Another required registration news site bites the dust; Success and failure in social news operations; Google’s secret plans; new Facebook-type site for sexual history

What the heck is e-mail?

RIP: Registration, and its database of lies
“It’s about time the industry faced reality: Registration doesn’t work. The information gathered is largely a database of lies. Why would anyone enter their real name, age or anything? Most users fill out crap so they can arrive at the story they wanted to read as quickly as possible. Newspaper executives expected to use registration data as a replacement to professional market research, though few will admit it.” Right on!

‘40,000 citizen journalist working to report one story for your paper? It’s possible, we did it’
“The citizen journalism project, he claims, has spun off into message boards with millions of posts, 200,000 uploaded photos and regular supplements in local editions.”

Social media site Backfence Says Goodbye to Evanston
“We are sorry to announce that Backfence Evanston will be ceasing operations within the next few days.We have been honored to have been members of this vibrant local community over the past several months. Your postings and discussions on Backfence have been been a reflection of the strength and interests of the members of the community. We hope we have provided you with a valuable local forum. Unfortunately, business issues are forcing us to close our doors and shut down the site.”

SPECIAL REPORT: Inside Gannett’s ‘Information Centers’
Definite must read.

Google: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
“Search engine giant Google Inc. has been putting together a massive cable network to provide customers around the world with telecommunications services ranging from broadband Internet to home and mobile phones.”

How Mass Media Passes Off Crap as News…
“There were certain things that respectable journalists wouldn’t write about in the 50s. For example, JFK managed to keep his affairs under wraps even though most of the white house press corps knew about it. They refused to write stories on it because it wasn’t respectable. Not that it’s a great ideas to have affairs or anything, but at least there were standards. Those are being slowly whittled away. When Saddam was hung, illicit camera phone footage ran on every major network for three days. We’ve crossed the snuff film barrier; all we have left is hardcore pornography as a limit to what media won’t portray.”

How Apple Will Use The iPhone To Take Over The Wireless Industry
“Steve Jobs isn’t stupid. He knows that AT&T Wireless sucks. So why lock the revolutionary iPhone into a crappy network? Because Jobs knows that everyone will buy an iPhone anyway, even if they hate the network. And that, as Umair points out, shifts all the power to Apple.”

How ‘Citizen Stringers’ Can Help You Hyper-Localize
“From a practical standpoint, probably not. It’s not worth assigning a reporter from your thinned ranks to spend a day watching a bike race that’s not a national championship. But from the standpoint of serving your community, definitely. You should figure out how to cover it without taking reporters off more significant assignments.

Finding yourselves in journalism: Finding yourselves in journalism
“We are seeing more people who are leaving the business altogether than I can ever recall. Some are peering into the future and seeking a different, perhaps more secure road.”

MyBlackBook lets you track sexual history
Social media sex history?

The greatest newspaper giveaway… EVER!
Free Prince album with a newspaper!

Rupert and Me
“The people responsible for lowering the quality of journalism is not us. It’s the people with the ad budgets, still investing all that money into dead trees, in a medium that hardly anyone reads, instead of hiring decent online ad agencies to produce good online advertisement. And paying the money it’s worth.”