New York Times: Alaska to Release Sarah Palin’s E-Mails

"The news media have descended here en masse to sift through the trove, with many organizations sending teams of reporters and database specialists to comb the documents and post them online. ... some news organizations are setting up elaborate systems for scanning them and inviting the public to help search them online. MSNBC.com, ProPublica and Mother Jones magazine are working with a research company to create an online database of the documents. ... The New York Times and other news organizations intend to assemble their own searchable online databases of the documents, and some, including The Times, were asking readers Thursday to help reporters sift through the voluminous correspondence in the coming days. "

MediaWeek: Web Publishers Divided Over Value of Charging

Erm, it's not just the BBC that won't be charging for content you know: "Besides Yahoo, neither MSNBC.com, CBSNews.com, nor CNET are likely to implement any paid structure. CNN.com has made no moves in this direction. Even ESPN.com, which has long maintained a small paid subscription service with its ESPN Insider product, isn’t likely to change its online approach."

Crain’s Chicago Business: EveryBlock’s Holovaty: MSNBC.com ‘gets it’

Adrian Holovaty: "MSNBC.com is a good cultural fit for us, because it has a history of bold experimentation in online journalism, design and user experience. I've been pretty impressed with basic (but important) things like their site design over the years, plus database projects such as their national bridge inspections database. You can tell these aren't the woe-is-me news execs whose answer to the future of news is to put a paywall around their content. These guys get it."

New York Times: Bits Blog: MSNBC.com Acquires Everyblock, a Hyperlocal News Start-up

"Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC.com ... said MSNBC.com would consider “sharing” Everyblock data with other news sites, particularly troubled newspapers. “We do not see it in our interest at all for local newspapers to be weakened. 'It’s a very difficult vacuum to fill without them,' he said."

Mike Davidson: Msnbc.com Acquires EveryBlock… Welcome Brother!

Newsvine's Mike Davidson: "Although building technologies and services for msnbc.com has slowed our development efforts on newsvine.com a bit, for the time being, Newsvine now serves over 4 million uniques a month; almost four times the traffic we did, pre-acquisition. We’re also distributing more revenue to our great community of writers than ever before."

The EveryBlock Blog: MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock

"MSNBC.com has hired our whole team, and they've made it clear to us that we'll be driving the site's strategy and implementation, and that our site will remain an independent destination as a community service. ... Second, it means that we'll have resources to expand EveryBlock profoundly. MSNBC.com is the most-visited news Web site in the U.S. and is in solid financial shape in a time when news organizations around the world are struggling."

O’Reilly Radar: Data Is Journalism: MSNBC Acquires Everyblock

"Everyblock, Adrian Holovaty's local data aggregator, has been acquired by MSNBC. ... The future of news is data and Everyblock is the premier startup in this area. ... Everyblock has proven that by taking free local government data sources and making them readily available to interested citizens you can create value."