A wonderful example of the dying art of "newspaper objectivity." Gosh, it's a conflict! Some people think that staring at a screen instead of the road while driving might be less safe; some other people think that the number of accidents won't change if your state outlaws texting and emailing while driving. Thankfully we have been presented with both opinions and can now just sit here in silence.

"Genting"—the world's largest purveyors of casinos, cruises, biotech and plantations—"has revealed its plans for the giant resort complex they plan to plop down on the current site of the Miami Herald building."

About.com, the content farm owned by the Times and one of the worst things on the Internet, looks like it's finally in trouble, due in large part to Google taking action against the Garbagenet. (These outfits depend on search results.) And also: advertisers realizing there are better ways to spend money than advertising against an empty void. In the second quarter of this year, About.com shed staff and now their real operating costs are $13.1 million; their operating profit is down 24% from last year, to $11.6 million. (That's less than $4 million a month.) To be fair, this is still a "real business": The About Group had revenues of $59 million year-to-date, so hey, I'd take it, but the writing is on the wall for this as a visionary business. It's not. It's bad for the Internet and not even that great for your wallet. There's a number of not-so-great numbers at the Times, just released today for the second quarter, but let's look at the interesting numbers: who subscribes online? READ MORE

"He just rolled up and trolled. He went into a venue where people have elected to be, and told everyone that their presence there makes them stupid. He then laments that he did not receive more positive responses from within that forum itself."
—Well, yes, here you go. As someone said earlier today, if Times mag editor Hugo Lindgren really wanted to be a big man, he could probably kick it up a notch by firing his boss and columnist, Bill Keller.

Do you know what the McKenzie River Reflections weekly paper has, besides the delight of being located in McKenzie Bridge, some ways inland from Eugene, OR, right in the middle of the Willamette National Forest? Yup, a really awesome crime blotter. READ MORE

Edgewood, New Mexico—30 miles east of Albuquerque—has a skittling problem. Yes. So to combat this epidemic of pill-popping, they participated in the national drug take-back program, according to their weekly paper, The Independent. You can just go down to the pharmacy and give them your pills! I have no idea why someone would do this. At least gun amnesty programs get scary illegal things out of your house. But pill amnesty programs just take away your fun pills! I don't really get it? READ MORE

Five years ago, according to the editor of the Quincy Valley Post Register, the town went a bit crazy in a near-shoring boom. Microsoft and Yahoo! both were building data centers in town (hey, eastern California is much closer than Utah, America's favorite near-shoring zone (Mormons are so honest and industrious!)) and property values went up and everyone got a little nuts: "We all know what happened. The construction workers eventually left town, the data centers didn’t bring thousands of new people to live in Quincy and we’re still waiting for a movie theater," he writes. "And sadly, I know of several people who were busted when the boom was over." Now Dell and Sabey are building data centers there too. Here we go again! Meanwhile, up the road a piece in Greenville, you can buy a "3200sf, historic building on Main Street" for $99,000. Be right back, I'm off to start over in Plumas County!

The Malakoff News serves (part of) Henderson County—county seat, Athens, Texas—overall home to almost 90,000 28,000 households. And just like the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, Henderson, if those fatcats in the Texas House have their way, will be redistricted into two districts. Henderson, says the paper, is the only county in the state to be butchered up in such a fashion, and the locals are ticked off. Then the robocalls started, blaming their (Republican) state representative for it all, and asking citizens to call him up. Unfortunately, the freshman is actually not on the redistricting committee. Meanwhile, closer to Malakoff? They are trying to tax everyone's dogs! READ MORE

The internet is agog with the news that the Daily Mail gets more traffic than the Huffington Post—some 40 million uniques in a month now. (This is sort of like saying that bacon "gets more traffic" than sausages, in a way: people just like breakfasts meats, just as they adore celebrity nipples.) The Daily Mail, unlike the HuffPo, also sells 1.9 million newspapers a day—astounding numbers to American newspaperpeople. (That's extremely close to the total daily circulation of the Washington Post plus the LA Times plus the New York Times. For real.) Still, almost 2/3rds of their web traffic is from outside of the UK. Their secret isn't just celebrity nipples though, to be fair. It's also old-school, small-town newspaper-style death and disaster. The magical thing about the UK is that their tourists are constantly being murdered in Sarasota or plunging to their deaths in Thai waterfalls. It's like the whole country is the cast of a Final Destination movie. As long as the UK's number one export is woe-begotten folks on holiday, that's cash in the bank.