Morning Links: January 8, 2009

By Joshua Benton @jbenton Jan. 8, 2009, 10:20 a.m.

A belated happy new year to everyone trying to do good journalism or enable others to do so.

— Online-video viewing time increased 40 percent in the past year — fodder for anyone who wants to justify more video on their site.

— Those Connecticut papers on the brink have been rescued, at least for now.

— Rick Edmonds says that Atlantic article on the impending demise of The New York Timeshas some basic math problems. “Relax, Times-o-philes. The scenario is not the least bit plausible…corporate finance is not like an auto loan, in which the repo man comes if you miss a few payments.”

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. 8, 2009, 10:20 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.”