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March 13, 2009, 12:47 p.m.

Links of the Week on Twitter

Nothing spreads faster than a good link. We’ve posted more than 80 links related to new media on our Twitter feed this week, and here’s a roundup of the most popular, interesting, and/or important ones:

Technorati released a list of websites to which blogs most frequently link, and it’s dominated by traditional news media. The top 10 are YouTube, The New York Times, BBC, CNN, MSN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, Reuters, and The Los Angeles Times.

Talking Points Memo hired Diane Rinaldo as its first vice president of sales. She was previously director of Yahoo’s political advertising unit, which makes sense because TPM is planning to sell targeted ads for its DC readership. Meanwhile, The Chicago Tribune made a very creative ad sale for its 404 (“Not Found”) page.

— A Pew study found that only one third of Americans would miss their local newspaper if it closed, but not all their findings are as depressing.

— With The Seattle Post-Intelligencer‘s fate still unknown, the newspaper’s iconic “It’s in the P-I” globe was jokingly posted to Craigslist and pictured against a beautiful moonscape by staff photographer Joshua Trujillo in a kayak.

The New York Times Co., which raised money this week from a sale-leaseback deal on its headquarters, is also selling the corporate jet. On Twitter, Jacob Harris, a senior software architect at the Times, pointed to a July 10, 1919, article (at right) about the newspaper’s aircraft.

New York magazine examined the “existential crisis” at Columbia Journalism School and quoted a senior professor there with salty words for new media.

— And in the category of Things That Are Awesome, Pepsi unveiled a site to track the goings-on at South by Southwest using Twitter. (News organizations could replicate — and, I’m sure, improve — Pepsi’s model for coverage of large, lengthy events where people are tweeting.) A new plugin for WordPress lets readers easily submit corrections. The design studio Rayogram put together a neat way of viewing the front pages of major newspapers, though I wish you could click through to the individual stories. And there were at least three pieces on the R&D lab at The New York Times.

— The must-watch video of the week was Pattie Maes of the MIT Media Lab demonstrating a “wearable gestural interface” that’s cooler than anything Steven Spielberg dreamed of in Minority Report. The implications for news organizations, including video projected on a newspaper, begin about five minutes into the video:

POSTED     March 13, 2009, 12:47 p.m.
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The media becomes an activist for democracy
“We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”
Embracing influencers as allies
“News organizations will increasingly rely on digital creators not just as amplifiers but as integral partners in storytelling.”
Action over analysis
“We’ve overindexed on problem articulation, to the point of problem admiring. The risk is that we are analyzing ourselves into inaction and irrelevance.”