QUESTION OF THE DAY for Wednesday: Will Blogs, Facebook, Twitter Fade?

Earlier this month we introduced a popular new daily feature. Every weekday we will post a burning, or sometimes offbeat, newspaper industry/media issue here and at our main site. We urge you to comment to get the ball rolling and, we hope, take part in an ongoing debate on that issue.

We post today's question in the headline above.  Individuals, and all media, have been embracing the three but is fatigue starting to set in?  Some notables, for example,  have lately announced they are retiring from blogging and tweeting.  Rather than permanent fixtures, will they prove to be fads?  What's the next big thing?  Weigh in here below.

You don't have to register. Just hit the comments link at bottom of this and enter your opinion and then return to see what others are saying. Thanks for taking part at the outset as we try to make this grow.

More Journos "Happy to Help" Mark Sanford

Yesterday we noted that The State daily in S. Carolina had obtained a slew of emails to and from Gov. Sanford's office in the days surrounding his walk along the Appalachian Trail, so to speak.  Many media figures were offering to help clear his name etc.  Today the paper released a few more, including one from ABC's Jake Tapper knocking a rival's coverage as "insulting" to the gov.  Whoops.

Inflation Runs Wild -- Michael Jackson Style

The press never seems to learn to take huge numbers that are "common wisdom" with huge grains of salt.  Latest example: repeating claims of Michael Jackson worldwide album sales of "750 million" of or some such.  Of course, the original generator was a Jacko employee -- just as it was MJ people who first dubbed him "King of Pop."  One of our favorite journos, the WSJ "numbers guy" picks it apart here.    Econ blogger Barry Rithzoltz ads his take here. --Greg Mitchell

Kissing (Up To) Mark Sanford

The State newspaper in S. Carolina, which had so much to do with exposing Gov. Sanford's wayward trysting, has now obtained dozens of emails sent to the governor's office when he was "on the Appalachian Trail."  They reveal many interesting things including his aides failure to find out where he was, embarrassing messages of support from conservative media outlets, and even a note from Stephen Colbert inviting Sanford on his show (native son Colbert had momentarily declared himself governor in Mark's absence).  Don't miss it here.

Moyers on the 'Unholy' Salon Plan from 'Wash Post'

If you missed Bill Moyers' comments on PBS the other night, on the way things work in Washington.

Was It Sen. Jeff Sessions Who Fondled David Brooks' Leg?

Well, it's about a one-in-forty shot for Sessions, anyway, and it's raised by one of his constituent/journos (see below) here, partly in good fun, but with edge.  You may recall that several days ago we posted here a video of the NYT columnist David Brooks on TV revealing, with a laugh,  that a certain (unnamed) GOP senator had fondled his leg under a table throughout a dinner. He was talking about the loss of "dignity" in D.C. And how.

Now the Tuscaloosa News Associate Editor and Online Editor Tommy Stevenson at his blog  has called on Brooks to reveal that senator's name, otherwise all GOPers in that body will be suspects, even his own Alabama reps. Or reporters could toss out names, such as Sessions, and see if Brooks will fail to deny: "And I would print his answer, in an effort to perhaps get him to clear the whole matter up."

An excerpt follows (the link above includes transcript of the earlier Brooks claims):

Now I am not trying to be snarky here about a fellow journalist. I am just trying to make the point that Brooks probably wouldn't let someone he was interviewing get away with a sensational allegation that tars a whole class of people with suspicion, or at least he wouldn't print it if he or she did spread such gossip.

Therefore I think he owes it to those who have not grabbed the inside of his thigh to exonerate them. That's only fair, isn't it?

'Post-Dispatch' Home Run Derby Extra Scrapped

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is pulling out all the stops for tonight's Major League Baseball All-Star Game -- and has already started selling posters of its Sunday special front page -- was prepared to make a buck as well from last night's Home Run Derby.

If hometown hero Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals had won the home run exhibition, the Post-Dispatch was ready to print up 30,000 copies of a four-page extra to sell outside Busch Stadium for $1 each after the event.

