Weekend roundup

Not much time for blogging this weekend, so here's one of those hodgepodge posts to tide you:

• Jeff Jarvis visited a class at Harvard and found validation of our Daily Show theory of news delivery.
• Seth Godin gives corporations advice on what makes blogs work. I'd argue that the news media should embrace these as well: Candor, Urgency, Timeliness, Pithiness, Controversy and Utility.
• Evelyn Rodriguez has two intriguing posts right now: The first is a good overview of the blogosphere debate on whether branding is dead or on life support. The second, illustrates one of our key differentiators from legacy media. By nature, our ad model is much more participatory:

  Here's a challenge for any company to try out. Pretend you have no advertising budget - zilch - how would you engage with your potential and existing customers then? If you cannot answer that question, advertising won't save you.

  Many of our advertisers have limited resources or don't currently advertise, because their 1/68 page ad can't really drive them any business.
• One of my partners, who we'll call "Nancye," (since that's her name) often gets wound up on a schpeal about how the convergence of our various distribution models will position us to command a huge mind (and advertising) share across multiple platforms. I usual respond with something along the lines of "Yeah, but we've got to get launched first." Then, I read something like this and feel both shortsighted and visionary at the same time:

  Eventually, and probably sooner than later, someone is going to pull together all these diverse angles on telecom/internet/media/hardware/applications/chips, incorporate some hard financial and technical analysis, and build a cross-sector investment research platform incorporating realtime tools (I mean blogging, IM, video conferencing and collaboration) rather than .pdfs and spam.

• A bunch of people continue to get in a wad about Google stealing their content and advertisers. Quit bitching and evolve, already. (Our new friend, Vin, gets a mention.)
• Doug McGill guests over at PressThink with an essay on why journalists' "Grand Old Professional Code" is falling to pieces and why that may not be a bad thing. Daily Peg's inaugural must-read of the week.