2 States Opt out of Real Id; Where’s Wisconsin?

Jay Stanley:

Idaho opted out of Real ID today, becoming the second state to say
“no thanks,” along with Maine. And there are a lot of other states
moving in the same direction (we have a map that tracks them online
at http://www.realnightmare.org/news/105/).

Senator’s Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl supported the National ID (Real ID) legislation. Related: Nathan Cochrane on becoming an unperson. Bruce Schneier has more.

Big Profits in Small Newspapers

Frank Ahrens:

If there’s any good news about the businesses of newspapering these days, it can be found at the industry’s littlest papers, which are doing well even as their bigger brothers founder.

Lee Enterprises, based in Davenport, Iowa, for example, owns 56 daily papers and more than 300 small weeklies and other publications. Three of its papers have a circulation of more than 100,000 — including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — but the rest of its dailies are much smaller, averaging about 26,000 each.

Over the past five years, the circulation gains at Lee papers have outpaced the industry average; some of the gains came from acquisitions, but much came from the growth of the group’s existing papers. Over the past two decades, the company’s stock price has likewise gone in the opposite direction of large-newspaper stock, climbing steadily from less than $10 a share in 1988 to more than $30 a share today.

“We’re largely in markets . . . that have pretty good local economies, a strong sense of place and strong newspaper readership,” said Mary E. Junck, Lee’s chairman and chief executive. Another advantage: “Many of our markets are pretty homogenous and tightknit,” she said, making it easier to pin down and target readership.

Chinese Dissident’s Wife to Sue Yahoo

Richard Komen:

Speaking with VOA’s Mandarin Service Wednesday after arriving in Washington, Yu Ling said Chinese police arrested her husband, Wang Xiaoning, partly because Yahoo’s Hong Kong office gave Chinese authorities information about his e-mail accounts.

Yu Ling said she has come to the United States to sue the company for damages and to demand an apology.

Last year, Yahoo provided the Chinese with information about Shi Tao, a journalist who emailed to Western news outlets details of China’s plans to handle the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.

Publicly owned networks are the key to universal access and healthy competition

Becca Vargo Daggett:

Local governments have taken the lead in U.S. broadband policy. Hundreds of communities of all sizes are making decisions about how to best deliver universal, affordable access to high-speed information networks. Many are offered seemingly attractive arrangements with no upfront cost to the city. They do themselves and their households and businesses a disservice if they do not seriously explore the costs and benefits of a publicly owned network.

In this report, we highlight five arguments for public ownership.

1. High-speed information networks are essential public infrastructure.

Just as high quality road systems are needed to transport people and goods, high quality wired and wireless networks are needed to transport information. Public ownership of the physical network does not necessarily mean the city either manages the network or provides services. Cities own roads, but they do not operate freight companies or deliver pizzas.

We Can’t Tell You, It’s a Secret”

Joe Francica:

At GITA, Dr. Bill Gail of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team addressed a question as to working with highly sensititve imagery of perhaps a national security concern and whether they might be asked to black out areas on Virtual Earth. Google had been asked to do this previously for certain areas and Microsoft wanted to preempt such situations. Gail said that Microsoft has sat down with various government agencies to ask them about these potential conflict areas that they thought might be blacked out if asked to do so. Their answer was, “it’s a secret, we can’t tell you.”