UC Berkeley j-school can’t find a dean – Sounds like candidates and students are ready to move the school’s venerable j-program into the 21st century but old guard faculty aren’t 100 percent on board, leading to a longer decision-making and interview process than candidates were willing to put themselves through.

That’s no typo – John McIntyre, long-time copy desk chief at the Baltimore Sun and the red pencil behind the You Don’t Say grammar column is leaving. I picked Your Don’t Say as one of the best blogs for writers in 2008 so am especially said to see him go. (Stay tuned for the 2009 list of best blogs for writers coning soon.)

New media training wheels – Webbmedia Group’s new media Webinars have proven so popular with newly unemployed journos and other writers the company’s creating an online community to carry on its mission of educating the ink-stained class in the ways of Web 2.0. The new Knowledgewebb site has live chats and message boards as well as plenty of online training sessions. Annual subscription is $129, or $80 if you’ve ever attended a Webbmedia Webinar before. Look on the site for more details.

This week’s online news link love:

• So you’ve been scammed – Advice from Bizzia freelance writing biz blogger Allison Boyer on what to do if you’ve gotten stung in a freelance writing scam.
• Regret the error – Reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media. The blog’s the creation of Craig Silverman, a Montreal-based freelance journalist, CJR columnist and author of the book Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech .
• Happy birthday Freelance Writing Jobs – The reliable source of how-to articles and job listings turns four.

Twitter tools:

• Twitter homepage highlights search: The microblogging service tweaked its front page by positioning a new Search window high up in the right-hand column along with Following list. The tools column also has a collapsible Trending Topics list making it easier to see hot topics people are tweeting about.
• Twitter Guys make Time’s Most Influential People in 2009 list – Ashton Kutcher, who famously rode the Twitter craze to become the service’s first Millionaire – first member to hit  1,000,000 followers, that is – wrote the profile.

But there’s another reason too. As any reporter who’s worked on daily deadlines knows, the news business is all about getting the next story, and the next, and the next, in other words, “feeding the beast.”

The Daily Beast has been building buzz since early summer and is owned by Barry Diller’s Internet enterprise, InterActive Corp. The e-zine, which launched Oct. 6, blends the day’s best news on politics, Wall Street, Hollywood, international affairs and current events from top magazines, newspapers and blogs and packages them with kicky intros and a reader-friendly layout with lots of black, red and white space. DB doesn’t aggregate the news as much as “sifts, sorts and curates,” says Brown in this cheeky Q & A.

What’s the difference between DB and already established sites like the Huffington Post, Gawker and TMZ that play in that sandbox? “Sensibility,” Brown says in the Q & A. Whatever that means. Brown, a Brit who previously was editor in chief at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk, a short-lived tabloid style glossy, has assembled a gaggle of high-level bloggers as another way of going above and beyond. The group includes Kevin Sessums, whose current piece on Jennifer Lopez was apparently dropped from a big-name magazine when the star objected to seeing some of her own comments in print, and Project Runway star and mother of six Laura Bennett, an unapologetic “bad mommy” who blogs about her laissez-faire child-rearing techniques.

Does the world really need another place to read about celebrities and Wall Street? Only time will tell whether this Beast has teeth, or will slowly slink off into oblivion.