A study by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found that the Internet is the most trusted media outlet in Australia.

The study found that 25% of the population list the Internet as their must trusted source of information, followed by newspapers at 20%, TV at approx 17%, and radio at approx 13%.

Among the small number of respondents who weren’t on the internet, radio came out as the most trusted outlet.

Mumbrella notes that the survey was small, and that ACMA notes that consumers may not be distinguishing between [different types] of information [online] and may be confusing ease of access with quality of information.”

Sounds like an old media cop-out to me. If they’re confused, it certainly is a good confused. The full study findings below:

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MSNBC “Oh God” Video

The hushed remark, followed by laughter in the background, aired immediately after MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann introduced the Republican governor. Internet speculation has placed the voice as being either Olbermann’s or fellow MSNBC host Chris Matthews’. MSNBC has yet to deliver any response of its own.

Here’s the MSNBC “oh God” video. Watch and make your own conclusions.

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According to Kanye the paparazzi are delivering him a world of darkness, apparently his photos are only worth $1,000 each.

REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH LIGHT I PUT OUT, THERE ARE PEOPLE WORKING JUST AS HARD TO ONLY DELIVER DARKNESS. IF YOU LISTEN TO MY MUSIC, HOW COULD I DELIVER SO MANY POSITIVE UPLIFTING MESSAGES AND BE THE MONSTER THAT THE MEDIA PAINTS. PAPARAZZI GIVE REAL PHOTOGRAPHERS A BAD NAME.  A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS, THEIRS ARE WORTH A THOUSAND DOLLARS…

According to Kanye the paps killed Kenny Princess Diana and his recent arrest was just a publicity stunt.

I AM PROTECTING MY PERSONAL SPACE SINCE THERE ARE NO LAWS TO PROTECT THAT FOR ME.

I PUT MY HAND UP TO THE CAMERA IN SELF DEFENSE!

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED…WHEN I LEFT THE CLUB, I WAS ENCOUNTERED BY A THIRSTY PAPARAZZI AS USUAL. HE FELT HE HAD MORE RIGHTS TO MY SPACE THAN ME, SO I PUT MY HAND UP TO PREVENT HIM FROM TAKING MY IMAGE. I DIDN’T ASSAULT HIM BUT MERELY PUTTING MY HAND UP TO COVER HIS LENS. MY SECURITY YELLED, “GET THE CAMERA OFF HIM.” I GUESS IN ALL THE COMMOTION THE CAMERA SCRAPED HIS NOSE.

THREE HOURS LATER I GET A KNOCK AT MY HOTEL DOOR. THERE WERE FIVE POLICE OFFICERS IN FRONT OF MY ROOM AND I HAD NO IDEA WHY. I HAD MY SECURITY GO SPEAK WITH THEM. THE COPS WERE VERY CORDIAL BUT TOLD ME THEY HAD TO ARREST ME BECAUSE A COMPLAINT WAS FILED. THAT WAS THE BOGUS PART. THEY PLACED ME IN HANDCUFFS AND DROVE ME TO THE STATION. THEY SPOKE ABOUT HOW THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY A PUBLICITY STUNT BY THE PHOTOGRAPHER BUT THEY STILL HAD TO GO THOUGH THE MOTIONS. WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE HOTEL THERE WERE PAPARAZZI HANGING OVER THE BRIDGE ABOVE THE HOTEL TRYING TO GET A SHOT OF ME GETTING OUT THE POLICE VAN. EVEN THOUGH I WASN’T CHARGED, THE DAMAGE WAS DONE. SURE ENOUGH THE NEXT MORNING, PLASTERED ACROSS EVERY MEDIA OUTLET… KANYE GETS ARRESTED. IT DIDN’T MATTER THAT I WASN’T CHARGED OR THE FACT THAT I HADN’T ASSAULTED ANYONE. ALL THAT MATTERED WAS THAT I WAS ARRESTED.

SIDEBAR, THEY QUOTED ME AS SAYING…”GET THE CAMERA OFF HIM!” LIKE I WAS TALKING IN THIRD PERSON. HE TRIED TO MAKE ME SOUND LIKE A CRAZY PERSON AND PEOPLE BELIEVED HIM. WHAT MERIT DOES THIS GUY HAVE THAT HE CAN SAY SOMETHING ABOUT ME AND PEOPLE TAKE IT AS LAW? THE FACT THAT HE COULD GET ME ARRESTED OFF A MERE COMPLAINT BUT I CAN’T ASK HIM TO STOP TAKING PICTURES OF ME IS VERY LOPSIDED.

WHO’S WINNING, ME OR THE MEDIA?

I’ll have a go at answering that Kanye. Its the media, you are famous, when you want to sell albums you suck up to the media in order to flog your wares.  You trade on your image and the publicity in order to make money.  We say suck it up.

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But what if there were an alternative path that might save even more newspapers? Not all newspapers, but some that would otherwise have died out.

