Reuters - Literary heavyweights Andrea Levy and Hilary Mantel are up against seven first-time novelists in the longlist for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction honoring women writers in the English language.

A message from the private aviation sector to the President.

Reuters - Popular legal thriller author John Grisham has broken his holdout against selling his books in an electronic format and will sell all of his 23 titles as e-books, his publisher said on Tuesday.

“You sleep-tweet”…and Letterman’s nine other Signs You Spend Too Much Time On Twitter http://j.mp/9gLPOt »

Launched today: MyNews, @NewsTrust’s customizable social news aggregator http://j.mp/96xUZu »

NY Observer to relaunch its Media Mob blog…as a reporter-branded product (via @fishbowlny) http://j.mp/cLLAm2 »

We’re enjoying this conversation between @ryansholin and @10000Words: chock full of win http://j.mp/awInG1 »

Still images used to be the bedrock of visual storytelling. What will they become? Experts weigh in @NiemanStory http://j.mp/csgY0k »

Today marks the debut of A.V. Club Undercover, a cover-song-based web series sponsored by Starbucks http://j.mp/99hGSV »

Lots of useful info here: @JLab’s “Citizen Journalist’s Guide to Open Government” http://j.mp/16MSd »

Of news/media sites, HuffPo got the most Twitter traffic last week–followed by CNN, NYT, People mag, Google News http://j.mp/958A0h »

Audit Bureau of Circulations modifies its definition of “digital magazine” in preparation for the iPad http://j.mp/aYF4eq »

A new London-based start-up allows anyone to print their own 12-page newspaper (via @donohoe) http://j.mp/b9ylKe »

What would a midday TV news broadcast look like? ABC News considers the possibility http://j.mp/9Ae3zV »

Wonk paradise! C-Span uploads its video archives–160,000 hours of footage–to the Web (via @brianstelter) http://j.mp/9EracS »

Now streaming live: @FCC’s presentation of its National Broadband Plan http://j.mp/7Di3iT »

Facebook passed Google–just barely–as the most visited web site in the U.S. last week http://j.mp/cj7xJu »

Last year, the WaPo killed its business section. This year, it’ll launch a subscription-only biz weekly http://j.mp/9I0sFl »

Google exec predicts mobile ad prices could surpass what companies pay for desktop ads now http://j.mp/a04eSg »

Good morning! A Chinese registration page for Twitter is “just a matter of time” http://j.mp/9Vd7Kr »

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Tiger Woods is returning to golf, and many of his biggest backers are coming with him. Nike, Gillette and EA Sports all expressed support for Mr. Woods' now public plan to play in April's Masters, although none except EA Sports -- which has already gone ahead and launched a Woods-themed video game for the coming year -- has not indicated if or when Mr. Woods will return to a front-and-center role in their marketing messages.

AmLaw Daily
"We've got a doozy on our hands," writes Zach Lowe. The latest twist: Possible sanctions against a Tribune bondholder after its law firm mistakenly included confidential papers in a public filing.

Gannettoid | Gannett Blog
Gannettoid.com reports Gannett community papers division employees making more than $90,000 a year will be required to take at least one furlough week during the second quarter, but company spokeswoman Robin Pence says that's incorrect. There will be no furloughs, she tells Romenesko. || Here's the memo.

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- A year after the Sci-Fi Channel replaced its name with the more vague and therefore less limiting "Syfy," the network is also broadening its pitch to advertisers.

Amid the Twitter death watch, the blogged eulogies and the pundits' postmortems for Google's local Chinese search site, we are all beginning to ask what the Chinese internet industry -- and the digital advertising business -- will be like when Google.cn is no more. And at first glance, the closure of Google.cn looks to be a bad thing for everyone but Baidu shareholders.

Reuters - Wall Street's biggest banks could be broken up by the Congress in the coming year in an eventual reckoning over the financial meltdown of 2008, "Liar's Poker" author Michael Lewis said on Tuesday.

True/Slant | The Daily Beast
"There's a certain crassness to AOL's experiment," writes Leor Galil. "The very concept places more weight on quantity vs. quality ...Instead of rewarding writers for creating well-thought critiques and excavations of pop artists, AOL is shelling out cash and providing great space for potentially terrible content." || Gawker.com: Deadline panic at AOL.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) --The day when commercials are indistinguishable from the programs they support finally arrived -- just before 10 p.m. Eastern last Thursday night. That's when an ad for Dr Pepper ran after NBC's insider-y sitcom "30 Rock," making use of recurring character Dr. Spaceman, played by comic Chris Parnell. In the spot, which was paired with a more-traditional TV commercial for the soda, Mr. Parnell's fictional medical practitioner decried boredom and told viewers how drinking Dr Pepper could banish it. A few moments later, viewers saw the credits roll for "30 Rock."

Seattle Weekly
"It's a question no one -- not even a host of his former colleagues -- can seem to answer," writes Mike Seely. One compares Robert Jamieson to "the stray cat that never comes home."

> The problem with Smith's colonoscopy crusading
> Chan named publisher of Fort Myers News-Press
> Mutter: Are small papers safe? (Yes. No. Maybe.)
> Boyd preached diversity of thought, not just race
> Future-of-journalism discourse is urgent, intense
> Ted Rall's plan to save newspapers (a video in b/w)
> Weiss: BW's institutional memory is fading fast
> Former Strib, MPR staffers launch energy news site
> Ads begin running for sale of Honolulu Star-Bulletin

AP - The Julia Child renaissance continues.

