There's a perennial danger, at any non-daily print publication, of publishing material that's dated the moment it comes out--or even before. But Rhode Island Monthly went to the opposite extreme with their March issue, which features a cover story titled, "I WON'T RUN AGAIN: Patrick Kennedy talks about his father, his future, and why he's leaving Congress after 16 years."

If you're looking for an overview of the troubled roll-out of Google's Buzz--the new social-networking site that could, potentially, be an alternative to Facebook and Twitter--this piece, from the NY Times's Miguel Helft, is a worthwhile read. Here's the bottom line: Google screwed up, big time, by automatically pushing people into networks rather than letting users take the first step.

Today in the Herald, Laurel Sweet takes the still-unfolding story of Amy Bishop in a new direction: Bishop, she reports, loved to play Dungeons & Dragons back in the day...just like Wakefield workplace killer Michael McDermott!

Bishop, now a University of Alabama professor, and her husband James Anderson met and fell in love in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s, and were heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game, a source told the Herald.

During a speech to the Mass. High Tech Council yesterday, Boston mayor Tom Menino mocked local weathermen's performance in last week's Storm that Wasn't--and took a broader jab at weather guys/gals as a profession. “Just imagine if you have a job like a meteorologist,” said, according to State House News Service (via the Herald).

Writing at Gawker, John Cook argues that the decision to give a George Polk award to the unidentified (wo)man who caught Neda Agha-Soltan's death on video raises some big questions about what it means to practice "journalism":

[W]hen you start handing out awards that were created to "honor special achievement in journalism" with an emphasis on "investigative and enterprise work that is original, requires digging and resourcefulness and brings results" to works that consist of finding yourself next to a horrible thing and pulling your camera phone out of your pocket—well, what's the point of calling anything journalism anymore?

Radio Boston, WBUR's weekly local-news show, is about to become a five-day-a-week affair. As Universal Hub's Adam Gaffin notes, a posting for an executive producer job at Radio Boston describes:

a new, local daily program (five days a week) which will cover a full range of topics, from public affairs and politics, to the arts and economy, from cutting edge culture to the highs and lows of daily life that matter to the WBUR audience.

Over at Universal Hub, Ron Newman argues that the Globe's latest Amy Bishop scoop--which details the accused murderer's familial relationship to whimsical novelist John Irving--is proof that the paper's coverage of the Bishop affair has jumped the shark, as they say.

That strikes me as overly harsh. After all, in today's Globe, we learned (among other things) that Bishop apparently threatened a police officer with a gun after shooting her brother years ago, which is a pretty remarkable and relevant detail.

In this week's Phoenix, I noted that Red Mass Group's recent hot streak had RMG publisher Rob Eno planning a regional conservative site--possibly titled "Red Nor'easter."

Now it's official. Eno writes that Red Noreaster (note: no apostrophe!) will launch March 1, with the tagline "A conservative storm is coming." The icon's pretty cool, too.

Yesterday, Globe editor Marty Baron sent out a congratulatory note describing a couple gratifying award wins for the paper--including an ASNE prize for the Globe's big multimedia series on Ted Kennedy and a Schaap sportswriting award for Bob Hohler's coverage of the the dysfunctional sports system in Boston's public schools.

Former Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson is a tough act to follow. But I'm pleased to report that the paper has tapped political reporter Lisa Wangsness to replace Paulson, who's now the paper's city editor.

I've covered some of the same stories as Wangsness (e.g. the '06 governor's race) and have read her stuff closely for years: she's an excellent writer with a keen eye for telling detail, and should do a very good job in her new post.

I don't know much about Rebecca Ostriker, who's been tapped to replace Scott Heller as the Globe's arts editor. (Heller recently decided to decamp* for the New York Times.) But the memo announcing Ostriker's appointment offers reason for optimism--starting with the fact that Ostriker, who'd been Heller's second in command, helped edit the coverage that won critic Mark Feeney a 2008 Pulitzer.

A little more than a week ago, I told the Phoenix that I was leaving to take an associate producer job at WGBH’s Greater Boston, where I’ve been a frequent guest panelist. The news has now been announced at the paper, so I wanted to mention it here as well, even though I’ll be writing through March 10.

While I’m excited about heading to WGBH and taking part in the big changes unfolding over there, leaving the Phoenix is bittersweet.

Whether you're a journalist or a consumer of journalism, you already know that people get their news differently today than they did a decade ago. But a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism documents--to sometimes breathtaking effect--just how much the internet has transformed the media landscape.

When I heard a few minutes ago that NECN executive editor Iris Adler was leaving for an unidentified job at WBUR-FM, I assumed she'd be part of the remaking of WBUR's "Radio Boston," which is about to become a daily rather than a weekly program--and I began whipping up a blog post.

It turns out, though, that my friend and former colleague Dan Kennedy was several steps ahead of me.