Maybe it's kind of like facebook and relationships: It's not real until Murdoch says so.

Murdoch does differ from the obvious general airwaves by offering some details: he says it'll take ten to fifteen years for news to go fully digital, and there will be a digital subscription model, with subscribers receiving updates "every hour or two." He also casually tosses out that news sites will be vastly improved - there will be "much more in them."

Murdoch's News Corps is one of the few companies with a pay model already in place. The million dollar question - literally, and then some - in the future of news is: Who's gonna pay for it?

Make no mistake: the dinky impulse-buy price of newspapers (and magazines) hasn't ever paid for the costs of producing them. Subscriptions are significant, but the advertising on those pages is what made print so solvent you could practically wash windows with it.

But the advertising model hasn't worked online; the NY Times Web site is the envy of the news universe, but it still only generates 10% of the company's gross revenue. That might pay for operating the site, but it doesn't pay for the reporting that shows up on it. Subscription models could help, but there are some problems with this. Two that come immediately to mind:

1. Unless everyone goes subscription at the same time (which has been discussed), users will simply get their news somewhere it's still offered for free.

2. Even if all the major news outlets protect their content, many individuals who pay for it will still blog about it for free - after all, many of them make supplemental income off of hits to their Web sites. Why do I need to pay for full content, asks the "smart consumer," when I can get the rehash for free?

So, friends: who's going to pay for the time you spend waiting for sources to call you back?

NBC reports that a woman was dragged away from Air Force One. She wanted to hand Obama a letter about the sanctity of marriage.

Slight twist? She's a journalist.

There has been a perennial debate on to what extent - if any! - journalists should get involved in news. One Washington Post editor (whose name escapes me; if you know/find it, let me kn0w) publicly stated that he does not vote to prevent even that gesture from influencing his reporting.

So should we express our views - or is the sacred duty of journalists one that demands a sacrifice of expression? What kind of wedge, exactly, does the phrase "citizen journalism" indicate between...us and them?

I am fascinated with the stories people tell themselves, the narratives by which we define our identities. Our stories - and our selves - grow as we encounter new experiences...and new challenges.

You know, ideally.

In reality, when challenge makes us question the story of ourselves, it can be hard to do anything useful with it at all.

I'm talking about criticism. Whatever our role, other people have a huge advantage over us - they can see us from the outside. That doesn't make them right - unfortunately.

It's bad enough that criticism hurts, but we can't even assume it's right. Many naysayers will criticize out of pique or resentment or misguided protectiveness.

When we hear something that hurts, how do we know what to do with it? How do we decide whether to accept it and use it as a growth opportunity, or dismiss it and believe in ourselves despite the naysayers?

It's ok, even important, to admit when the criticism - and even critique, which is, certainly, invaluable, and is supposed to be supportive and beneficial - stings or contradicts a strongly held opinion. If we secretly resent a challenge to our work or our decisions, and we refuse to admit it even to ourselves, that hidden feeling disrupts our understanding of ourselves and we begin to feel out of sync - which will only lead to further dissonance and lack of a position from which to evaluate feedback.

In the article "Criticism: Taking the Hit," Judith Sills, Ph.D, suggests:

Sulk, hurt, complain, or just don't think about it - for a maximum of 3 days. Then ask yourself these three questions:

What part of this is true?

Have I ever heard this before?

What would I have to give up if I changed?

Of course, it runs in the other direction as well. When you need to give negative feedback, be just as careful. Sills provides these tips:

1. Pair every negative with a positive: "You are an amazing problem solver, but you aren't following up with the paperwork."
2. Give feedback on observable behavior only, don't speculate on internal attitudes.
3. Be excruciatingly specific about both the problem and the expected solution: "When you do X, it creates problem Y. Next time, try this instead... "
4. Extend yourself to maintain the relationship. After criticism, people withdraw. Counter that by making friendly conversation.
5. Remember, reward is the most powerful change agent. Go lightly over what's wrong and be heavy-handed with what's working or will work in the future.

Paying attention to motives and feelings when criticism or critique is necessary can also help in understanding what's on the other side of the table when it's received. When we feel attacked, we sink into ourselves for protection, and that's fine. But we can't use the feedback until we pull ourselves out of the whirlpool of subjectivity and reach some balance.

There's room in the stories we tell ourselves for everything - we just have to concentrate on rounding out our own characters.

Big issue from a bit ago: the swine flu.

I was a historical fiction nut for awhile as a kid, and so I've consumed more than i want to remember about, say, the plague, or the 1918 Spanish flu. But between recently being somewhat forcibly compelled to watch 28 Weeks Later, and the amount of science fiction about viruses I've read, I'm a little freaked out.

So when this cropped up, I checked out a few newsbites through RSS feeds in Google Reader, but I found they weren't answering one of my biggest questions - how does the swine flu kill?

Side note: this is one problem successful media will solve; how to aggregate all of the information so that all questions are answered. Also something that will put conflicting reports side by side - for example, I read that more than 150 deaths have been confirmed in Mexico, according to the AP, but saw in my skimming a claim that there have only been a fraction of that number.

