In any case, I’m assuming that the good people at “The Daily Show” will be dissecting said overcoverage very soon. But for now, we’ll have to make do with a British takedown of that country’s snow overcoverage last month, via Charlie Brooker.

I don’t like it quite as much as his more sweeping takedown of TV news in general. But aside from a few problems with the British/American language barrier, it does the job. Thanks to Mike Dunn, via Jeff Jarvis, via Bernie Gershon, for spotting.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a respite from snow non-news, Twitter isn’t the worst place to go right now.

“Blizzard” is indeed a trending topic, but Twitterers have other things on their mind as well, like Google Buzz, of course. And, obviously, John Mayer.

But Twitterers have more esoteric interests, too: They’re busy compiling reasons you should “shooturself,” and offering tributes to Captain Phil, whom you may know from “Deadliest Catch.”

“Google’s review of its business operations in China has attracted a great deal of interest,” Clinton said during a speech on Internet freedom this morning at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make this announcement. We also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent.”

Clinton’s remarks come as Google (GOOG) threatens to shut down its search operations in China after repeated attacks on its internal network, which appear to have originated in the country.

“In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all,” Clinton said. “By reinforcing that message, we can create norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global networked commons.”

Other luminaries on the guest list:

• Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey
• Howcast CEO and co-founder Jason Liebman
• Clay Shirky, author and New York University professor
• Jared Cohen, Member of Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning staff
• Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum
• Shervin Pishevar, founder of Social Gaming Network
• Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards
• Luis Ubiñas, President of the Ford Foundation
• James Eberhard, pioneer of mobile content and services

What’s on the agenda? Dunno. But I imagine we’ll hear a lot of chatter about it during and after the fact. Here’s Dorsey’s self-portrait, taken en route to the event today:

That’s the idea behind a brace of new sales guys, brought in by sales head Greg Coleman, who is himself a newish addition to the site.

The hires:

• Andy Wiedlin, formerly at News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, and Yahoo before that, will run West Coast sales.
• Phil Cara, formerly at AOL, and Yahoo before that, will run East Coast sales.
• Peter Cherukuri, the former publisher of Roll Call, will run sales in Washington, D.C.
• Brian Kaminsky, formerly at Reuters, and Yahoo prior to that, will run sales operations out of New York.

Note the connection for three of the four new guys? Not a coincidence.

Coleman was the longtime Yahoo (YHOO) sales head until he got pushed out in 2007. He resurfaced last year as head of AOL’s (AOL) sales group but left less than three months into the job when new CEO Tim Armstrong brought in his guy.

At the new gig, Coleman’s plan is to use his new/old team to convince advertisers to start spending significant money. The site was on track to do something in the $10 million range last year, but CEO Eric Hippeau wants to goose that number to $100 million in the next few years in order to justify the $37 million that investors have sunk into the company.

Coleman came to the site last fall when it already had a good traffic story to tell–comScore (SCOR) counted 6.8 million unique users in September, which is more than WSJ.com’s 6.7 million. And that story will get better very soon, as comScore rolls out its new “hybrid” measuring system. Coleman says the new numbers will push Huffpo above the 17 million mark.

His team still needs to battle the perception that Huffpo is an all-politics (and lefty, to boot) site, since advertisers are often leery about anything political.

Sure enough, as I’m typing this Monday night, the site’s front page is dominated by Washington coverage–a banner headline about the Republican Party’s opposition to something called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And no matter what Coleman and his guys say, no one’s going to confuse the site with, say, Fox News.

Still, the site has long argued that it isn’t dominated by political coverage, and Coleman now says less than 25 percent of its traffic comes from that stuff. A heavy dose of entertainment/media coverage–did you know the dude from “300″ now has man boobs and a paunch?–helps make that claim plausible.

Will advertisers buy it? People who aren’t Greg Coleman tell me marketers were already warming to the site this year, a result of work done by the previous regime. And in large part due to interest from entertainment companies pushing new movies and TV shows.

But if Coleman and his employers want to hit their $100 million goal, they’ll need to do a lot more work. For more on Coleman’s strategy, check out his conversation with Kara Swisher from last fall.

The handset maker asked 300 cellphone users in each of eight metropolitan areas in the U.S., including New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Boston and Denver, about where they send text messages.

