Below The Beltway

The WaPo’s Howard Kurtz has sour grapes over the fact that the newspaper industry is being forced to change:
Let’s not bury the lead: This is a rough time for the newspaper business, a rough time for The Washington Post and a rough time for me.
No one need shed any tears for the people leaving this [...]

It’s happening slowly, but the landline phone looks to be on the way to becoming an anachronism:
WASHINGTON - For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.
The federal figures, released [...]

An interesting article in The New York Times today talks about the changes being forced on television networks by the growing popularity of time-shifting technologies such as Digital Video Recorders:
This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million [...]

The Vatican Website, now in Latin:
[S]tarting today, in addition to its Italian and English and German and Spanish and Portuguese and French versions, the Vatican web site — and quite a sophisticated and attractive site it is — has just added a Latin version as well.
Hey, if this catches on, I may have to work [...]

At the end of a blog post about the Presidential race, Chris Core shares this tidbit:
Starting on April 17th, I will be a host on XM’s POTUS ‘08 (Channel 130).  POTUS ‘08 is politically neutral, unbiased, commercial-free presidential campaign news 24/7. On the 17th, and through the 28th I will be on from 11 am-1 [...]

A Saudi Arabian woman was the victim of another insane honor killing recently for the “crime” of having a Facebook profile:
A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged.
The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the [...]

The Department of Justice has given the okay to the long-pending planned merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The U.S. Justice Department approved the merger between satellite radio companies Sirius and XM Monday, more than a year after the two companies first announced their deal.
In its decision, the Department [...]

Two stories in two different newspapers today highlight the extent to which our technological age has created a new kind of generation gap.
First, today’s New York Times reports on the ways that teenagers have turned to text-messaging to create a new zone of privacy from their parents:
AS president of the Walt Disney Company’s children’s book [...]

It would seem that the next-generation DVD format war is over:
Jon Francke, a buyer at the video-rental chain Potomac Video, just placed his company’s first order for Blu-ray discs.
Until now, his company avoided stocking its stores with either of the next-generation movie formats because, he said, “who wants to spend thousands of dollars on a [...]

Apparently, you can never really leave Facebook:
Are you a member of Facebook.com? You may have a lifetime contract.
Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data.
While the Web site offers users the option [...]