Looks like a great lineup of speakers.

You can follow the event on Twitter with the hashtag #media140, or watch a livestream of the event:

You can have a read of the list here. Or here (Right click on the link to save to your desktop)

As a guide, divide the sums by five for a rough euro conversion. The sums are monthly net pay (no income tax). Rent must be paid out of salary, so the figures might not be as good as they first appear.

The Guardian reports it here.

Mr Newland, the editor, is on 132,834 dirhams a month. At today’s exchange rate that’s €28,000 a month, tax free. Nice if you can get it. R

Bono called the gig “an honor,” and joked that he’s “never been great with the full stops or commas.”

Ah sure, what harm. I think it’s a good move for the NY Times. What say ye?

Not heard of it? It’s a British-based website for photographers to upload and sell their photos, sharing revenue with Demotix (who sell the photos for you). More here.

As everyone knows by now the newspaper industry globally is having a bad time of it. Even a cursory look at my links will tell you how often I read about it.

The question I am asking myself, in light of the dire situation in the US of late, is what newspapers or newspaper groups will survive 2009. On a share price basis, Trinity Mirror Group and Johnston Press are serious contenders for bankruptcy. Given my own vested interest in the Irish media landscape I can’t comment on the newspaper group I work for. But I will say that if either Trinity or Johnston go, they will obviously bring many Irish titles down with them.

For interesting end of year roundups about the newspaper industry do read the following:

The Newspaper Industry and the Arrival of the Glaciers
Newspaper death watch
What might have been
There is nothing anyone can do about it
Bad news, good news

And they say the newspaper industry is dying ;-)

It looks like it started back in August and it seems many invites were sent out recently. It’s a step in the right direction.

Good stuff Yahoo, put a pic of Obama next to a headline about terrorism. I imagine the picture was added automatically because of the related keywords – but shouldn’t they really check it before it goes live?

Update: Someone/something from Yahoo visits within 10 minutes.

25 minutes later and it still features on the main Yahoo News world page:

Well the Irish Examiner, after much pitching by me, was brave enough to implement wordle usage. I reckon it might be the first Irish paper to use it.

I think it is effective. It draws the readers eyes in, and gives a sense of what the speech itself contains. What do people think? Is it something that could be used more in other contexts?

Well, except the MacBook Pro, which has been the best laptop I have ever had, and is now over one year old. Besides it is an EeePC 901 (12Gb solid state, 8GB SD, 1.6Ghz Atom, webcam, mic, Windows XP), a Canon 20D (extra battery pack/grip, 4GB CF), and a Flip Ultra.

The Flip Ultra has been interesting. The testing has shown that the mic is incredibly receptive, and the video quality is higher than I expected. I uploaded test footage to my YouTube account and it did degrade slightly, but it was still perfectly watchable.

I am taking a leaf out of the book of Jeff Jarvis, Michael Rosenblum and Howard Owens. Is this the kit all journalists should have? Maybe, maybe not. The DSLR is clunky, a point and shoot might be better. Better yet might be a new Nikon D90, which is a DSLR and a HD video recorder.

But for now I will make do with what I have, and see how effective they are as tools of the trade. Georgia should provide an interesting test bed if nothing else.

It will be on Page 14, all in horizontal. ‘Promise’ was the most frequently used word.

Russia has issued new, reduced casualty figures for the Georgian conflict, with 133 civilians now listed as dead in the disputed region of South Ossetia. The figure is far lower than the 1,600 people Russia initially said had died.

133? That sounds closer to fact. But Russia Today has been using the 2,000 figure across its ticker for over a week. This would polarise viewers very quickly, and I imagine now many would accept that figure as fact. It was a figure largely accepted by Western media, though always with the proviso that it was based on Russian media/government reports.

And in a further chilling of Western-Russian relations, Russia has said it is to cut all military ties with NATO.

The IT has recently gone down this route of interviewing their own journalists in various locations. It certainly adds value. But could she be doing more?

I’d like her to take some photos of her own, perhaps of the people she interviewed, and put them up on Flickr, or the IT website. Afterall, there is no shortage of space there like this is in a newspaper. A point and shoot would have done, a DSLR would have been preferred.

I’d like if she had a Flip Ultra with her, filmed the Hind helicopters flying overhead and hitting pylons, and then uploaded it to her YouTube account. That could have been embedded on the IT website, or indeed anywhere. It would have gone well with her written account. As would plain raw unedited footage of what she saw, including conversations with people. A podcast would have been nice too.

For now though, it seems we will be treated to the plain old text version, with radio-style interviews.

Is it asking too much? Too much equipment to lug around? I’m not sure. Flip Ultra, a Canon 20/40/400D, an EeePC (back at base either) and perhaps a good quality dictaphone. Internet access back in Tbilisi. A few spare CF cards and batteries.

Is that I am a news junkie that I would like all the other stuff, or would the general interest reader like it also? I wonder does Marlowe know about all this stuff, but prefer to stay traditional?