Atlantans topped the charts when it comes to texting while at the dinner table (44 percent), the movies (48 percent), on dates (27 percent) and at church (15 percent). The city was beaten in only one category, texting while at concerts or plays, with Philadelphia residents indicating that 33 percent of them do it, compared with Atlanta’s 31 percent.

The most restrained SMSers appear to be in Denver, where only 17 percent said they text while dating and 8 percent while praying. Beltway residents were the least likely (23 percent) to text at the dinner table or at concerts, while Bostonians were least likely (51 percent) to text from the doctor’s office.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Schmidt added a bit of nuance to that message today, noting that the company had been surprised to see its European business bounce back as quickly as it has. Here’s my transcript of his opening statement.

We are clearly seeing aspects of recovery, and what is notable is that we’re seeing aspects of recovery not just in the United States but in Europe. I had been in error in assuming that there would be a lag, that it would the U.S. first and Europe second. Asia, of course, was never significantly hit in the first place.

So that means from a Google perspective that…we never stopped hiring, but we told our team internally and again, we’ve said to many other people that we are increasing our hiring rate and our investment rate in anticipation of a recovery.

Schmidt and Google co-founder Sergey Brin covered a lot of ground in the hour-plus press conference, and I’ll try to go back and break out out some of the other highlights. A few items worth noting in summary:

• Brin expressed contrition over recent Gmail outages and said the company was working both to prevent future failures and to react more quickly if and when they do happen. But he reiterated the argument, common among cloud-computing fans, that conventional email systems fail much more frequently.
• Schmidt repeatedly defended the proposed settlement Google had reached with authors and publishers regarding its book archive. Recurring theme: It’s not a perfect settlement, but it’s workable.
• Schmidt stressed the importance of porting Google’s Chrome browser to Apple’s Mac platform and said this would happen within months.
• Schmidt said Google was working on ways to help publishers sell their work on the Web (via one-offs or subscription). But he said he had no interest in promoting one publisher’s results over another, as Associated Press officials had recently suggested: “We have to be very very careful not to favor one media organization over another, with regard to speed or latency.”
• Schmidt, who’d previously noted that he expected Google to start making an acquisition per month, said that these would likely be small, five-to-ten-person companies. He added that it was unlikely the company would be in the market for something the size of a YouTube acquisition, which cost Google $1.65 billion. Translation: Don’t expect us to pony up billions for Twitter.

Earlier: My live coverage of the press conference:

Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin is sitting down with about a dozen reporters in Google’s New York City headquarters for a Q&A session. Tune in for live coverage. This should be a wide-ranging conversation, which I’ll attempt to cover live as well as I can. Please consider everything below to be a paraphrase unless it’s in quotes.

Brin is joined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Brin gives an unofficial intro.

Schmidt adds his own informal introduction.

Schmidt: We’re here because we have a global sales meeting in New York, and we’re winding that up right now. A series of internal talks, and the mood was “very, very positive.” We told them that “the worst is behind us” (which Schmidt has said before). We’re seeing recovery not just in the U.S., but in Europe as well. I had been in error in thinking it would be U.S. first, then Europe second. Asia is less important, obviously. We’re increasing our hiring rate and investment rate in an anticipation of a recovery.

Brin discusses some tweaks to search. Do you feel that Microsoft’s innovations with Bing will cause you to accelerate your innovations?

Brin: Competition is healthy. Microsoft (MSFT) has made its contributions. So has Cuill. Many of the tweaks in Bing we’d already seen from Microsoft Live earlier in the year.

Schmidt: I agree!

But do you think Bing is really different? Or just a rebranding.

Brin: [Demurs]

Schmidt: You guys should judge us and our competitors. We’ve been criticized for having a self-referential view of the world. But I’d argue that our success so far proves that’s been a good strategy.

Please talk about Android and other mobile plans.

Brin: We started with Android because it was a problem for us, as an end-user and a developer, that phones lacked powerful browsers and the ability to install powerful apps. I think Android has addressed this very well, but it has also pushed the market. It has pushed Apple (AAPL) with the iPhone and RIM (RIMM) and Windows Mobile. I’m pretty excited about the future; they’re getting increasingly capable browsers, and you can now write native applications across five platforms that will cover most smart phones. I think that having the software platform has freed the hardware makers from spending time on that, and they can rejuvenate their efforts on hardware.

Please talk about enterprise efforts.

