Freakonomics:

While 69 percent of Americans claim that losing their local newspaper would have no impact, their reading habits show that people rely on print and online papers for 11 out of 16 major news topics.

And who wants to bet that radio and TV are relying on newspapers to steer coverage of the remaining five?

Hiawatha Bray, for the Boston Globe:

Building BostonGlobe.com meant thinking about how to publish for people who often do not use traditional desktop computers. Globe developers knew that readers will be just as likely to view the site on smartphones, tablet computers, and even televisions. That meant figuring out formats to fit a host of gadgets varying in screen size, computing power, and storage capacity.

Many companies have addressed the format issue by building different versions of a site - one for desktop computers, another for mobile users. Or they build customized software apps for different mobile devices.

BostonGlobe.com developers, with help from the Boston Web design company Filament Group, have adopted a different approach, called “responsive Web design.’’ It is a way of building sites that vary their appearance and features depending on the device used to access them, so the same page, with no alterations, looks just right whether it is displayed on a large desktop monitor or on a smartphone.

Beautiful work.

From an adapted version of Silva’s speech at the Bronx Documentary Center Aug. 2, posted on the Times’ Lens blog:

I heard the mechanic click. I knew: this is not good. And I found myself lying face-down on the ground, engulfed in a cloud of dust, with the very clear knowledge that this has just happened and this is not good. I could see my legs were gone, and everybody around me was dazed. I was like, “Guys, I need help here.”

Just an incredible read.

The indecently smart folks at Development Seed put together a beautiful map of today’s seismic event along with a quick write-up of the process:

This afternoon at 1:51 pm our office started shaking, pretty strongly. And then we all ran outside. Turns out a 5.9 earthquake hit Northern, VA, with its epicenter just northwest of Richmond, and we definitely felt it here in Washington, DC. After talking to the neighbors outside for a few minutes and of course checking twitter, we got down to work.

Using open data released almost immediately from the U.S. Geological Survey, Dave, Nate, and Matt mapped the earthquake using TileMill, our open source map design studio. This map shows the earthquake’s strength in the area where USGS tracked it.

Graham Button writes for Fast Company:

Recently, when Procter and Gamble cut its Head and Shoulders product line from 25 to 16, profits rose 10%. Similarly, when General Motors shrunk its brands from eight to four last year, dealers reported a 16% increase in sales.

When P&G cut Head and Shoulders from from 25 to 16 products, profits rose 10%. There’s a point at which new product development can destroy more value than it creates. Innovation for the sake of revenue just degrades the equity that the core brand has built up. Marketers call it “overshooting.” In the end, customers like you and me max out on “new and improved,” and we just stop buying.

My question is this:

How do we reconcile the tension between the diminishing returns brands like Procter and Gamble saw from over-branding and the current trend in media toward niche publishing?