We know that one of the main problems today with newspapers is the death spiral to the end. Classified advertising in newspapers is nearly dead, and general advertising continues to shrink. As newspapers lose money, they can only respond by cutting costs, and the leading cost at a newspaper is writing staff and support services (editors etc). The end result is cyclical: newspapers lose money, they cut staff, the quality and value of the paper declines, this results in less readers, which reduces advertising revenue, and around the cycle goes again.

We accept as a norm that newspapers cover a wide range of news. Everything from local, national and international news, sport, finance, celebrity news and gossip, and even offer comics and crosswords. The economies of scale created publications that had something for everyone, and it has worked well for a long time. But it doesn’t today. The internet has driven specialization, and advertising that efficiently targets customers. What if the answer to saving some newspapers was to use their diminishing resources to be the masters of specialized content, instead of going wide, and mastering nothing at all.

Former journalist Philip Meyer, currently the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina and author of the 2005 book “The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age” thinks that specialization may save some newspapers.

He quotes Robert Picard, a media economist from a June presentation:

Newspapers “keep offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of content, and keep diminishing the quality of that content because their budgets are continually thinner,” he said. “This is an absurd choice because the audience least interested in news has already abandoned the newspaper.”

Meyer’s case is one of narrowcasting: newspapers trim down to a specialized product and survive by serving a narrow market well. The key is to “narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution,” and Meyer believes that influence is the key:

the product least vulnerable to substitution is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

Meyer notes that by news, he does not mean the “stenographic coverage of public meetings, channeling press releases or listing unanalyzed collections of facts,” but “processed information” based around “evidence-based journalism, something that bloggers are not good at originating.”

Not all readers demand such quality, but the educated, opinion-leading, news-junkie core of the audience always will. They will insist on it as a defense against “persuasive communication,” the euphemism for advertising, public relations and spin that exploits the confusion of information overload. Readers need and want to be equipped with truth-based defenses.

Newspapers might have a chance if they can meet that need by holding on to the kind of content that gives them their natural community influence. To keep the resources for doing that, they will have to jettison the frivolous items in the content buffet.

Meyer also argues that a shift to quality may also suit a shift in frequency, a less is more approach where newspapers shift away from daily publication, but deliver strong content when they do publish.

It’s an interesting take, and the argument of specialization has a strong economic case at a time of disappearing revenue in the industry. It won’t save thousands of newspapers, and many simply will refuse to go down this path, but if some existing players do shift focus, the chances of more surviving may increase. Where I disagree with Meyer is on the end result: he still talks of physical newspapers, where any natural end point must end up online, because the notion of news on paper is going to die no matter what anyone does to save it. But that doesn’t take away from the specialization point: newspapers narrowcasting, with a focus on being the best at what they do, become a more appealing product to a core of readers, and perhaps enough readers that they have a sustainable business well into the future.

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The whole thing started when Jody Rosen over at Slate discovered an article of his reproduced nearly verbatim in a weekly newspaper from Montgomery County, Texas. The Bulletin, he explains, made some minor modifications — but largely just lifted his copy and put it under its own staff member’s byline.

Rosen investigated further and found chunks of content from two other publications within the same story — and it didn’t stop there. Some creative Googling uncovered article after article in the Bulletin matching previously published stories, almost word-for-word.

The ordeal gets more interesting as it goes on. Rosen ended up having a couple of conversations with the publisher, but never got a real answer. The publisher, he says, stopped returning his calls — and now, the Bulletin’s web site has mysteriously disappeared.

In his engaging, funny, and well-written account, Rosen takes us through his mixed emotions: Could this have been a big joke? Could such a paper — one purporting to have been around since 1969 — actually have built itself on such journalism practices? Or are those practices, Rosen suggests, perhaps not as evil as they seem? Maybe, he suggests, the Bulletin is “bringing guerilla-style 21st-century content aggregation to 20th-century print media.”

The Inquisitr has certainly seen its share of discussions about the line between 2.0-style blogging and good old-fashioned splogging. This is the first time, though, I’ve seen the same kind of argument come up in the world of print. Sure, at a glance, any journalist would label the Bulletin as a plagiarist based on Rosen’s discoveries — but could it, in fact, be doing the same thing sometimes argued as acceptable within web publishing? Maybe it’s just a step ahead of the rest of the newspaper publishing industry. Where does one draw the line?

The case does raise some interesting questions. In the end, though, I think most would agree to call it content theft. The Web may have loosened some rules and opened some opportunities for sharing, but there’s a difference between excerpting with due credit and downright ripping off. Lifting someone else’s words and passing them off as your own is plain ol’ plagiarism, no matter how you spin it — or how many different sources you combine.

That’s my take, and you can quote me on it…though you’d better properly attribute the words.

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The service — which offers customizable views of both mainstream and alternative media stories, filtered by reputation and relevance — received the Series B cash from RRE Ventures Wednesday. The site was altogether down as of 10:00 a.m. ET.

SkyGrid’s been around only since February of this year. It seems to be targeted toward financial professionals, offering news organizational tools based on ticker symbols, industry sectors, and personalized portfolios.

Let’s hope the company can take a piece of that $11 million and get back online soon.

Update: As of 10:45 a.m. ET, it’s back! Whew.

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