Brin: We started in enterprise, like mobile, to address our own needs. When we started with mail in ’04, Web email was like a toy. We really focused on something that would work in an enterprise and then made it available to consumers. We feel we’re farther ahead (than competitors) both in email and in collaborative document-editing. We’re moving toward eventually having everything (all our applications) available everywhere. “I just think the cloud model is a better model….I do think this install-less model of a cloud is better….It’s definitely made me more productive.”

More on enterprise from Brin: We’ve been successful with both SMB [small and medium business] and increasingly with enterprise. We’ve got a big implementation with Genetech (DNA), and in Washington D.C. We’re specifically adding features for enterprise. That’s part of the Postini acquisition–to add some of those email features for enterprises. You’d be surprised to hear some of the things businesses ask for.

Please talk about recent Gmail outages.

Brin: Certainly we’re not happy with any outages. With those outages we’re at the “three nines” level, which is not where we want to be. Targeting “four nines” by end of quarter. We’ll let you know how we do. Focusing not only on outages, which we don’t like, but recovery time. Second outage could have been resolved in five or ten minutes, but we made errors in handling it, and it extended over an hour. But if you look at a typical enterprise today, those outages tend to add up to more than even these kinds of outages that we had in Q3. Also, we’re working on the number of people affected by outages. Trying to group people into pods so that if one goes down it doesn’t affect others.

You’re adding more complexity to search. It’s more confusing than it ever was. Same thing with site links. Is that an issue (it is for Danny Sullivan)?

Brin: I’d like to see all the options, available in all the corpuses. We don’t have all the same options in each offering. In terms of the links and snippets that we’re offering, we’re trying to experiment with that.

On Google book deal: If the judge asked you why he shouldn’t be concerned by the concentration of Google’s power, what would you say?

Schmidt: It’s an error to answer a theoretical question from a journalist. But anyway, we won’t get that kind of question. With respect to book search, we were doing something that we thought was appropriate. We were sued, and after three years of discussion, we’ve come to a settlement. This is perfectly normal. From our perspective, this is a settlement we like, it’s a settlement we think they’ll like, and we’ll hear what the court says, within minutes. Let me reframe your question: There’s nothing particularly exclusive about what we’re doing. The rights registry we’re doing is for the benefit of orphan works. “It’s not a particularly good business for us. We’re going it because we think it’s the right thing to do.” We don’t think the settlement is perfect, but we think it’s good.

What are plans to expand book search?

Schmidt: We’re already huge. There are millions of books that have never been read, and we’re going to deliver readers to those books.

Brin: We want as many works as possible in some form, because that’s of tremendous value.

Schmidt: This doesn’t cover all international books, all books in the world. [Some disagreement about this between Brin and Schmidt]. It will take time to get the registry up and running, so for the near future I think that’s all we can achieve.

Back to the economy, please.

Schmidt: We’ve tried for a while to figure out if Google is an accurate predictor of the economy, and we can’t prove it. If we could, we’d brag about it. Last early in the year we saw a decline in U.K., which surprised us. From our perspective, the low point was somewhere in the spring. Which is why I said worst was behind us in May, June. We noticed a recovery “June-ish.” The conventional wisdom is that U.S. recessions are 18-24 months. Bernanke sees a recovery too, which we agree with. Conventional wisdom was that Europe would lag by three-five months, which we’re not seeing. Europe is not one country, and it varies a great deal depending on which country we’re in. I won’t go in to specifics but it’s the obvious stuff–the countries that didn’t have a big bump did not have a big fall. More on being a leading indicator: Obviously we’re a leading indicator in advertising.

Brin: And we’re good indicator for consumer spending, and you can see for yourself by looking at Google trends.

It seems as if Chrome isn’t having the impact with consumers that you would like.

Brin: [Starts, then stopped by Schmidt]

Schmidt: Some of your premise about Chrome is incorrect, in terms of adoption, and we’re going to get that message out.

Brin: It’s actually exceeding our benchmarks.

Schmidt: I see a lot of Macs in this room, and a lot of very sophisticated people are using Macs now and we need to get a version of Chrome out for that, which we’ll have in a couple of months. Key to browser strength is speed. In general, we announced Chrome OS and Chromium product. Everything is linked together: Cloud, chrome, etc.

At one point do Android and the Chrome OS come together or not come together?

