One TV guide, two days of the week. In my mailbox this week a missive from Fairfax announcing that from April 24, the Sunday and Monday TV guides will be combined into one and available on either Sunday or Monday. It’s a cost-savings drive. The Sunday guide, which goes into the Sun Herald, is being transformed by the injection of the higher quality guides and reviews and other material from the long established Monday guide in The Sydney Morning Herald. It will have eight-day guides (to include the next Sunday).

Subscribers are being asked to nominate which day they want to get it. Basically two pint runs become one, as two insertions, while paper costs will be lowered. It will be interesting to see what News Limited does because it has a Sunday guide for papers such as The Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun, but the Monday-to-Saturday papers have guides midweek. — Glenn Dyer

Why a tweet’s context is essential. We’ve seen a number of twitter “scandals” over the last year or so, all beaten up by the old media by:

  1. Taking the tweet out of context;
  2. Reconstructing the 140 characters in whatever harshest light can be put on them;
  3. Pretending that it was broadcast to a wide audience when it’s the newspapers’ beatup that has had that effect.

Recent targets have included Catherine “hope Bindi Irwin gets laid” Deveny, Miranda “had enough of rogering gerbils” Devine, and Larissa “show where guy had s-x with a horse less offensive than Bess Price” Behrendt. The point I wanted to make is that a tweet’s context is essential. — Read the rest of this story at Pure Poison

High school kids write the news. The Age has collaborated with Express Media to produce The Under Age, an online newspaper written by eager Victorian high school students. They might be cheaper than real journalists, but the industry remains popular with the kids, with nearly 400 applications for just 12 student journo positions. The website is already live, although the official launch will be at 6pm next Wednesday at the Wheeler Centre.

Documentary maker and photographer killed in Libya

“Oscar-nominated documentary maker and photographer Tim Hetherington and Pulitzer prize-winner Chris Hondros have been killed covering the escalating violence in the Libyan city of Misrata, and two other Western journalists working with them have been seriously injured.” — The Guardian

Journalists and social media: how far is too far?

“Should journalists avoid expressing opinion in their social media comments for fear of calling their objectivity into question? Or is the myth of real objectivity finally being torn by a global conversation in which everyone is expected to weigh in with his or her views?” — Newspaper Deathwatch

Facebook is worried about ‘too much free speech’

“Facebook is considering censoring content in some countries because it is “uncomfortable” offering excessive amounts of freedom to some people. The next time you start sympathise with a beaten or jailed protester, try imagining how that violence makes Facebook feel.” — Gawker

The five best iPad apps for consuming your news

“With the recent release of the iPad 2, the Apple App Store is swarming with new and updated apps tailored for interactive news consumption. Some of the most compelling news apps are those that take a familiar concept — such as the simple act of reading a newspaper — and adapt it to the iPad’s unique platform. These are the apps that remind us that reading the news can be a fun and social experience.” — 10,000 Words