News International is claiming that advertisers have benefited from "significant lifts in user engagement and brand recall" due to charging for access to The Times's website. Its claim is based on a three-month study that compared reactions to three types of online environments – the paid-for Times, an unidentified free-to-access quality news site and an online portal. Times users were found to be more engaged with the content and had a more positive response to brands.

Everyone from President Obama to Ted Koppel is bemoaning a decline in journalistic substance, seriousness, and sense of proportion. But the author, a longtime advocate of these values, takes a journey through the digital-media world and concludes there isn’t any point in defending the old ways. Consumer-obsessed, sensationalist, and passionate about their work, digital upstarts are undermining the old media -- and they may also be pointing the way to a brighter future.

From state legislatures to Congress to tea party rallies, a vocal backlash is rising against what are perceived as too-generous retirement benefits for state and local government workers. But a close look at state and local pension plans across the nation, and a comparison of them to those in the private sector, reveals a more complicated story: there's simply no evidence that state pensions are the current burden to public finances that their critics claim.