AP - Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei (ehl-BEHR'-uh-day) is writing a memoir about his years as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, including the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As the Interactive portion of SXSW winds down and the music crowd takes over just as the rain appears, it’s time to consider what SXSW accomplished this year for publishing types—and whether it’s worth attending going forward.

As Richard Nash, a newbie this year, marveled, “If there’s a tech show that is friendly to culture, this is it.”  As a newbie last year, I couldn’t believe that “creative” and “geeky” coexisted so easily in so many speakers, panels, and attendees. Half a dozen sessions were mindblowing enough that I can recall specifics a year later.

This year, not so much.

True, there were some terrific panels—including, I’m relieved to say, two well-attended publishing-related ones: New Publishing and Web Content, moderated by Jeffrey Zeldman, with Lisa Holton, Erin Kissane, Mandy Brown and Paul Ford; and A Brave New Future for Book Publishing, with moderator Kevin Smokler and panelists Kassia Kroszer, Debbie Stier, Matthew Cavnar, and Pablo Defendini.  There was also a stunning brave new world panel called Imagineering the Fully Digitized and Connected Future that presented a day in the life, 2015-style.

But on balance—and this sentiment was shared by others—a certain pizazz was missing.  Was it that the crowds were bigger, so that some sessions got closed out early?  Was it that, as one person put it, the panels started resembling cliques, made up of like-minded friends who didn’t have a whole lot of creative tension to share? Or was it that, when the audience (this correspondent included) is so busy writing and monitoring tweets on the current panel, as well as those going on concurrently, it was hard to absorb the points being made—and even harder to not to feel that other, better sessions were being missed?  Is sxsw setting itself up to foster a sense of deprivation—why am I here listening to this, when I could have, should have, been there, listening to that?

Which is not to say that the sxsw spirit—and mission—isn’t heads and shoulders above that at most conferences. The attendees are interesting and varied: In no particular order, I met two Finns who developed crowdsourcing software for movie making; a correspondent for L.A. Weekly; a folklorist from Memphis; and an older woman who works in HR at a not-for-profit in New York and was attending the many sessions aimed at nonprofits (a surprisingly big component of the festival).

Should publishers make their way here in 2011?  Yes, because sxsw offers a chance to see options for the future—amazing gaming, interactive software, inventive marketing, creative content development and deployment.  But as Will Schwalbe, a veteran attendee (he’s been going for three years) said, “If publishers come to sxsw to create their own sessions track, they’ll learn nothing. If they come to attend panels on subjects about which they know nothing, they’ll learn an enormous amount.”

Darryl Hudson is the new publisher of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph and Princeton Times, both in West Virginia.

Comments in this weekend’s San Jose Mercury News by the head of Google’s book search program put an end to all the high falutin’ statements that the effort is about creating the next digital Library of Alexandria.

“Obviously, we think there is value in search,” Dan Clancy, the Google executive in charge of Book Search, said, “but I think to the extent that any (competitors) feel similarly, they can invest, similarly as we have, in digitalizing books.”

Nice idea Mr. Clancy, except of course, they can’t.  That is the exact issue raised by Google’s competitors.  Google chose to flout copyright law and illegally begin scanning the works of authors.  When caught, they used the legal system as a tool to bypass the legislative process and carve out an exclusive right for digitized books.  Hardly the type of “do no evil” activities we’d like to encourage from others.

In his February 18 testimony before Judge Chin, Andew DeVore an attorney representing folk singer Arlo Guthrie and “Pay it Forward” writer Catherine Ryan Hyde, explored the search issue:

Second, your Honor, this agreement unfairly strips authors of control over and compensation for nondisplay uses of their works.  This, I submit, your Honor, is the elephant in the living room with regard to this case and what the case is really about for Google.  Google admits that this vast database of books is of enormous value for search and its continued dominance in the search market.

Google engineer Dan Clancy has said, “Google’s core business is search and find, so obviously what helps improve Google’s search engine is good for Google.”  Yet this agreement would give Google unfettered, perpetual rights to exploit and profit from nondisplay uses of authors’ works.

Your Honor, we don’t even know what those uses are. They’re undisclosed, they’re unknown, they’re unexamined in discovery by any party, by the Court, or by any author that the settlement agreement would be imposed on around the world. … Yet this agreement would deprive authors of any meaningful right to control or receive any compensation for all such uses and force them to release any claim relating to those uses.

Not surprisingly, improving the bottom line was not a highlight of Sergey Brin’s NYT Op-Ed defending the settlement. And no one can really blame him for that.  Creating a library sounds a lot better than improving the delivery of targeted advertising.

The Department of Justice gets it though.  In their February 4 filing with Judge Chin, the government’s attorneys concluded that:

This outcome has not been achieved by a technological advance in search or by operation of normal market forces; rather, it is the direct product of scanning millions of books without the copyright holders’ consent.

We’re happy to see that the truth is catching on.

I have just returned from the Publishing Business Conference & Expo in New York ( full coverage begins on page 10 ) and couldn’t help but feel that this year, more than ever, there was a sense of camaraderie, a message of “We can...