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Found this at a blog maintained by an exec producer at NECN
THE LAW OF BREAKING NEWS
Breaking news” is usually neither.
COROLLARY TO THE LAW OF BREAKING NEWS
Breaking news will exceed your “breaking news” line item in the budget.
RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW OF BREAKING NEWS, with respect to MURPHY
When there actually is breaking news, it will happen when you are on skeleton staff.
THE LAW OF NEWS CONSPIRACIES
Those who believe there is a “giant media conspiracy” have never seen three producers try to agree what to get on a pizza.
COROLLARY TO THE LAW OF NEWS CONSPIRACIES
The media are not right-wing, left-wing, pro-choice, pro-abortion, pro-gun, anti-war or any other such nonsense. We are pro-leaving-work-on-time and very pro-heading-to-the-bar.
THE WRITING ASSIGNMENTS PARADOX
Those who can't write are assigned to write the most.
PARKINSON'S LAW, RESTATED FOR NEWS
Your breaking news coverage will always exceed the “breaking news” line item in the budget.
FIRST AND SECOND LAW OF PRODUCING. AND THIRD LAW.
Nobody will ever be satisfied with your show. Including you.
LAW OF REPORTING
Producers will always give you 15 seconds less than you need to tell the story.
RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW OF REPORTING
Reporters will always take 15 seconds more than they need.
THE ENG LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
You can have a sat shot, a microwave, a fiber feed and a newsroom live: you just can't have all of them right now.
THE THREEFOLD LAW OF NEWS EXPERIENCE
You will never get done paying your dues. You will always think your managers are nuts. You will never work in a market you can afford to live in.
NEWS WEBSITE CHAOS THEORY
Every department in your station will want more space on the front page.
THE “VIEWERS ARE OUR CONSULTANTS” POSTULATE
You can't affect change at your station. But if you send an anonymous email to the station suggesting the same change, it will occur.
PRODUCER'S PARADOX
No matter how well you time a show, it will always be 25 seconds heavy.
THE SECOND PRODUCER’S PARADOX
Despite that, you will get off on time.
THE ACCU-FORECAST 3001 RESTATEMENT OF PARKINSON'S LAW
A weather report will expand to fit the time allotted.
THE “BALANCED NEWS” PARADOX
Equally distributed quotes from both sides do not a balanced report make.
AVERY'S RULE OF THREE, REDEFINED FOR NEWS
Famous deaths always come in threes.
THE FIRST OBSERVATION OF THE NEWSROOM
Everyone in news is a procrastinator.
NEWS JOBS FIRST IRONY
By the time the job is posted on a station’s website, someone has it.
HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, APPLIED TO NEWS
The time between an employee's hire, and their complaint they are underpaid, is too small to be measured accurately.
THE LAW OF NEWSROOM EQUIPMENT
If it breaks, we own it.
NEWSROOM SICK DAY THEOREM
People will use precisely the number of sick days allotted.

We have lots of anecdotes about the increasing use of surveillance in society post-9/11 and the increasing controversies and public policy fissures that surveillance is causing. Now, a group of researchers led by David Lyon at Queen's University will spend the next four years examining the implications of the increasing flow across international borders of ?personal data?, from telephone numbers and PINs to fingerprints and retinal scans. In Canada, we're deadling with the fact that if we fly on an international flight, some personal information is going to be passed on to U.S. authorites.
?Surveillance is not just something done to people by the government or the police: it?s also determined by how far the ordinary person is prepared to go along with it,? Lyon said in a Queen's University press release announcing the study. (The press release was prompted by the release of a $1.9-million federa research grant for this project.)
?Neither complacency on the one hand, nor paranoia on the other, is a very useful response. We?d like to generate some informed debate that will lead to increased awareness and positive change.?
I spoke briefly with Lyon about this earlier this week. Didn't have enough yet to fight for space in the Globe but it was an interesting conversation nonethless. Hope to put some working notes up here sooner than later.
Interestingly, an hour or two after that discussion, I recevied electronic notice of a conference to be held in April in Surrey, U.K. carrying the title: The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity. Lyon, as it turns out, is to be a keynote speaker at this conference. Here's the conference description:

The rapid adoption and diffusion of mobile devices over the past decade has transformed the way information is generated, organized and communicated about individuals and their lives. The construction of new mobile data profiles and of mobile, informatic selves, hold the potential to transform what is organizationally and interpersonally meant by privacy, individuality, community, risk, trust, and reciprocity in a mobilizing, and globalizing world.
In order to examine these transformations, the RIS:OME project at the University of Surrey is hosting an international, interdisciplinary conference to address emerging social and cultural relations of mobility, privacy, identity, information and communication. This conference will bring together academic, industry and policy researchers and practitioners to critically address how mobile information and communications technologies structure relations of privacy, security, trust, power, identity and difference.

