• Not long for Laurent Gbagbo? Reports coming out of the Ivory Coast are somewhat convoluted at this moment — the machinations of these scenarios can involve a lot of back and forth between the sides involved, and as such it’s understandable that things can become murky. Reuters had reported that strongman Laurent Gbagbo signed a U.N. document ceding power and surrendering, but nearly an hour later posted a report from a U.N. official claiming his surrender is not official, and that he’s negotiating for protection. Perhaps the biggest takeaway, though, is what’s most important thing for the Ivory Coast; that there’s a visible endgame, and Laurent Gbagbo’s desperate grip on power could soon vanish. source

• 38+ people have died, according to Egypt’s state-run Nile TV
• 108+ al-Jazeera’s estimate, based on reporters going to area hospitals
• 74+ Reuters’ estimate of the death toll, according to medical sources source

• So, let’s say you’re Michelle Obama and you’re about to do something really nice for kids on Christmas Eve. How would you want that presented? Well, if you’re Reuters, you’re going to pick a file photo that makes her look like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Way to go, wire services, for negating the positive press! source

• After much criticism, the insurer will back off of canceling policies after on May 1. After a Reuters feature put pressure on the massive insurer by noting many patients were getting their policies canceled almost immediately after getting breast cancer, Democrats put lots of pressure on them to change the policy. They would have had to change it anyway due to the new health care law, but the Democrats got them to change it early. The company claims “there have been a lot of misrepresentations and inaccuracies in recent days,” but the decision would help bring clarity to the company’s stance. Good move. source

• In this interview with the founder of Wikileaks, Stephen Colbert rips into the guy pretty hard around the 3 minute mark. He notes that the clip was called “Collateral Murder,” which offers a political angle to something he’s trying to push objectively. Colbert quickly drops back into his persona, but the effect is pretty impressive.

• We take care of the source and act as a neutral intermediary and then we also take care of the publication of the material whilst the journalist that has been communicated with takes care of the verification.
• Wikileaks director Julian Assange • Explaining the site’s role in providing information to the world. Essentially, they’re not pretending to be journalists. But they also realize that sensitive information often can’t pass directly between a source’s hands and a journalist’s, due to its sensitive nature. So, they find it, host it anonymously, and break it to the world (and take the crap that comes along with it, including contacts from the U.S. government). It’s great for the free flow of information, as has been proven by the just-released video of two Reuters staffers getting killed. source

• Wikileaks went through a lot of hell to get this video up. The clip, which shows a Reuters photographer and another staffer (along with ten others) getting killed by the U.S. government during the Iraq war because they mistook his camera for a weapon. He was shot at from a distance, and he survived, only to be killed during a rescue attempt. The government has been covering up this clip for years, including from Reuters. Now, from this video, it’s clear what happened: An unprovoked attack. This video is a harrowing watch. source

• Our take? It depends on the app. Right now, the iPad does three things really well. It allows you to surf the Web at nearly the same clip as a laptop, it rules at non-Flash video playback, and it allows you to read the news better than either a newspaper or Web browser. For a 1.0 product, this is polished. But we’re journalism nerds that read a lot of links, so let’s focus our appeal. How is reading and curating news on this thing, anyway? (Hint: Pretty good.)

First: What a good news app needs

• one A simple format that makes it easier, not harder, to read the news. It’s not a newspaper or a Web site; it’s a little of both
• two An easy way to share content – you should be able to copy quotes, tweet links, and e-mail articles to a friend (or yourself)
• three A solid offline reading mode – these apps need to be able to work without a wi-fi connection nearby; all of the apps had this

Second: The best news apps

• best The Reuters app is
  super-readable,
  easy to scan, and
  best-formatted for
  the iPad. It’s also
  the one that tried to
  look least like a
  newspaper.
• great The USA Today
  app has a mix of
  strong readability,
  easy organization,
  and smart uses of
  swiping. It’s nearly
  as good as the
  Reuters app.
• eh The New York
  Times app isn’t
  bad, but its body
  type isn’t on the grid. The Wall Street Journal app tends to overreact
  to tiny movements.
• wtf The Associated
  Press app went all
  scrapbook with
  their format, which
  is OK – for a
  scrapbook. For
  reading hard news,
  it’s very annoying.

Third: Twitter on the iPad

• 
  Best balance Twitterrific was designed for the iPad the way that one would expect someone to use an iPad Twitter app. The use of Twitter lists, for example, makes for great news-reading. Less is more in this case.
• 
  Most complex TweetDeck could stand to be a little less complicated right now. It loads too many windows at once and comes across as a bit bloated and overwhelming. A bit more interface furniture to clean up the look would help this greatly.
• 
  Best mashup As many people know, the EchoFon/Firefox setup is hard to top for reading linked tweets, and TweetBrowser goes a long way to replicate that on the iPad. Only issue: We wish we could hide the feed in the horizontal format.

• » One side note: Webkit’s skills at rendering the Twitter web apps are mostly pretty good. The web version of Hootsuite is actually better than the iPad-native version of TweetDeck on the iPad. Threadsy also works great, as does the Web version of Seesmic. You’ll have to use a two-finger swipe to navigate, though, which can be cumbersome.

Overall: What did we think?

• » What we like: It’s a good reading format, and Safari could handle nearly everything we threw at it (except the TinyMCE rich-text editor, which means it sucks for blogging because WordPress uses that). The format is awesome for video and music. Once Hulu and Spotify get apps on here, it’s seriously a one-stop shop. Also, being able to load articles on the device and take it on the wi-fi-less D.C. Metro was downright perfect.
• » What we don’t like: It can be hard to hold the device upright, especially if you’re not sitting at a table. It’s strange that Apple didn’t consider putting a kickstand on the back. The keyboard is usable but not heavy-duty. Apple should consider putting in (or allowing) additional keyboard setups that make it more usable for typing in HTML. Right now, it’s a serious chore.
• » What we want to see: Surprisingly, we don’t miss multitasking on the iPad – it actually wasn’t noticeable for most apps. But we think someone needs to create a single app that mixes social media, web browsing and blogging/word processing. TweetBrowser gets the first two down, but WordPress‘ app isn’t designed for this at all. We smell opportunity (eh, Tumblr?).

• The fundamental problem with Kouwe was that when he saw good stories elsewhere, he felt the need to re-report them himself, rather than simply linking to what he had found, as any real blogger would do as a matter of course.
• Reuters blogger Felix Salmon (who knows how to rock a pair of glasses) • Nailing the real problem with a lot of mainstream media blogs (but specifically regarding the situation of New York Times plagiarist Zachary Kouwe), which is that they’re link-phobic. Instead of having the guts to link to a story (out of fear of looking like he was behind the story), what Kouwe and other mainstream journalists do is find a story that needs to get on the blog, rewrite it and make it their own. Unfortunately for Kouwe, he left pieces of language from the other stories in his posts. Salmon puts his criticism like so: “If there’s a minor news story on a trustworthy wire service, and you think you need it on the blog, then link to it.” source