Schmidt: Current definition of use platforms has to do with use patterns. Android for mobile, delivered via telecom store, heavily integrated with telco offerings, like our Verizon (VZ) deal, which we’re enormously excited about. The analog for Chrome is that it’s designed for a 10, 12-inch form factor. They both use Linux, etc. But they’re designed for different uses. [Netbooks?] May be some overlap there.

Is Google being too nice? Is there a rethinking of relationships with aggrieved groups?

Schmidt: In many ways we’ve always wanted to be this Google as opposed to the way we were perceived a few years ago. We’re particularly proud of the way we’re working with advertising agencies, which is very important to us. With the media industry, we’re having success with YouTube and YouTube monetization, and we’ll have more on that coming forward….”We have always wanted to have these partnerships….We’re learning how to do them in a way that they win, too.”

Brin: People can now differentiate between us and the Internet.

Schmidt: Google is an innovator. The Internet is causing collisions. Innovation plus collisions equals opportunity. For instance, the fact that Verizon has embraced most of the open principles that we put forth five years ago is shocking. “It’s pretty amazing. This is Verizon. It’s not some itty-bitty telecom start-up.”

Are you uncomfortable with Google employees’ sense of entitlement? [Per new Ken Auletta book]

Brin: [Refers to layoffs--Schmidt corrects him: "We did not have layoffs."] [Addendum: Schmidt was talking about Google closing engineering offices in Phoenix and other locations; Google did have layoffs last winter.] You’re right:

What do you think about publishers requiring pay walls, and how will you help surface that.

Schmidt: We’re starting with that YouTube. Overall, “there’s clearly a market for free content, and that market is the size of the Internet.” Also a market for subscription/paid. The analogy I would offer is TV. We all grew up with “free” TV. Now almost everyone pays for cable, and some people pay for pay-per-view, “which is ridiculously expensive,” but people will pay for particular events, like boxing. I think all three of those uses will emerge. We’re working on payment models, subscriptions, to enable that.

But what about surfacing paid content in search [this comes from WSJ.com editor Alan Murray]? Will you factor the desire of someone to pay for content into results?

Schmidt: We’re not going to use the price you use as our ranking in results. That’s not going to be our signal. But we’ll incorporate the price people are paying for your content into results. But I’m not going to answer this precisely because I don’t want to discuss how we produce results. The most interesting improvement you could make is that to the degree that we have more of the marketplace data available, we could take that information and reflect some of that in our rankings.

The AP CEO said Google or Microsoft might be willing to pay a premium for an advance look at the news.

Schmidt: We have a deal with the AP, and I don’t want to talk about any specifics of any deal. I don’t think that’s proper. “We have to be very very careful not to favor one media organization over another, with regard to speed or latency.” We are staying out of the media business. “You guys are very good at it, and we’re not.”

[Apologies for tech error; I missed the specific question and part of the following exchange, but the subject is entitlement.]

Brin: We cut down on snacks, etc. to “reset expectations” regarding entitlement.

Schmidt: “Google pays very well. Google is clearly a growth company. People at Google don’t work for those reasons at Google. We don’t want them to come to work for Google for those reasons. We want people to come to Google to change the world. Life is short.” The tightening in the last year has been good for this, by the way, the controls put into place by Patrick Pichette, who is our hero, have been very helpful.

Please talk about M&A plans and goal of one acquisition per month.

Schmidt: That’s been our historic pattern. I think we will be buying small companies–five, ten people. That’s where some of our best stuff has been. One day Larry and Sergey bought Android, and I didn’t even notice. Think about the strategic opportunities that has created. Sergey found Google Earth one day while he was surfing on the Web. And then he walked into my office and told me he bought them. “And I said, ‘for how much, Sergey?’ And it turned out to be a few million.”

Would you buy a YouTube?

Schmidt: Is there another one to buy? The problem with that size of acquisition is that you have to make your money back. I think that DoubleClick and YouTube will be two of our best acquisitions. DoubleClick is already close to paying back, and YouTube will get there soon. But bear in mind that any major acquisition now will involve a regulatory review, because of our size and because our competitors will make sure of that.

[Sorry, missed another question]

Do you anticipate making large upfront commitments for new or renewed search deals [as you did with MySpace and AOL]?

Schmidt: I’d rather not comment on search deals. We are in discussions with both of those companies. “Some of our best friends are in those companies.”