There was a Wi-Fi meetup in Toronto just last night and I had no idea. That does it. I've got make sure I'm reading Joey's blog every 20 minutes. And Rader's, too.
Incidentally — if you're a Canadian Wi-Fi hotspot provider, Wi-Fi telco provider, Wi-Fi enthusiast or just want to know about Wi-Fi, drop me a line. I'm putting some stories together on this thing for the network and I'd like to hear from you.

Noel Malcolm reviews the new book by Terry Eagleton in The Daily Telegraph and hits several nails on the head when it comes to his assessment of sludge of verbiage that passes for academic discourse. (Can't say if he's right or wrong about Eagleton's book, not having read it yet.)

Go to your nearest academic bookshop and look at the section labelled “Cultural Studies” . . . If you open these books and try reading a page or two, you will probably notice one more thing: most of them are unreadable. The reason for this is not that the authors are generally stupid or uneducated – rather the opposite. These are clever people who have spent years mastering bodies of theory and styles of argument, to the point where they can produce new quantities of the same. But the overwhelming impression they give is that they are writing to impress one another, not to enlighten you or me . . . something has gone terribly wrong. Not only have these clever cultural theorists ended up producing stuff which will never emancipate ordinary people, because no ordinary person can read it. They have turned into cultural relativists, and given up on the whole theory of emancipation. They do not believe in a general project of freeing people from the cultural or economic forces that oppress them; they are against general projects or general values tout court.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, holding its annual convention this week in Quebec City, released a poll this afternoon guaging attitudes Canadians have about media. Of some note: Many Canadians would support their tax dollars going to support Canadian broadcasting and many erroneously believe that newspapers received financial support from federal government grants.
A press release with all the survey details is here but here's some interesting excerpts:

• Not surprisingly, Canadians expect news from Canadian local daily newspapers and national
  newspapers specifically. However, Canadian newspapers do more than keep Canadians informed. Under the layer of articles, pictures and commentaries lay important societal benefits. A strong majority of Canadians feel that their newspapers play an important role in terms of keeping their government accountable, promoting a sense of community, of national pride and of unity, and promoting Canadian athletes and history.

• Despite this increase in use of Canadian media, Canadians agree that the Canadian media is faced with a number of significant challenges. Not only do they agree that the volume of foreign media is threatening to overwhelm Canadian voices in Canadian media but they also feel that the reliance on such foreign media is likely to increase due to declines in funding for Canadian content.
• Canadian content is so important to Canadians that 7 in 10 would accept that a greater proportion of tax dollars be used to ensure that Canadian content is available to Canadians for many years to come. As for maintaining or improving the quality and accessibility of the programming
  Canadians have come to expect from Canadian radio and television broadcasters, fully 82% of Canadians believe the government should dedicate the same or more funds and resources to broadcasting in Canada.

• Although Canadian local dailies and national dailies do not depend at all on federal funds, it is nonetheless interesting that the Canadian public is not very well informed on this matter. Fully twothirds of Canadians think that daily newspapers some federal funding.
• “Fully two-thirds of Canadians consider at least some newspaper advertising informative while 80% consider the advertising found in newspapers at least somewhat acceptable. ‘Acceptability’ of advertising in newspapers does change noticeably once respondents are informed that newspapers do not depend on government funds to operate.”

