These are people who know each other producers, TV executives, book publishers a relatively small group of people.

Citizens should be very nervous anytime that courts are ordering news organizations to hand anything over.

It varies by market, but you can generalize and say this: 2005 was a very difficult year for newspapers. If you don't see this cutback, you do see others.

(It's) indicative of larger trends that are going on in journalism, in which citizens are becoming their own editors, and even their own producers, of news. It's much easier to get information from distant places now than it was a generation ago.

each one synthesizing and adding to what others are learning. If only one or two news organizations do it, it won't have the same effect.

Then, when she embroils you in a legal tangle over the matter, instead of monitoring the situation as closely as possible, you put the discretion nearly entirely in her hands. You do not know what's in her notes. And when you believe you are backing her because she is defending a principle, she then brings in a second attorney. To people outside journalism all this looks just weird,

It's the illusion of more information, but it's actually a lot of repetition.

It's not unheard of to wait for a news peg. It's not unusual to discover the existence of something and not know the context of it until later.

It's not up to a news organization to let its source substantiate the news for them. The news organization has to be skeptical of the information it receives, verify it independently, then run it by the subjects of the story for comment.

At a time when newspapers need to make a major long-term transition into the new kind of online journalism, companies are driving off the old-school editors. They burn out because they spend all their time on budgets, not journalism.