Survey: Readers Still Prefer Holding Onto What They're Reading

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeKPMG, LLP, an audit, tax and advisory services firm, recently surveyed 2,241 people and found a whopping 86 percent of them preferred reading from physical copies to online perusing, according to Printweek.com.

The latest Media & Entertainment Barometer survey also found that 24 percent of magazine readers hadn't paid for the periodical they were reading and only 26 percent of newspaper readers didn't pay for the publication. Those figures were in contrast to 80 percent of online magazine readers and 92 percent of online newspaper viewers polled who had paid for the privilege.

Reports of the death of old media may be premature.

Can a Swede Sue Google for 'Libelous' Links? Of Norse He Can

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A 61-year-old Swedish businessperson has sued Google for defamation, claiming that a Google search results of his name led to blogs that falsely portray him as a pedophile.

The plaintiff is seeking a million kroner ($135,021) from the Internet search behemoth for negative publicity he and his business purportedly have sustained because of the linked-to information. The businessperson has also alerted police regarding who he suspects is spreading the allegedly defamatory gossip about him.

In the U.S., the individual who initiated the allegedly libelous claims would be exposed to legal liability, but Google, which indexes, rather than publishes data, would likely be protected by Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which says the user or provider of an interactive computer service can't be considered the publisher or speaker of information provided by another information content provider.

It's a bumpier ride for Google internationally, as the company learned when it was held liable for invasion of privacy by an Italian court (see "TUOL" post 2/25/10), and in 2008, when it was socked by a Brazilian court with an $8,500 fine for a social networking site posting that accused a priest of being a pedophile.

DePaul J-Students Take to the Tweets

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"Digital Editing: From Breaking News to Tweets," "Reporting for Converged Newsrooms," "Backpack Reporting," "Niche Journalism."  This is not your father's journalism school education.

J-Students at DePaul University's College of Communication, Chicago's second-largest dispenser of degrees in communications, hopes to ride the wave of digital journalism in the changing field.  Craig Kanalley, digital intern at The Chicago Tribune, a DePaul alum,  is teaching DePaul j-students a college-level journalism course devoted entirely to Twitter and its applications. The course will tie into Kanalley's Web site, www.breakingtweets.com, which has had more than 500,000 page views since it launched in January 2009.

Lovers of irony will be disappointed to learn that enrollment is not limited to 140.