links for 2007-01-17

The US now has something similar to the UK’s old 30-year-rule. 400m classified documents in the National Archive are now technically public. But there’s a catch…

The BBC College of Journalism web site launched last night, but is currenlty only visible within the BBC.

The House of Commons could be forced to release a more detailed breakdown of MPs’ travel expenses after losing an FOIA appeal at the Information Tribunal.

Lincoln journalism student Dave Lee gets it: “Words are words. They take just as long to write, and are just as valuable, whether they are destined for paper or web.”

Paul Linford looks at the spat between two of Britain’s biggest political bloggers, Guido Fawkes and Tim Ireland.

“In an important new marketing twist newsstand buyers of the Wall Street Journal Europe (WSJE) newspaper are now being given free access to the web site just like subscribers.”

Journalism student David Cohn looks at his own use of the social news aggregation tool Digg: “With up to ten thousand submissions a day, Digg is a rich marketplace of story ideas for journalists looking for trends.”

ZDNet and Business 2.0 are paying their journalists bonuses based on the traffic they generate on their blogs. Is this really as ethically dubious as some commentators have suggested?

“Terrorists attacking British bases in Basra are using aerial footage displayed by the Google Earth internet tool to pinpoint their attacks, say Army intelligence sources.”

“Axel Springer AG, Europe’s largest and most successful newspaper publisher, founded the Axel Springer Akademie on 1 January 2007.”

Katja Riefler looks at Wikio, the new, Luxembourg-based European news aggregator site.