Quick hits

Adrian Holovaty, now of the Washington Post but formerly of the Lawrence Journal-World, had an interesting post last week on the idea that by forcing everything we do into "story," newspapers are painting themselves into a corner. Read it. Think about it. If you are in a journalism school, think about it even more -- are you pouring money into labs or should you be looking at centralizing your servers and getting a content management system that does what Holovaty says? Holovaty knows of what he speaks; after all he's the maestro behind the award winning Chicagocrime.org.

If you want a close-up view of the anguish of the layoffs in this business, the News Buyout blog tracks the comings and goings at the Dallas Morning News, as does the just-started After the DMN.
(All this, of course, involving the expected cuts of as much as 20 percent of the newsroom staff through buyout packages.)