MONDAY'S LINKS: Admin. Pressure, WH Pool Briefings, 'Seattle Times' Staffers' Rift With Citizens Group

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, the Bush administration steps up its pressure on journalists, pool reporters try to figure out Bush's body language, and some Seattle Times staffers want to sever ties with a citizens group.


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Bush Admin. Using Espionage Laws to Target Journos
Earlier administrations have fired and prosecuted government officials who provided classified information to the press. They have also tried to force reporters to identify their sources. But the Bush administration is exploring a more radical measure to protect information it says is vital to national security: the criminal prosecution of reporters under the espionage laws.


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YouTube Technology Gains Steam Online
A growing number of amateur videographers trying to tap into the mushrooming phenomenon called YouTube, a Web site that encourages users to "Broadcast Yourself" by posting short video clips to the Internet universe. Though it debuted only five months ago, YouTube.com attracts 6 million visitors each day to watch two-minute video clips that amount to the Internet's version of "America's Funniest Home Videos" meets "American Idol." Every day, users stock the site with 35,000 homemade videos of lip-syncing, dancing, silly animation and commentaries on any topic, all of which are commented on and rated by viewers.


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Editor Wants to Change the Way India Perceives Journalism
Raju Narisetti is a journalist on a mission. The 39-year-old Narisetti, editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, is leaving at the end May to become the editorial director of an as-yet unnamed business daily in New Delhi, published by the Hindustan Times Media group. Naturally, the 13-year Journal veteran, who started as an intern in the Journal's Pittsburgh bureau, faces such pressing start-up tasks as assembling a staff, not to mention contemplating a Web strategy. But Narisetti's biggest long-range challenge may be helping to change the way Indian readers regard the craft of daily journalism.


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No-Name Recommenders Replacing Critics?
Amazon.com may have been one of the first sites, in the mid-1990s, to allow its users to share their thoughts about a book, just below the venerable Publishers Weekly or Booklist write-up. Now, such sites as Blogcritics.org collect reviews written by bloggers, and Apple's iTunes Music Store allows users to share their iMixes -- lists of favorite songs on a particular theme, like ''NJ Best," a selection from Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and other musicians with roots in the Garden State. "The cultural influencers are changing," says Brian Kalinowski, chief operating officer of Lycos, the Waltham Internet portal. "Expert opinion in the media used to drive culture. Now, it's peer recommendations."


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Pool Reporters Try to Decipher Bush's Body Language
Usually "in-town pool duty is more a test of my observational skills than anything else," writes Linda Feldmann. "Does the president's body language or tone of voice betray anything? Who else is in the room and why? Is actual news taking place? The typical report chronicles the workaday dealings of the president, such as comments to reporters after a closed cabinet meeting, spiced with dashes of humor and, one hopes, a telling detail or two. 'Often, pool duty is a lot of sitting in vans and standing outside the Oval,' sums up Julie Mason, a White House correspondent for the Houston Chronicle."


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Some 'Seattle Times' Staffers Want to Sever Ties With Citizens Group
Some Seattle Times employees are making another bid to sever their union's ties with a citizens committee that has been fighting The Times Co. in court over its joint-operating agreement (JOA) with The Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Steve Miletich, a Times reporter who also is vice president of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, said Friday he has requested an emergency meeting of the union's executive board to consider ending the Guild's support for the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town.


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Read the News, Go to Jail
"The Constitution remains a barrier to those who would restrict the flow of information to the media -- and thus to the public," writes David Wise. "But administration policies are gradually chipping away at its protections. The nation is in danger of having an Official Secrets Act not through passage of a law -- although that is still a possibility -- but through incremental steps."


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Writers Face Frontier Justice in Internet Age
In the age of the Internet, literary exegesis (whether driven by scandal or not) is no longer undertaken solely by pale critics or plodding lawyers speaking only to each other, but by a global hive, humming everywhere at once, and linked to the wiki. And if you are big enough to matter (as any writer would hope to be), one misstep, one mistake, can incite a horde of analysts, each with a global publishing medium in the living room and, it sometimes seems, limitless amounts of time. Frontier justice? Mob rule? Perhaps.


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Tony Snow's Washington Merry-Go-Round
The trek from politics to journalism and back again has become so commonplace that nobody bats an eyelash anymore, except for some media traditionalists who believe that their business should not become a refuge of former spokesmen, strategists and spinners. But when someone like Snow makes a second trip across the divide, the issues get more complicated. How, for instance, does he wave away his previous criticism of the president he now serves?


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Bhutan Gets First Privately Owned Newspaper
Bhutan has its first private newspaper as the Himalayan kingdom begins to move from a monarchy to a democracy. The first edition of the Bhutan Times, with 32 pages, appeared on newsstands Sunday and sold out within hours. Until now, the government-controlled Kuensel was the only newspaper in the Himalayan kingdom of about 635,000 people, India's Hindustan Times reported.