"We would have had a [Pujols] photo from round one [of the derby] and a headline that he had won and they would be ready to go," Deputy Managing Editor Bob Rose reveals. He said at least 1,000 copies were printed, but later discarded after Pujols failed to make the final round. --Joe Strupp

Brit Tabs Out REAL Slumdog Millionaires

The WSJ reports today that it took British tabloids to expose the problems surrounding the abandonment of some of London's toniest real estate by absentee owners. (Even Former Prime Minister Tony Blair's home is adjacent to a crumbling property that's been vacant for more than a decade. ) The problems of vacant homes surfaced last winter when a group of young squatters occupied two £20 million homes on Park Lane overlooking Hyde Park, which had been vacant for seven years.

 But the property owners turned up once multiple British newspaper accounts outed the squatters. "We're the REAL Slumdog Millionaires," read a headline in the Sun. --  Barbara Bedway

Porn to Be Reporters?

New site Mediaite finds that a number of journos share a name with porn stars. Slow news day for all of us. Tom Brokaw never had this problem.

See the 'USA Today'... on Your Newsdeck

The national daily launches the Newsdeck aggregator on its site.  For a view, here.

'Plain' Foolish or 'Plain' Wise?

You may have followed some of the blog criticism of the Cleveland Plain Dealer's reader rep's video last week which, in the view of some, expressed a really geezerish kids-get-off-my-lawn view of online news, blogs and so forth.  So the paper put up another discussion with more back-and-forth.

Two pipsqueaks sitting around talking

The Day in 100 Seconds

Our nightly feature from TPM.

Was Froomkin Fired Mainly Because of Page View Drop? He Had Company

Since the axing of Wash Post "White House Watch" blogger Dan Froomkin last month, the Post has claimed that most of the reason was the drop in page views for his column with Obama in office, not Bush.  This line was emphasized again today in a NYT report, which also warned that judging Web writers by page views was a slippery slope.  But Froomkin took issue with it today in an email to Atlantic blog star Andrew Sullivan, claiming the page view drop was NOT the main reason for his firing.  He has alleged that a lot of others at the Post lost a lot of audience in recent months.

Indeed, the traffic seems to bear this out.  Here are the Nielsen numbers for washingtonpost.com since last September, when traffic really picked up at the Post  (and a lot of other sites) during the election campaign--and  has declined since.  So Froomkin, indeed, did have a lot of company.  Uniques off nearly 4 million since September.  Traffic during one month this year actually was 12% less than one year previous.  Up 9% in May, so obviously some parts of the site are doing very well--but surely a lot of other areas lost readers, as did Froomkin.

Sept. 08: 12.9 million unique visitors,  up 43% over previous year
Oct. 08: 12.3 million, 43%
Nov. 08: 11.1 million, 17%
Dec. 08: 11.4 million, 15%
Jan. 09: 11.1 million, 13%
Feb. 09: 9.2 million, (-12%)
March 09: 9.3 million, 5%
April 09: 10.2 million, 8%
May 09:  10.0 million, 9%

QUESTION OF THE DAY for Monday: Are Today's News Consumers Better Informed Than Ever -- Or Less So?

Earlier this month we introduced a popular new daily feature. Every weekday we will post a burning, or sometimes offbeat, newspaper industry/media issue here and at our main site. We urge you to comment to get the ball rolling and, we hope, take part in an ongoing debate on that issue.

We post today's question in the headline above.  Has the growing reliance on online news made users lazy, fed short attention spans, and only left them with mainly sketchy information?  Or are today's readers better informed because they use so many more sources and can follow links to dig deeper? 

You don't have to register. Just hit the comments link at bottom of this and enter your opinion and then return to see what others are saying. Thanks for taking part at the outset as we try to make this grow.

Yoo Dirty Rat?

Popular "Attytood"  blogger and longtime Philly Daily news reporter Will Bunch has been on the case for some time regarding sister paper's hiring of former Bush administration torture advocate John Yoo as a regular Philly Inky columnist.  With the revelations in new report last weekend he has more ammunition and fires some of it here.

'Post-Dispatch' Hawking All-Star Page One

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is all over tomorrow night's baseball All-Star Game at the hometown Busch Stadium, even hawking the front-page image from Sunday's special preview section.

Online users can buy a poster of the great Page One photo of St. Louis Cardinals' legend Stan Musial and current Cardinal All-Star Albert Pujols for just $19.95.

What's next? $1.99 for posters of each day's weather page? -Joe Strupp