A new ad series from The Atlantic promoting their history of “challenging assumptions” is fantastically well done. And I’m not just saying it because one of them featured Michael K. Williams.

I wish more of the news was presented in Lego form.

Well, at least they don’t suck as much as the Associated Press. There is no shortage of the coverage of the A.P.’s plan to follow the recording industry’s failed efforts to stave off irrelevance by pissing everyone off and leaving themselves on an island. But out of this mess of ignorance, idiocy and imminent failure comes one white knight, Thomson Reuters. In a blog post by Chris Ahearn, their President of Media, Reuters has proclaimed their love of links and excerpting and news aggregators.

Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content… Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged.

Thanks Chris, I think I just might. He also takes a well-deserved shot at the A.P.

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

Thomson Reuters – 1,  Associated Press – 0

[Via Daring Fireball]

A piece of America died with the passing of Walter Cronkite. I’m not old enough to remember first-hand what it was like to start my evening with his broadcasts. Or to be comforted by his voice in times of national turmoil. But I am old enough to know how important he was to our nation and it’s history. That he was a national treasure, and one of the last great news anchors.

When you look around there really aren’t any newsmen that carry the same importance as Walter Cronkite. Partly because of the “24-hour news cycle” and partly because I just don’t think they exist. The closest we have may be Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams, now that Tim Russert is gone. But none of them are as watched, trusted nor carry the same weight as Cronkite did.

“A news anchor isn’t supposed to cry,” he said once when recapping his coverage of the death of President John F. Kennedy. But we should all shed a tear in mourning the death of a great American man.

A finer newsman we may never know.

An inspiring story, recipe that will no doubt spark much debate, about how the New York Times and Wikipedia might have just saved the life of a Times reporter as well as the lives of a local reporter and their driver while they were being held captive in a Taliban prison.