Interestingly, my question was answered not by any media source but by mahalo.com, a Yahoo answers sort of site. Someone had asked my question and the response explained: The disease kills through respiratory failure. It causes the lungs to swell and fill with fluid. (Read the answer here.) And more importantly, it's virulent enough to incapacitate healthy people.

While regular flu kills around 36,000 each year, those deaths are primarily in the elderly or already significantly ill. The unfortunately named swine flu (unfortunate for the pork industry, Israelis, and Muslims, anyway) is able to bring healthy teenagers to a fever of 101 for five days - scary prospect.

I also discovered that wearing a face mask really only helps stop people who are already sick from spreading the disease - not so much prevention from catching it.

So I'll be washing my hands a lot, and possibly investing in antibacterial hand sanitizer (something I normally avoid after hearing a speech on the harm of over-anti-bacterializing a few years ago), and not using public bathrooms.

And not kissing anyone. Sorry, strangers.

A recent profile of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (NY Times publisher) asserted that he has bought into the myth that journalism sells, whereas the truth for decades has been: Advertising sells. Journalism costs.

Any writer who has slung espresso or worked a related job to support their habit probably agrees - at least a little.

Gregg Levoy wrote - paraphrasing slightly - that the relationship of the artistic self-employed (such as writers) to the financial and business world has customarily been a bit like that of one warring nation trying to maintain trade agreements with another.

It's an incredibly salient point to the written-media world. Of course, he made it in a book published in 1992 - This Business of Writing.

On Monday, which is incidentally my birthday, I will launch - or perhaps it might be more accurate to say stumble into - an internship program at my local newspaper. The coincidence of taking a significant step into my intended field, and field of study, as I start a new year in my life is especially satisfying as I spent my last birthday finishing my college career - pulling my final undergraduate all-nighter to write my final undergraduate paper. (Did I mention this fell on the day after I walked at graduation?)

As Carol Hanisch's famous 1969 essay proclaims, the personal is political - and the personal is business too (although the phrase isn't quite as catchy). Writers are selling a product, and it isn't a product someone else manufactured or a tangibly separable object. It's the output and expression of their psyches. Given that I am not the only writer to feel composing a piece seems like what I imagine giving birth to be, putting a price on that output is an immensely emotional - as well as financial - thing.

I am leaving a year of crisis - the identity kind and otherwise - having left my student cocoon for the first time since age 5. I am entering a process of turning dreams into goals, narrowing and clarifying in order to be a successful member of society (including being financially solvent. You know, more or less). And I enter it as the media world is just shedding its shell-shock and beginning to cope with its own crisis and attempt to become financially solvent in ways it has never been before.

When Hanisch wrote about the personal and political, others were speaking of the glass ceiling. The profession of writing has maintained a glass wall between business and creation. I believe that there are as many opportunities in the shattering of the latter as the former - and that, anyway, it's inevitable. In destruction there is opportunity for change (a review of which will probably be my next post). Writing and media have been some of the primary catalysts in my development - and as the breaking down of the old system offers the chance for individual impace, this generation of writers will be the catalysts for media.

This Business of Writing

A recent profile of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (NY Times publisher) asserted that he has bought into the myth that journalism sells, whereas the truth for decades has been: Advertising sells. Journalism costs.

Any writer who has slung espresso or worked a related job to support their habit probably agrees - at least a little.

Gregg Levoy wrote - paraphrasing slightly - that the relationship of the artistic self-employed (such as writers) to the financial and business world has customarily been a bit like that of one warring nation trying to maintain trade agreements with another.

It's an incredibly salient point to the written-media world. Of course, he made it in a book published in 1992 - This Business of Writing.

On Monday, which is incidentally my birthday, I will launch - or perhaps it might be more accurate to say stumble into - an internship program at my local newspaper. The coincidence of taking a significant step into my intended field, and field of study, as I start a new year in my life is especially satisfying as I spent my last birthday finishing my college career - pulling my final undergraduate all-nighter to write my final undergraduate paper. (Did I mention this fell on the day after I walked at graduation?)

As Carol Hanisch's famous 1969 essay proclaims, the personal is political - and the personal is business too (although the phrase isn't quite as catchy). Writers are selling a product, and it isn't a product someone else manufactured or a tangibly separable object. It's the output and expression of their psyches. Given that I am not the only writer to feel composing a piece seems like what I imagine giving birth to be, putting a price on that output is an immensely emotional - as well as financial - thing.

I am leaving a year of crisis - the identity kind and otherwise - having left my student cocoon for the first time since age 5. I am entering a process of turning dreams into goals, narrowing and clarifying in order to be a successful member of society (including being financially solvent. You know, more or less). And I enter it as the media world is just shedding its shell-shock and beginning to cope with its own crisis and attempt to become financially solvent in ways it has never been before.

When Hanisch wrote about the personal and political, others were speaking of the glass ceiling. The profession of writing has maintained a glass wall between business and creation. I believe that there are as many opportunities in the shattering of the latter as the former - and that, anyway, it's inevitable. In destruction there is opportunity for change (a review of which will probably be my next post). Writing and media have been some of the primary catalysts in my development - and as the breaking down of the old system offers the chance for individual impace, this generation of writers will be the catalysts for media.