Literature Conform, or else.
Writers, here’s how you sell it: anecdote, set-up graf, scene, digression, quote from some academic.
The man was talking not only of stories, but of stories that lasted. The conventional wisdom argues that the well is dying. No one, especially young people, wants to read anymore. And even if they do want to read, they don’t want to read anything long.
Editors still try to lure people and money to their magazines by rolling out variations on a familiar theme: eye candy in the front of the book; followed by columns, how-to, confessionals; and finally, as the ads peter out, the well, where the big stuff sits.
· Story [CJR]

Lights, camera, writer!

For countless authors, movies have proved a fatal temptation, savaging great novels from The Naked and the Dead to Portnoy's Complaint, and corrupting F. Scott Fitzgerald and others who lived out their Hollywood years in drunken decline. But in recent years, prominent writers have been finding success on the screen, both by carefully choosing those who would adapt their books and by participating in the filmmaking process themselves.
· Learning To Play the Game [The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/30/02]

Politics & Blogging

One of the most provocative suggestions in Schudson's Good Citizen is that the democratic ideal of "the informed citizen" requires modification. The essence of this venerable ideal is that citizens are obligated to keep themselves sufficiently informed about public affairs that they can judge candidates and issues on their substantive merits rather than on the basis of whim or partisanship. Schudson is by no means opposed to an informed citizenry. But he maintains that it is asking too much to expect citizens to follow public affairs in all of their particulars. He therefore wants to find a way for citizens to get the job done with less strain and effort.
· Citizen [zaller]

Media Everything's in a name
Vibe and Spin are seen as "alluring" names while wogblog ...
· Thorny Art of Naming [Life, Media, Dragons, Mussollini (sic)]

A New Digital Dragon

A new digital press may one day produce personalized newspapers, allowing readers to choose much of the content of their paper. Managers have not been trained for the transition from one-size-fits-all to personalised newspapers. This will require re-education at practically every level within a newspaper. It also typifies an intensifying push among computer scientists worldwide to quickly navigate and retrieve nuggets from vast storehouses of data that are growing at unprecedented rates.
· Different - Sizes [Double Dragon]
· Different - Sizes [Double Dragon Fishing for Financial Data]

Trivia Everybody's doing it
Everybody's doing it in the debut novel of Cowra's own Marilyn Monroe, intellectual brunette named Lucy Lehmann.
· Bees [Sydney Morning Herald]

Google Ooogling
You could try to depict Google as a Microsoft-in-the-making. But the search-engine game is relatively cheap to enter, rivals still abound and users will move quickly to engines that give better results. Google is thriving because it has a clearer vision and better execution skills than its rivals.
· It's nice to see a good guy win. [Herald 2]
· Fr Bob Carr [Bob Carr]
· Congress [Congress Track]
· BookDesign [ BookDesign]
· Vanishing Act [ Unique Web of Businesses]

The old Slavic teaching - if you reach a river, cross it and ask questions afterwards.