[Missed yet another one]

What will new tablet machines [like Apple's] mean for you? And to content producers?

Brin: Hardware is getting amazing with regard to cost. Used to be that display was expensive. Now that’s cheap, and so are chips, etc. Now, the main cost is broadband connection, or cellular, or however you get to the Internet. That’s why wide broadband availability is important to us. Think about how much you spend on access costs compared to the amount you spend on your handset. The phone cost is negligible.

Schmidt: Not sure how to answer question. We provide the infrastructure below what you’re talking about [touch interfaces, etc.]. Kindle is a good example. Don’t think about current one, think about one two or three years out. I think there will be many kinds of things like Kindles, and that’s a material change in the way people will interact with hardware, media.

Brin: I think it’s better if hardware isn’t locked down to specific platforms.

[Long exchange between Schmidt and Danny Sullivan that I'll have to pick up later]

Should Google be required to lease servers and access to Google checkout numbers to deal with “lock-in” issues that broke up the telcos?

Schmidt: Google Checkout isn’t interesting. But I think your analogy is wrong and that there are no data to support your theses.

[I missed the next question on the book settlement about orphan works, etc.]

Schmidt: A lot of these complaints are being made by people who don’t want a solution.

What are the reasonable book settlement proposals you’ve seen?

Schmidt: Goal is to get all the books to everyone and to get all the authors compensated properly. Some of the proposals make sense to me, but I don’t want to characterize them. Not a perfect solution, but the best one we can do.

How will book settlement affect international users?

Brin: It won’t. We’d love settlements that work across a range of countries.

Why won’t you be like Microsoft with regard to antitrust?

Schmidt: Many reasons. Culture, for one. Another reason is that majority of users are one click away from moving away from us. Third: If we went into an “evil room” and had an “evil light” shined on us, and we then behaved in an “evil way” we would be destroyed….There is a fundamental trust between Google and its users.”

Schmidt walks through “ludicrous” thought experiment whereby Chrome takes 80 percent of market share and then tries to lock consumers in, noting that it wouldn’t work due to open source.

Do you think you’ll take another stab at moving into radio, print?

Brin: We are quite optimistic on the TV front. Radio and print didn’t pan out as well as we thought initially. One of the reasons is that those mediums are moving online and consumers are moving online and the publishers/producers want to work with us there. “We were kind of at the dock where the ship had already left.” But TV is quite similar to the Web in terms, potentially, of measurability, so we’re excited about those prospects.

Is page rank broken? People are gaming it, etc.

Brin: No. We have to continually develop. Part of the issue is span, but the main issue is that everything changes. We’re doing a much better job of ranking than we did a decade ago. If we just rested on our laurels with what we wrote in paper from 1998, we’d be in big trouble.

Sewell joined Intel (INTC) in 1995 as a senior attorney and was named general counsel in 2004. In that capacity, he managed Intel’s antitrust battles in Japan, Korea, the United States and now, the European Union as well. At Apple (AAPL), he succeeds Daniel Cooperman, who will retire at month’s end.

“We are thrilled to have Bruce join our executive team, and wish Dan a very happy retirement,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “With Bruce’s extensive experience in litigation, securities and intellectual property, we expect this to be a seamless transition.”

It would seem, then, that Sewell’s decision to leave Intel for Apple is more train-hopping than anything else. And while it certainly comes at a lousy time for Intel, it’s not likely indicative of some upset within the company’s legal department.

As Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood told me this morning, “Some personnel changes result from the circumstances of the individuals involved, rather than high level machinations within the organizations to which they belong. Cooperman’s retirement created the opening at Apple, a position Sewell is well qualified to fill. My bottom line: Bruce’s move has more to do with Apple’s need for a top notch lawyer than with Intel’s current legal situation.”

The official announcement, below.

Bruce Sewell to Join Apple as General Counsel & SVP

Daniel Cooperman to Retire

CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple today announced that Bruce Sewell, formerly senior vice president and general counsel of Intel Corporation (INTC), will join Apple as the company’s General Counsel and senior vice president, Legal and Government Affairs, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Daniel Cooperman, who has served in these roles at Apple for the past two years, will be retiring at the end of September.

“We are thrilled to have Bruce join our executive team, and wish Dan a very happy retirement,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With Bruce’s extensive experience in litigation, securities and intellectual property, we expect this to be a seamless transition.”

