Paul Michelman over at Harvard Business Review is worried publishers are going to fail with the iPad in the same way they failed online. Taking the print product and making it digital didn't work online, and it won't work with the iPad, wrote Michelman. "The publishing industry's strategy: create products and experiences that so mimic print that we are able to extend its dying advertising and subscription models."

Perhaps his most poignant observation was that readers are no longer a publisher's first priority; the business model is. I posted a video a few weeks back that highlighted the disconnect between publishers and their readers. Going forward with a "screw the consumer, save the business model" attitude is all backwards. There is a place for traditional news organizations in an age where information is atomized — but they'll need to try harder to make it.

Get this—a post that doesn't lead with the words "layoff," "severance," "grim," or "death!" (Simple pleasures, for us folks at the Review; just let us have it.)

No, today it's good news! A new online fashion mag has just been launched! Yes, you read that right—growth.

The Style Notebook is the new sister site to Torontoist and promises to go beyond the streets of Toronto to document the latest in fashion and style. Editor-in-chief is Laura deCarufel, formerly senior editor at ELLE Canada. DeCarufel has worked at FASHION and The Look and will continue at ELLE as a contributing editor.

The site? Still in the baby stages it seems, but already offers great photos and illustrations. Time will tell if the women at SheDoestheCity.com have something to worry about. "

I was just in Cuba. You all know this because I blogged about it here before I left.

Well, there were no issues with the custom agents; most of them were young and female and attractive and more interested in finishing their evening shift than sifting through our bags. The reception we received from the Cuban public and baseball players, however, was mixed. People were willing to open up and be candid with us once they learnt that we were journalism students on assignment for our university. They shared tales of their displeasure with the country's socialist system and the frustrations that accompany playing baseball in a country where players earn between $10-15 a month.

Now I'm back in Canada with a notebook filled of material and I'm at odds with what to do with it. I can certainly use it to benefit our Ryerson oriented project but is it ethically wrong to pitch and potentially publish a story on this subject in a newspaper or magazine. Can I use quotes if I don't attribute it? Can I paraphrase? Can I use non-sensitive quotes? If a ball player in Cuba even hints at wanting to play outside his country he could be banned from the sport. Tell me, readers.

What should I do?

Journos often complain that online news websites don't provide the same surprise factor as their print counterparts. Well no longer! The Guardian and The New York Times have both developed Stumbleupon-like apps that randomly brings up an article published within the last 24 hours. Serendipity, indeed; it's almost as fun as clicking on Wikipedia's "Random article" link, though not quite as addicting as looking through the 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia.

Rupert Murdoch, of course, is heading in the opposite direction. I know some are hoping the random approach will win out, but if Murdoch's paywall is a desperate gambit for money, then newsroulette is a band-aid gimmick to increase page views and keep users engaged. Fitting that the idea came from a joking remark.

In between fighting an expensive divorce battle with his wife, being punched in the face by his constituent and making wildly inappropriate comments about Barack Obama, Silvio Berlusconi has found time to slash the $2.8-million his government gives to Canada's only Italian daily newspaper by half. The Globe and Mail reported today that Corriere Canadese, the 55-year-old paper read by many first-generation Canadians, is now in dire financial straits because Berlusconi's government is scaling back on cultural expenses. Um, thanks?

Although not of Italian heritage, I, for one, will notice the change if the paper folds—my Little Italy neighbourhood is home to many who read some of the paper's 35,000 daily copies and sit around discussing the day's news in Canada and Italy at the College Street strip's bars and coffee shops.

Luckily, it doesn't sound like the paper is going down without a fight. Editor in chief Paola Bernardini says the paper is launching a feisty campaign to attract other top Italian donors. And maybe lessening its ties with the Italian government isn't such a bad thing. As Bernardini tells the Globe, "it's funny for us to cover the [upcoming Italian] election from here because we have a government who decided to cut funds running in the elections." Funny, indeed.

Oh, and here's some good news: to read more about Corriere Canadese, take a look at Elizabeth Pagliacolo's story from the Spring 2002 issue of the RRJ.

Yesterday, Exclaim! magazine published a letter to the editor on its Facebook fan page. It was in response to Keith Carman's concert review of the punk band Vivian Girls' performance during last week's Canadian Music Week festival.

Titled "Angry-ish Ravings from a Feminist Cunt" — the reader's word choice, by the way — it has now sparked a debate on the fan page between staffers and readers. It started as a debate on sexism in the magazine, but is now more focused on the ethics of music journalism.

Carman wrote that "if these band members had penises, people would say they suck."

The reader responded: "This kind of half-assed music 'journalism' is offensive and sloppy. This is also one of the most chauvinistic things I've read in any magazine article in this century."

Senator Mike Duffy threw down some tough words for Canadian journalism schools this week. Duffy gave a speech to Conservative party members Monday in Amherst, saying that journalism programs these days train their students with a leftist bias.

"When I went to the school of hard knocks, we were told to be fair and balanced," said Duffy. "That school doesn't exist anymore. Kids who go to King's, or the other schools across the country, are taught from two main texts." He said the major problem was the mixture of focusing on Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and books on critical thinking (which, technically, are not two texts but one text and one variety of texts).

"When you put critical thinking together with Noam Chomsky, what you've got is a group of people who are taught from the ages of 18, 19 and 20 that what we stand for, private enterprise, a system that has generated more wealth for more people because people take risks and build businesses, is bad."

I won't belabour the fact that Duffy seems to lament that teaching journalism students how to think critically seems a little weird, nor the implication that doing so would generate young minds acerbic to the open market. What I will question, though, is the ridiculous claim that Duffy came from anything that can be called a "school of hard knocks." Unless he spent an undisclosed part of his childhood living in Red Hook, or UPEI offers an unadvertised course in shiv-handling.

Today, I'm off to Cuba. Not for the sun or sea or rum, but to investigate an issue very close to the hearts and minds of the Cuban people: baseball. However, reporting on such a nationalistic issue in a country where press freedoms, according to Reporters Without Borders, is ""disastrous,"" will be a challenge. Without official foreign press credentials, my colleague and I intend to bring a camera, a video recorder and notebooks into the country because they are all items that can be justified for tourists. Yet we are hesitant to bring our big Marantz recorder into the communist state. How could we explain such an item?

Media in Cuba is tightly controlled; insulting government officials alone can carry a three year jail sentence. Moreover, private ownership of electronic media is prohibited by the constitution. Although I am looking forward to walking the streets in a city where people make eye contact instead of being absorbed into their BlackBerry screens, it will certainly be an odd sensation. I guess the real test will be the openness of the people we encounter on the street. How willing will they be to offer their true opinions of Cuban society?

Stay tuned for updates.

Just about the most clever, and inspirational, video I've seen on the future of publishing:

The mirror here revealing the disconnect between publishers and their readers hits too close to the bone when I think of the relationship between journalists and their audience. It seems that, in striving to reach out to the lowest common denominator among our followers and include the widest possible demographic, we've forgotten how to challenge our readers. The news and information we present to them should be clean and simple, but it should also leave room for growth. Otherwise, what's the point?

Says the reader to the publisher, "You should never think I don't care. I read a lot and I like learning. And it's just not true that my attention span is too small for big ideas." Neither should it be true for us.

Thanks, Jessica.