Imprisioned U.S. freelancer ends hunger strike – Roxana Saberi, the freelance broadcast convicted of spying in Iran ended a two-week hunger strike after Iranian authorities agreed to hold an appeal hearing for her next week. The Iranian-American freelance broadcast reporter was arrested in January and convicted of spying in a closed-door trial in April. Saberi’s supporters have created a website, Free Roxana Saberi.

Congress holds U.S. newspaper industry hearings – Plenty of big names held forth on the future of the news business at a May 6 Congresssional hearing. As could be expected, presenters’ POVs varied. HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington was the optimist, declaring, “Despite all the current hand wringing about the dire state of the newspaper industry – well-warranted hand wringing, I might add – we are actually in the midst of a Golden Age for news consumers.” Ex-newspaperman turned Hollywood writer (“The Wire”) David Simon was much more downbeat, saying “High-end journalism is dying in America and unless a new economic model is achieved it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else.” Replay the entire Webcast here.

Is this what they had in mind? – The Chicago Tribune is working on a new Website called Chicago Now that could be a blueprint for the 21st century news ventures discussed at this week’s Congressional hearings. According to news reports, Chicago Now will combine elements of traditional news coverage with e-commerce, blogs, advertorials and social media. The new site is distinct from RedEye, the Tribune’s free daily paper for “young, urban professionals.” The Tribune and other Tribune publishing holdings filed for federal bankruptcy protection last December.

Other stories, items and websites of interest -

• 2009 Online News Association Awards categories – 14 categories, including four paying a total of $28,000 in cash prizes. Deadline for entries is June 30, 2009.
• The Center for Investigative Journalism is hiring reporters to staff a California investigative reporting initiative funded by $2.4 million in grants.
• The Boston Globe, Las Vegas Sun, ESPN.com and CNN.com each won two 2009 Editor & Publisher EPpy awards for outstanding news industry websites and blogs. See the full list here.
• Neighborlogs – a free service/website template for creating hyperlocal community news sites.
• 17 statistics for monitoring your blog – From ProBlogger.

Twitter tools -

• Tweetmeme – Like a Digg for Twitter, this service finds the hottest stories on the service based on the number of retweets.
• How to integrate Twitter into WordPress – A Web Designer Magazine tutorial that explains in 16 very code-y steps how to weave Twitter into a WordPress.com blog.
• Twitter Secrets – An entire blog dedicated to Twitter apps and tools.

Got Websites, news or tips about the digital media business to share? Send them to me: michellerafter (at) comcast (dot) net.

The worst of times: layoffs, more every day including downsizing at some of the country’s biggest papers. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times said it was cutting 250 jobs, including 150 in the newsroom, bringing its total editorial staff to 700, down from 1,200 in 2001. In recent days, job cuts have also been announced by the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and many others.

But the best of times? Some actually think so. Newspapers are cutting jobs to save money as they grapple with lower advertising revenue. But at the same time, the more innovative papers are reorganizing newsroom operations to create the news organizations of the future, organizations with an integrated newsroom that will produce information to appear in a variety of forms: print, online, on air and on mobile devices.

So is the glass half empty and getting emptier each day, as some news industry prognosticators believe? Or is it half full, and poised to eventually fill up again, some optimists believe?

My take: newspapers of the future will have to act like the Internet start ups I’ve written about for so long. They’ll be a lot leaner so they’ll have to do more with less. And because they don’t have as many layers of bureaucracy, they’ll innovate much faster than they could as larger, more established organizations.

Here are a few recent articles about what’s happening in the newspaper industry to read and decide for yourself:

THE PESSIMISTS
Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News examining combining some jobs – The rival dailies are considering merging photo departments and other jobs as a way to cut costs.

What newspapers still don’t understand about the Web – In this post, Publishing 2.0 – a Website that covers the evolution of media – gives newspapers, and the Washington Post in particular, an A for effort but a lower grade for execution in moving material online and making it relevant to local readers.

‘There will be no newspapers delivered in paper form.’ – Ballmer – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s big dis of the present newspaper and magazine industries in a wide-ranging Q&A with the Washington Post published in June.

THE OPTIMISTS
Times to cut newsroom staff and pages published – LA Times Editor Russ Stanton’s memo to staff about job cuts and reducing the number of pages printed by 15 percent a week.

The future of journalism, part I – Social media and online news expert Paul Gillin’s take on what newspapers need to do to transform themselves for 21st century.

Editor & Publisher’s Best of the Web – Thanks to Paul Gillin for bringing my attention to this regular E&P column on innovative things newspapers are doing on their Websites.

Save the Press – Long-time reporter and writer Timothy Egan’s New York Times op-ed piece on the present state and possible future of U.S. newspapers. Don’t miss the comments section.

Where do you think newspapers are headed?