Multi-Ball VII - November 06, 2021

Readings and thoughts on a Saturday morning.

New York Times Adds 455,000 Subscriptions in Third Quarter - I have a subscription to the NYT. No other publication covers such a breadth of topics at such high quality.  I do wish the NYT's would expand their Canadian coverage.

Licensed to thrill: Kim Sherwood set to ‘expand the James Bond universe’ - overdue for the James Bond universe to expand. It is a great franchise. Looking forward to fun thrills in the future. From the article "to write three contemporary thrillers set in the world of James Bond but where the original 007 is missing, presumed captured or even killed."

Soaring newsprint costs make life even harder for newspapers - is this the much predicted, hasn't yet happened moment, when printed words published daily on dead trees ends?  The Economist looks at the newsprint industry and the factors which are driving newsprint prices up by 50% in Britain, 50-70% higher in Europe, 25-45% in Asia and Oceania, in North America the increase is 20-30% higher.    The pandemic is a factor, the bigger driver is that mills are switching from producing newsprint to packaging as newspapers continue their steady decline in print circulation.

Americans are watching way less cable news - "On television, between October 2020 and October 2021, according to Nielsen data, CNN was down 73 percent, to 661,00 viewers. Over the same period, MSNBC was down 56 percent, to 1.2 million viewers, and Fox News was down 53 percent, to 2.3 million viewers."

Why public media should just say no to Facebook’s money - I see a similar argument for news organizations in general. Ethics over money, what a concept.

How producers of PBS’ prime-time series got their shows back on track during COVID - interesting to read how workflows changed and how PBS maintained its photography standards during COVID.

Oregon city courting Google data centers fights to keep their water usage secret - this is a common problem, corporations seeking to hide public information from the public, and public entities agreeing to undermine transparency rules which are essential to democracy.