It's all obviously a charade in which everyone pretends that expectations for this woman were so low that her ability to read lies written by some anonymous party functionary was somehow surprising. But these very different reports on how her little talk was received are fun.

The New York Times on reactions to Sarah Palin's speech to Hong Kong investors:

A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was closed to the media, said Mrs. Palin spoke from notes for 90 minutes and that she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling.

"The speech was wide-ranging, very balanced, and she beat all expectations," said Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners.

"She didn't sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative," he said, adding that she mentioned both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "She brought up both those names."

The Times of London on reactions to same:

Several audience members reportedly walked out of Ms Palin's speech 30 minutes before the end, citing "more important things to do" or describing the talk as "too partisan and too much like a speech at the Republican convention".

One senior fund manager told The Times that the 80-minute lecture, and the lack of an opportunity to fire any questions at Ms Palin, was a disappointment. "You would think that with her team of speechwriters and a supposedly media-free environment Palin could have afforded to be either funny or thought-provoking, but she was neither," she said.

Curious!

[Photo: AP]

When the National Review's Ed Whelan revealed Publius, who writes for Obsidian Wings, to be a professor of law at the South Texas College of Law named John F. Blevins earlier this month, the palpable online outrage forced Whelan to apologize. Now the case of "The Author of a Blog v. Times Newspapers Limited," which was decided this morning by a British judge in favor of a newspaper seeking to publish the identity of a crimeblogger in the UK, has bloggers worried about the future of anonymity online. But nobody ought to have a right or privilege to publish whatever they please without the consequences of their ideas redounding to them.

The British case—which, given the vagaries of British law surrounding the press, could never happen here—centers around Richard Horton, a detective in Lancashire whose blog Night Jack was, as his attorney Dan Tench describes it to Gawker, "an on-the-ground, thoughtful reflection about criminal justice policy." Night Jack received about 3,000 visitors per day, and won the prestigious Orwell Prize last year, the first in which blogs were eligible. As Night Jack's readership and prominence grew, the Times of London decided to find out who was behind it. By tracing out Night Jack's online tendrils, through relatives' Facebook pages and other publicly available means, they determined that Horton was the author. When Horton learned that the Times was on to him, he pulled the plug on Night Jack and sought an injunction to keep the paper from publishing his identity, which a judge granted temporarily. The ruling this morning lifted it, and the Times published Horton's name and photo. Horton has been reprimanded by his police department for discussing cases publicly, but is keeping his job and working on a novel.

"There is clearly a moral case that some people should be able to join the public debate and retain their anonymity," Tench told Gawker. "And I think this will have a chilling effect. Blogs like this can only exist anonymously, and I imagine that anyone who wanted to set one up is thinking about this case."

As well they should. But the notion that anonymous publishers have a right, in perpetuity, to keep their identities a secret—or that people who learn their identities are honor-bound not to reveal them—is nonsense. In both Blevins' case and Horton's, the motive behind their anonymity involved the inconvenience to their personal lives that would be entailed if they were revealed as the authors of their own ideas. Horton risked the ire of his employers, not to mention the victims and their relatives involved in the cases he discussed. And Blevins wrote that he didn't want his left-wing advocacy to interfere with his private law practice, his law-school classroom, or his relationships with conservative family members. There's nothing noble in proclaiming the value of ideas that you don't have the courage to advocate to your own family. More power to Horton and Blevins for finding a way to write what they wanted to write without suffering the inconvenient consequences. But the cushiness of the arrangements they've made in no way obligate the rest of us not to topple them if we think there's a good reason. Whelan believed that Blevins was an ideological "hitman" for the left. The Times clearly thought there was public interest in who was behind Night Jack. Maybe their reasons weren't pure—Whelan's certainly wasn't—but Horton and Blevins should have thought about, and come to terms with, the likelihood that their online adventures would end in the revelation of their identities before they began.

"One of the odd things about this case," Tench told us, "is that a newspaper that commonly relies on anonymous sources was deprecating the use of anonymous material." Indeed, anonymity is a crucial component of good reporting and a pillar of online culture. And that's great! When we promise to protect a source's identity, we keep that promise. But the Times made no promises to Horton, nor Whelan to Blevins. And the outing of anonymous sources is not in and of itself an objectionable act. It was a good thing when Scooter Libby and Karl Rove were outed as a sources about Valerie Plame, and when the CIA operatives were revealed to be editing the agency's Wikipedia page. People ought to be held accountable for the things they do and say, for good or for ill.

There's nothing inherently wrong with blogging anonymously (as say, The Cajun Boy), though some motivations are more cowardly than others. And much good can and has come from people who are free to write the truth without bearing the consequences. But the decision to do so carries with it certain exceedingly obvious risks, and when the jig is up, it's best for anonybloggers to endure the scrutiny with dignity rather than complain that people who had no obligation or interest in preserving their anonymity have behaved as such.

[Photo via Flickr by Summer Luu.]

Newspapers are still among the best media businesses... no competitor in local markets has held onto audience as well as newspapers have...

We certainly have competition from Google and others. But in each of the communities where we compete, almost every newspaper has the largest news staff, largest sales force, biggest audience and greatest share of advertising in its market. Whether it's on the Internet or off the presses, we are capturing that business.

...Simply put, more people want our products today than wanted them yesterday; this is hardly the profile of a dying industry.

After Pruitt published that op-ed and completed his company's acquisition of Knight-Ridder newspaper group, his company's shares fell to less than $2 from $48.

Of course Murdoch has faith in newspapers. That's self-evident. Like Pruitt when he published his op-ed, Murdoch's just made a huge investment in the future of newspapers. Hopefully he's right! And hopefully he can really cement the public perception of newspapers as "news [readers] can trust" by not sweeping his company's stock-moving errors under the rug so often, and getting the name Canada straight. They're little things, and to a certain extent unavoidable, but they add up.

(via)

Harding to take Times top job [Guardian]

The New York Times reports that "a group of Journal reporters based in China urged the Bancroft family in a letter to reject Mr. Murdoch's bid." The letter can be found here. It echoes concerns voiced by James H. Ottaway, Jr., whose family owns about six per cent of Dow Jones. Times of London editor Robert Thomson—expected to have an advisory position on the Journal should Murdoch's bid succeed—responded with a letter of his own which called the claim "a challenge to the integrity of the journalists at The Times and to me personally."

Former Times Hong Kong correspondent Jonathan Mirsky claims that "When Murdoch wants to interfere, he will. If there's supposed to be a China wall [separating corporate executives from editorial decisions], he'll ignore it." There's precedent: Flashback to this 2006 interview with former Page Sixer and champion liver-damager Ian Spiegelman. In response to a question about which Murdoch friends the gossip gang was ordered to "dance around or flatter," Spiegelman said, "The People's Republic of China. One time I was looking into an item about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club when word came from somewhere up above that China had carte blanche. The message I got was more or less, "If you mention Chinese, you'd better be ordering lunch." (Also Nicole Kidman, but we imagine that will be less of an issue for the Journal.)

Previously: Rupert Murdoch Loves Dow Jones, Whitefish

Anyhow, maybe this dark and foreign visitor will generate at least a day's worth of pseudo-excitement. What's it like out there? Sheer madness? Are mild-mannered men turning rabid for the last remaining copy? Have newsstands burst into flames from this half-assed hotness?

Brits Offering Another Source of News [BaltSun]