— Martin Langeveld makes his predictions for 2009 in the news biz. I’d agree with most, although (a) I think there will be at least one other newspaper company bankruptcy, (b) I think Q3/Q4 revenue numbers will be down from 2008, not flat, (c) circ will be down, not stable, (d) newspaper stocks won’t beat the market, (e) the Kindle boom won’t be as big as he thinks for newspapers, and (f) Twitter won’t be in major trouble in — Facebook is more likely to feel the pinch with its high server-farm costs.

— It’s a few days old, but I liked Mario Garcia’s recipe for the Miami Herald. Shrink the size from a broadsheet; more photos and more youth, especially among columnists; have the color and flash of the quality Latin American papers; reflect the culture of the place.

— A transcript from Australian TV of a discussion on the future of foreign correspondence. Richard Sambrook, director of the Global News Division at the BBC:

I mean 20 years ago, I guess the BBC, same as the ABC and limited American networks, really had — we had British nationals and you would have had Australians and NBC or ABC America would have had Americans reporting to an American audience. These days though I think there’s a greater tolerance to having local people reporting and a greater respect of the fact that they can perhaps offer a deeper perspective into events. So I think we can increasingly see more and more international reporting from people who live and breathe and are perhaps foreign nationals and stringers and so on.