. Appar­ently try­ing to stay in the record industry’s good graces, iTunes removed a ser­vice it had pre­vi­ously offered cus­tomers. Called Ren­dezvous, the ser­vice enabled lis­ten­ers and their friends to access one another’s music and lis­ten to it

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Wash­ing­ton Post: In recent days, the FCC — about to make a deci­sion about the eas­ing of media own­er­ship rules — has been inun­dated with hun­dreds of thou­sands of e-mails and e-petitions urg­ing the agency to put off a deci­sion. Thanks to IWant­Media for the pointer.

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LA Times: Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass have the atten­tion of colum­nists, mag­a­zine cov­ers and blog­gers — because “we have a fas­ci­na­tion with peo­ple who break the rules.” Thanks to IWant­Media for the pointer.

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The sad­dest blog­gers in the land must be the four news­pa­per blog­gers at the Albu­querque Jour­nal who reside behind a paid reg­is­tra­tion wall, mean­ing that their blogs are vis­i­ble only to the hun­dreds or few thou­sand souls who ponied up for a sub­scrip­tion to the ABQjour­nal. (To spot ‘em, scroll 2/3rds of the way down the right nav.) This is spec­u­la­tion, but a blog­ger who’s cut off from the blo­gos­phere has got to feel a bit unspecial.

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Bloomberg News: eBay Inc. was ordered to pay $35 mil­lion yes­ter­day [Tues­day] after a fed­eral jury in Nor­folk, Va., said that it was imper­mis­si­bly using a company’s inno­va­tions for con­duct­ing sales over the Internet.

What utter non­sense, and yet another indi­ca­tion that the patent sys­tem is out of control.

eBay’s crime? Intro­duc­ing a “buy it now” option for its auctions.

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Wired News: Indus­try watch­ers say the deci­sion by Sony and UMG to sell their ser­vice Press­play to Roxio indi­cates that the major labels are turn­ing away from dis­trib­ut­ing music online. By let­ting some­one else “own the high­way,” they can still reap some of the profits.

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Archae­ol­ogy mag­a­zine takes a look at how a group of fed-up archae­ol­ogy buffs launched a Web site to help debunk “alter­na­tive his­to­ries,” such as ancient space travel and the exis­tence of Atlantis. The arti­cle also fea­tures a list of the top five pseudoar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites and the top five sites that refute them. Good stuff.

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