[Media] Four Links That Should Be Posts

But alas, I've been too busy.

Slashdot: Some newspaper chains launch their own ad network. Too little, too late to compete with Google & Co.?

WSJ Blog: Newspapers' online growth isn't as impressive when placed in context.

BuzzMachine: What if we divided up the newsroom into discrete companies? I have to say, I find this idea fascinating - but what happens when one part starts losing money? Does it just die out? What effect will this idea have on the end product?

LOCAL MAN: Doug MacGill discovers 30-year-old critiques of objectivity and applies them to his work for the NYT and Bloomberg News. This should have happened industry-wide at least 20 years ago. The fact that it didn't.... well, I'm not sure what that means.

The History Boys

Picked this film up at random this evening and watched it with two friends.

It was amazing.

I don't want to give away any plot information, but here are three things that were raised during the film:

1. Student-teacher relationships, including power dynamics.

2. Pedagogy, specifically modern vs. postmodern understandings of truth, history, and literature.

3. Masculinity, male adolescent development, and sexual identity.

It plays out against the background of a British grammar school with wonderful, if incredibly understated (stereotypically British?) writing and acting - as it would turn out, the cast of the film is the same as the cast of the play the film was based on. It also shares the same writer and director as the play.

Anyway, the thing that impressed me the most was the way in which the film treated everyone with compassion.

Go see it.