At Intel, Sewell has been responsible for leading all of Intel’s legal, corporate affairs and corporate social responsibility programs, managing attorneys and policy professionals located in over 30 countries around the world. He joined Intel in 1995 as a senior attorney assigned to counsel various business groups in areas such as antitrust compliance, licensing and intellectual property. In 2001, Sewell was promoted to vice president and deputy general counsel, managing Intel’s litigation portfolio, and handled corporate transactions including M&A activities.

Prior to joining Intel, he was a partner in the litigation firm of Brown and Bain PC. Sewell was admitted to the California Bar in 1986 and to the Washington D.C. Bar in 1987. He received his J.D. from George Washington University in 1986, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Lancaster, in the United Kingdom, in 1979.

If the court’s decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.

Reuters:

“The commission has failed to demonstrate that allowing a cable operator to serve more than 30 percent of all cable subscribers would threaten to reduce either competition or diversity in programming,” the court said.

The judges pointed to rising competition among video providers, including satellite companies like DirecTV Group Inc, as well as telephone companies like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, which have been rolling out their own subscription television services.

“Cable operators, therefore, no longer have the bottleneck power over programming that concerned the Congress in 1992.” the court said. The FCC’s cable ownership limit has been the focus of court challenges for years.

As Reuters points out, new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski can try to appeal the decision or try to write a new one. But if the cap stays off, we’re likely to see another round of combinations, or attempted combinations, at the very least.

Lots of handicappers have already been expecting big cable operators like Comcast (CMCSA) to make a run at programming assets, as it did with Disney (DIS) years ago. But what if the company deploy its assets to bulk up with more subscribers instead? Investors in Cablevision (CVC), the smallish, New York-based cable system that is a perpetual supposed takeover target that never gets taken over, like the idea: CVC shares are climbing modestly in a flat market.

That distinction popped up this morning after Politico detailed an “astonishing offer” by the paper’s business staff to lobbyists–a chance to underwrite “salons” with D.C. bigshots, hosted at the home of CEO Katharine Weymouth.

A promotional flier Politico got its hands on also promised that the Post’s editorial staff would be part of the events, including one scheduled for July 21. But that part isn’t true, a Post spokeswoman told me via email this morning:

The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. It went out before it was properly vetted, and this draft does not represent what the company’s vision for these dinners are, which is meant to be an independent, policy-oriented event for newsmakers.

As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this.

We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that The Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate.

OK, so that’s cleared up. But let me play devil’s advocate: What exactly would be so wrong about getting the paper’s reporters or editors to to participate in one of these?

This certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the Post has been at the nexus of power, money and influence. In fact, Weymouth’s grandmother, Katharine Graham, was famous for hosting gatherings much like these at her house. And publications of all stripes, including this one, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site, frequently charge fees to attend networking events where their editorial staffs participate.

And you’re likely to see more of this stuff, not less, as publishers search for revenue streams besides advertising to stay afloat. Any tempest you see about this today is going to look quaint in a couple of years.

UPDATE: The ensuing uproar has forced the Post to cancel the events altogether. Post execs are now busy pointing fingers at each other, although it seems clear a lot of the blame is going to be laid at the feet of the paper’s conference group and/or marketing team.

But note Howard Kurtz’s report on his employers’ reactions to the reaction: Weymouth (or her proxies) say she was OK with the idea, but not the marketing; Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli says he was OK with the concept, but not this version:

Weymouth knew of the plans to host small dinners at her home and to charge lobbying and trade organizations for participation. But, one of the executives said, she believed that there would be multiple sponsors, to minimize any appearance of charging for access, and that the newsroom would be in charge of the scope and content of any dinners in which Post reporters and editors participated.

Brauchli said he had been involved in discussions, stretching back to last year, about newsroom participation in conferences of the sort commonly staged by major news organizations.

But he said he made clear to the company’s marketing officials that Post journalists would participate only if they could substantially control the nature of any such conference. Brauchli said he was blindsided by the wording of these fliers and that they are an embarrassment to the newspaper.

