• America lags in broadband – and based on my last trip downunder, NZ is in a far worse position. "In 2001-04, Mr Bleha notes, America fell from fourth to 13th place in global rankings of broadband internet usage" – The Economist.
• Mossberg on blogging. Consumer focused.
• The Future of Jounralism – The Economist on the Murdoch keynote. “I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers,” Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media companies, told the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week.

Another dangerous cliché is to consider bloggers intrinsically parasitic on (and thus, ultimately, no threat to) the traditional news business. True, many thrive on debunking, contradicting or analysing stories that originate in the old media. In this sense, the blogosphere is, so far, mostly an expanded op-ed medium. But there is nothing to suggest that bloggers cannot also do original reporting. Glenn Reynolds, whose political blog, Instapundit.com, counts 250,000 readers on a good day, often includes eyewitness accounts from people in Afghanistan or Shanghai, whom he considers “correspondents” in the original sense of the word. – The Economist, April 29