Via Romenesko:

The Federal Communications Commission study says "the independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism -- going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy -- is in some cases at risk at the local level."

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57454752/FCC-Report-THE-INFORMATION-NEEDS-OF-COMMUNITIES

"Minnesota Public Radio Commentary Editor Eric Ringham did a byline count of MPR's commentaries. Ringham found that from April 2010 to April 2011, MPR's commentaries featured female bylines 39 percent of the time."

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/134074/mprs-ringham-people-who-feel-left-out-of-the-conversation-have-to-summon-up-some-guts-to-dive-in/

"Through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other websites, professionals stay in touch with each other -- and with advances in their fields -- around the clock. If they have a special problem, they no longer need to call the association and be connected to someone else with a similar problem -- they can just go to the Internet for a solution. And who has the time or money for an annual convention anymore?"

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/25/136646070/time-for-associations-to-trade-in-their-past

"Why editorials? In an age of celebrity, when everybody is marketing his or her own brand, an unsigned opinion article seems old-fashioned. Done right, editorials can do things that other news and opinion articles can�t do, or at least not as well. Editorials can see the world whole. That is, they can be logically consistent with one another, each a piece of the larger puzzle, and each able to withstand changing circumstances."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-24/bloomberg-view-the-world-in-focus.html

Earlier this year, Alfred P. Doblin of the Bergen County (N.J.) Record won the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award for Editorial Writing "for writing robustly and persuasively across a range of issues." Linda Valdez of The Arizona Republic and Paul Weingarten of the Chicago Tribune were named runners-up in the category.