In the old days, the fact that this story broke just before the long holiday weekend would help the Post. But this story will now have legs, egged on by stuff like this:

That’s the path that Jason Herskowitz has chosen. Old job: VP of product management at Total Music, Universal Music and Sony’s (SNE) attempt to create a service that offered either free downloads or free streaming music as a way to combat file-sharing. It collapsed earlier this year and Project Playlist bought some of its parts.

New job: VP of product management at LimeWire, one of the last (one of the only?) high-profile peer-to-peer file-sharing companies based in the U.S. Not surprisingly, the service was embroiled with industry lawsuits for three years running.

Here’s Herskowitz’s blog post announcing his new job and his pending move to Brooklyn (Welcome, Jason! Pretty sure we’re neighbors.) from Washington D.C. It’s not a crazy career move: A job is a job and there aren’t that many in digital music these days. Besides, I hear that LimeWire has nice offices.

Which reminds me: How is it, exactly, that LimeWire stays afloat when the labels have been able to force so many of its peers to shut down? Good question. I’ve asked around and heard murmurings that the labels and the file-sharing service may be able to work out some kind of agreement, but I’ve heard that every 12 months or so. So I’ll believe it in when I see it.

In the meantime, LimeWire continues to allow you to download just about any song (and many other things) you can imagine over the Web for free, without paying anyone a cent. Though if you do try to download a copyrighted song, you do get this stern warning from the service. I take it in the same spirit as the warnings head shops give you when they say the bong they’re selling is for tobacco use only (click to enlarge):

Kundra, who has served as a technology policy adviser for President Obama, will oversee federal technology spending, among other things. “Vivek Kundra will bring a depth of experience in the technology arena and a commitment to lowering the cost of government operations to this position,” Obama said in a statement. “I have directed him to work to ensure that we are using the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government operations. As Chief Information Officer, he will play a key role in making sure our government is running in the most secure, open, and efficient way possible.”

If stories about Kundra’s enthusiasm for Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) products are any indication, we can expect to see some big changes in the way federal technology spending is handled. “One of the biggest problems in government is that process has trumped outcome,” Kundra once said. “As everyone is focused on compliance, no one is thinking about innovation.”

Kundra, who has served as a technology policy adviser for President Obama, will oversee federal technology spending, among other things. “Vivek Kundra will bring a depth of experience in the technology arena and a commitment to lowering the cost of government operations to this position,” Obama said in a statement. “I have directed him to work to ensure that we are using the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government operations. As Chief Information Officer, he will play a key role in making sure our government is running in the most secure, open, and efficient way possible.”

If stories about Kundra’s enthusiasm for Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) products are any indication, we can expect to see some big changes in the way federal technology spending is handled. “One of the biggest problems in government is that process has trumped outcome,” Kundra once said. “As everyone is focused on compliance, no one is thinking about innovation.”

But Sequoia Voting Systems is trying–really trying. Earlier this week thousands of phantom votes were cast in a Washington D.C. primary election that used Sequoia’s machines. This not a week after the Computer Security Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara demonstrated how astonishingly simple it is to hack the company’s e-voting systems.

Election officials initially blamed the cock-up on some defective memory in one of Sequoia’s machines. But the company denies this. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the [District's election] database,” spokesperson Michelle Shafer insisted. “There’s absolutely no problem with the machines in the polling places. No. No.”

OK. But if that’s the case, why were thousands of phantom votes recorded in the election? The answer to that question is particularly troubling: Sequoia doesn’t know. Neither does the D.C. Board of Elections. “All I can tell you is that we’re looking into it,” said Daniel Murphy, a spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics.

Well, that’s reassuring. Especially with the November elections nearly upon us …

But Sequoia Voting Systems is trying–really trying. Earlier this week thousands of phantom votes were cast in a Washington D.C. primary election that used Sequoia’s machines. This not a week after the Computer Security Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara demonstrated how astonishingly simple it is to hack the company’s e-voting systems.

Election officials initially blamed the cock-up on some defective memory in one of Sequoia’s machines. But the company denies this. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the [District's election] database,” spokesperson Michelle Shafer insisted. “There’s absolutely no problem with the machines in the polling places. No. No.”

OK. But if that’s the case, why were thousands of phantom votes recorded in the election? The answer to that question is particularly troubling: Sequoia doesn’t know. Neither does the D.C. Board of Elections. “All I can tell you is that we’re looking into it,” said Daniel Murphy, a spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics.

Well, that’s reassuring. Especially with the November elections nearly upon us …