Monday Morning Quarterback: The Navel-Gazing Edition and Where iPhones Are Born

Are we masochistic to love the Google move to allow subjects in articles to comment right next to the news stories?

As anyone who knows newspaper folks knows, we have been dragged kicking and screaming into the highly interactive social-media space. No matter what they say, in the past at least, few journalists welcomed the idea of dealing with letters to the editor about their work and fewer still liked it when the whole thing went digital and comments flourished.

While we have a strict comment policy on this site (yes, we will kick off cretins with gusto), it’s an interesting idea to solicit reaction from those we write about.

“We’re hoping that by adding this feature, we can help enhance the news experience for readers, testing the hypothesis that–whether they’re penguin researchers or presidential candidates–a personal view can sometimes add a whole new dimension to the story,” said the Google News folks.

Here at BoomTown, we say, bring it on and look forward to the first comment from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about our flip-flop and business-plan fixation.

In another interesting development in the online news business, the New York Times has brought the Freakonomics blog into the fold of the online site. The whole concept did spring from a Times article and also its authors, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, write a column for the paper’s Sunday magazine.

Now it will expand its blog, adding all sorts of bells and whistles. But what is more interesting is that the media company did not buy the blog, but is doing a partnership. It’s a trend you will and should see a lot more of, as the idea of cross-promotion and link love does not have to mean one company has to amass a stable of content anymore.

Now, if the NYT would only end the suspense and put its silly TimesSelect gated content out of its misery by making its popular writers free again.

Speaking of free news, if I hear one more person who has been with the media mogul Rupert Murdoch of late tell me he told them he was planning on making The Wall Street Journal’s paid Web site free now that he has won the right to buy Dow Jones, I might begin to think it is a done deal.

And here’s a great video from WSJ.com Online Video from reporter Jason Dean about the place in, you guessed it, China, where the iPhone and many other well-known electronic devices are made in massive quantities at the Hon Hai factory:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.