Morning Links: January 22, 2009

By Joshua Benton @jbenton Jan. 22, 2009, 6:49 a.m.

— You know they take software development seriously at the Times when they create their own nerd conference to support it.

— Mark Glaser reports on the RJI Talkfest at Mizzou.

— Both Martin and I are quoted extensively in this piece, in the alt-weekly in Lafayettte, Louisiana, about cutbacks at The Advertiser, the daily paper there. (It was the paper I read every morning when I was a kid.) The daily for a metro area of 550,000 people now has only 16 pages and one section some days.

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).

POSTED Jan. 22, 2009, 6:49 a.m.

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Sophie Culpepper

The California Google deal could leave out news startups and the smallest publishers

“We don’t know whether or how this nonprofit and its fund will operate, and likely won’t for some months (nonprofit governance is many things, but fast is not one of them).”

Joshua Benton

With an expansion on the way, Ken Doctor’s Lookout thinks it has some answers to the local news crisis

After finding success — and a Pulitzer Prize — in Santa Cruz, Lookout aims to replicate its model in Oregon. “All of these playbooks are at least partially written. You sometimes hear people say, ‘Nobody’s figured it out yet.’ But this is all about execution.”

Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos

Big tech is painting itself as journalism’s savior. We should tread carefully.

“We set out to explore how big tech’s ‘philanthrocapitalism’ could be reshaping the news industry, focusing on countries in the Global South…Our findings suggest an emerging web of dependency between cash-strapped newsrooms and Silicon Valley’s deep pockets.”