The New York Times has a new, full-screen photo blog called "Lens"--and it might not exist without Boston.com's "The Big Picture." From a write-up in Photo District News:

Lens draws some inspiration from The Big Picture a photo blog published by Boston.com, which is also owned by The New York Times Company. The Big Picture pioneered a wide-screen layout that took advantage of improving resolutions of computer screens.

As Nick Kristof notes in today's New York Times, Web-based news consumption makes it easier than ever to avoid data and ideas we don't agree with, for better or (more likely) worse:

When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.

Nicholas Negroponte of M.

The main point of Michael Kinsley's anti-micropayments Times op-ed--"Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers"--is well taken, and worth considering if, like me, you've previously been intrigued by the pro-micropayments argument. (Ditto for the anti-micropayments case made by Gabriel Sherman today on Slate.

Earlier today I sat down with Ken Auletta, author of the New Yorker's "Annals of Communications" column, before his appearance at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. We covered a fair amount of ground: topics discussed include his upcoming book on the future of media; whether newspaper traditionalists should be excited about Amazon's Kindle 2.

If Steve Brill has his way, the New York Times will aggressively push back against the free-content model that's come to predominate on the internet--and the Boston Globe just might follow suit. As Brill puts it in a memo obtained and posted by Jim Romenesko:

The same model might be initiated for Boston Globe and other Times Company newspapers; indeed, there is a possibility that the more local papers, with less content competition, will be able to make the transition just as effectively.

If you're marvelling at the measured tone of Muammar Qaddafi's op-ed in today's Times, make sure you read Kevin Cullen's column in today's Globe as well.

Citing Chelmsford resident Mohammed Eljahmi, whose brother Fathi was imprisoned by Qaddafi's regime, Cullen argues that Qaddafi's current media offensive--which also featured an op-ed on Russia that ran in the Globe and the Washington Times--amounts to a transparent push for undeserved image rehabilitation.

Last week, I argued that our Deval Patrick's post-election courtship of the media contrasted unfavorably with Barack Obama's. In retrospect, I may have exaggerate Obama's willingness to cultivate the press as a whole; among other things, he's been surprisingly cool to the New York Times.

Still, Obama seems to know that it's better to build relationships with the media rather than needlessly antagonizing them--and, when he feels like it, can do so pretty smoothly.

When the Times announced Bono's hiring as an op-ed columnist, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal had this to say: “Bono is a great addition to our Op-Ed line-up. He is an extraordinary man who thinks deeply about his art and the major issues confronting the world. His writing will reflect that.”

In its sharp deconstruction of today's Maureen Dowd column--which attempts to make the case for Caroline Kennedy as U.S. senator--Gawker rightly notes that Dowd seems to have a double standard regarding the thin resumes of Kennedy and one Sarah Palin.

Undiscussed, though, is the bogus argument Dowd uses to close out her piece.

My buddy Dan Kennedy dimisses this NY Times Q-and-A with "Caroline Kennedy and her staff" (the paper's phrase) as "crapola," and argues that the Times shouldn't have run it.

His "crapola" assessment is dead on. But to my mind, that's exactly why the Times did the right thing in printing the interview.

In an op-ed in today's Times, Mitt Romney makes a pretty good case against bailing out the domestic auto industry. But he seems to lay an inordinate amount of blame for Detroit's woes on the extra costs that current labor agreements impose on American manufacturers in comparison with foreign competitors.

Slate's generally excellent Jack Shafer today offers an impassioned defense of Matt Drudge's continued importance. Among his claims:

If you could access only one home page for breaking news and chose Washingtonpost.com or CNN.com over the Drudge Report, you'd be a blockhead. His newswire-meets-tabloid sense of story—hysterical and playful at the same time—links to both what you need to know and what you want to know, and he updates more frequently than conventional media sites do.

Got an e-mail this morning from none other than Newt Gingrich, who urged me to stick it to the media by going to the polls. Because, he explained, the media don't want conservatives to vote:

The latest tactic in this elite media campaign has been to declare the presidential race over in an effort to discourage some voters from going to the polls.

Given the McCain campaign's ongoing battle with the New York Times, someone at McCain HQ must have gotten intense enjoyment out of correcting today's NYT Magazine cover story:

The cover article on Page 52 this weekend about Senator John McCain’s campaign misspells the given name of Mr. McCain’s fellow senator from Arizona and the surname of the governor of Florida, both McCain supporters.

In today's New York Times, NBC News president Steve Capus says, basically, that Columbia Journalism Review's Megan Garber got it wrong on perils of having Andrea Mitchell--wife of former Fed chair Alan Greenspan--cover the financial crisis:

Steve Capus...called [CJR's] article “overly simplistic.” The news division has allowed Ms.