Julie Chrysler, the editor of This Magazine, needs arts writers. Here's the message she's circulating:

Calling all arts writers:
Well, maybe not all arts writers. But arts writers who want to write for This Magazine (please don't flame me about our pay rates – trust me, I know all about it).
This Magazine is launching a new section. Starting in Jan 2004, we will be publishing opinionated 1000-1200 word essays examining and critiquing trends and issues in the noble, popular and underground art worlds.
We are on the lookout for writers from across the country with sassy wit and something original to say about arts and culture.
Questions? Ideas? Get in touch with me at editor@thismagazine.ca or our section editor Lisa Whittington-Hill at arts@thismagazine.ca

One of the perks of being a tech reporter is that manufacturers lend you their newest gadgets from time to time. The newest gadget I've got is the 17-inch PowerBook from Apple. You might have seen the ads on TV with MiniMe from the Austin Powers movies and that giant Chinese NBA player on the plane. MiniMe has the 17-inch PowerBook and the the big guy as the 12-inch version. Ha Ha. But I digress. You cannot believe the size of the screen on this machine — and the machine is only one inch thick. My colleague George Emerson reviews this machine in the lastest edition of Report On Business Magazine and, so far, I agree with much of what he says, particularly on the issue of size. “I've always believed big screens fall too far on the side of clunky in the balance between portability and performance. Small screens, those around 11 or 12 inches, are extremely portable, and the best ones have good guts (fast processors and capacious memory),” George wrote. “I was quite prepared to reject the PowerBook 17 out of hand if it didn't fit snugly in my briefcase. When it did, I began to reconsider my aversion to big-screen notebooks…” George ended up liking the machine quite a bit and — while I've had it for all of about three days now — I'm liking it, too.
I had been carrying around an 11-inch iBook — very light, very portable, very mobile. I was worried that the immense footprint and size of the machine I have now would simply be too much, that I would be giving up too much mobility. Well, at just one inch (2.5 cm) thick when closed, so far, the tradeoff of mobility vs size has been just about nil. This is a pretty impressive machine.
I've just installed OS 10.3 (Panther) on it and plan to give it a good workout over the next week in a variety of conditions. Only little beef so far is that this machine comes with the Airport Extreme card as standard equipment. (Airport is the brand name for Apple's WiFi group of networking products.) The iBook I just have up had the first-generation (lower max bandwidth) Airport card on board, too. But the first-generation seemed to work much better with my LinkSys wireless router than what's under the hood of this PowerBoook. Perhaps some more tweaking will help.

The University of California (UCAL) Berkeley has completed its second “How Much Information” study. The researchers conclude that the the amount of new information stored on paper, film, optical and magnetic media has doubled in the last three years, reaching five miliion terabytes or five billion gigabytes or five exabytes by the end of 2002, compared to half that in 1999.
I wish I could remember the source — probably Wired or could have been something Kurzweil wrote — of some geek's estimate that if you could digitize all the experiences of an average human being's lifetime, you would end up with 5 terabytes of data.
Nonetheless, a terabyte is still an awfully big chunk of data.

Whether it's a book-length biography or a newspaper profile, writers who do biographical pieces are often faced with a dilemma: Access versus Independence of Thought. As a writer, I want to get as close to my subject as possible, to see him or her in their private moments, in closed door meetings, and get lots of exclusive material. The price for that kind of good stuff, though, is usually Independence of Thought. The subject may grant that access in return for some control over what you write. That can range from veto power over the entire project to being able to modify interview notes. If you want complete independence of thought, you may never be granted a chance to speak to your subject let alone get close to him or her. Well, here's a neat new strategy. For his new biography of Larry Ellison, Matthew Symonds agreed to let Ellison share the page with him. Ellison gave Symonds some terrific access, allowing the writer to accompany Ellison to closed-door meetings, for example, and, in exchange, Ellison was allowed to respond via footnotes in Symond's biography. I like it.

Corporate governance and issues of disclosure and transparency are the hot topics on Wall Street these days.
Now, in the wake of some rule changes by the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, if I interview an analyst by phone that will qualify as a “public appearance”. What are the implications for journalists in Canada? Well, for one thing, I got a note yesterday from the PR woman at Merrill Lynch Canada letting me know that I can no longer phone up some of the economists and analysts I would routinely contact at that banks Toronto or New York office without first going through a PR woman and listening to a standard spiel about disclosure.
And while none of my sources have done this to me yet, there's a chance the analyst could be forced to disclose what s/he said in that interview as soon as it's over, even before I publish the contents of the interview!
Here's a story on this;

Banks Eye Analyst Disclosure: Big Board Expands 'Public Appearance' Guide
The NYSE and the NASD have added print media interviews to existing rules on disclosure of TV appearances by analysts. Banks must maintain records of interviews whether they're published or not.