• Only if the app is better than the WSJ app. The News Corp. main man may not win any points for his paywall push or his insanely-slow Wall Street Journal app, but he’s going to make another run at the model, instead focusing on the general interest. “We’ll have young people reading newspapers,” Murdoch said during a recent earnings call. “It’s a real game changer in the presentation of news.” Just don’t make it take five minutes to download like the WSJ app. source

• $2 million bail, made possible by the Enron SCOTUS case source

• Hey, wait a second. That’s not Steve Jobs’ Twitter account! Tell that to our friends at The Daily Mail, who used it as a basis for a story about Apple possibly recalling millions of iPhone 4s over the infamous antenna issue. It’s a good thing The Next Web noticed it and encased it in amber, or we’d never know how little they actually read Twitter before realizing not everything on Twitter is true. A tough lesson to learn. We learned it when we read somewhere that Nick Nolte died. source

• 14.1% the amount of interest on Carlos Slim’s $250 million loan, at a time when there was no inflation whatsoever
• 15.9M number of warrants of stock the Times gave Slim; thanks to a rally, Slim has made $77 million on stock alone
• $112M amount Carlos Slim
  has already made back on his journalistic investment in just a year; holy crap source

• Facebook is a unique and wonderful artery to our friends’ lives and interests. But if we define our reading by our friends’ libraries, we will all find what we already expected rather than what we need to know.
• Atlantic writer Derek Thompson • Regarding recent reports that Facebook has become a primary source of finding news for many people. He brings up a good point, one that news like this only emphasizes: With the change in journalism to something suggested to us by friends, all cookies instead of a well-balanced meal, we end up limiting our information to what we want to know rather than what we need to know. And, considering how often it shows up in politics already, that’s pretty dangerous. source

• I think some of the reason ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it. I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.
• “Calvin and Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson • In his first interview since ending the strip 15 years ago. While he appreciates the success it gave him, he’s glad he stopped and has been able to recover some semblance of a normal life. “I wrote “Calvin and Hobbes” in my 30s,” he noted, “and I’m many miles from there.” Is it ironic that he came out of the woodwork the week J.D. Salinger died? Yes, yes it is. source

• When we read yesterday that Newsday had a total of 35 subscribers to its paywall-riddled Web site, we wondered how this could be. How could only 35 people who weren’t subscribed to Cablevision or the print product say, “I’m paying Newsday $5 a week for some of the best damn journalism to be found on Long Island!” So, we decided to find out why. ShortFormBlog is now Customer No. 36.

Subscription notes:

• one They don’t bill you right away or ask for your credit card. Instead, Newsday.com staff contacts you afterwards. This is stupid.
• two You have to give them your phone number. And the registration thing is written as if you live in New York state. We live in D.C., dudes.
• three Newsday gives you a huge list of ways you can receive news from them. This includes e-mail and SMS alerts. We signed up; hey, we paid for it!

Review of Newsday’s signup process:

• C- it clearly doesn’t understand how online commerce works source

• Is Skiff the future of the news? As with any of these e-Reader devices, it’s too early to call, but it’s closer than most. TechCrunch says it’s an attempt to put the genie in the bottle again. We like the fact that it does nice newspaper layout. source

• We don’t pretend to have the solutions. We’re just asking a few questions. We admit how little we know, but we’re trying to luxuriate in print and maybe remind people of everything it can do.
• Bestselling novelist and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers • On his latest gambit, the San Francisco Panorama, a 300-page newspaper he’s selling for $16. He had a little help from his friends – over 150 freelancers worked on the project, which is just as much a testament to the newspaper form as it is amazing art project which might get people excited about newspapers – and journalism in general – again. We know we are. Now where to we buy one of these? source

• Our circulation sucks. Let’s kill the paper! In a hack and slash maneuver with negative ramifications for tons of journalists, the Times has announced layoffs of 40% of their staff. They also plan to trim the paper back significantly and focus on the right-leaning chatter that has earned the paper a circulation that’s only a fraction of the size of The Washington Post. Is less sports and more crazy the answer? We’ll find out. source