If you’re the sort of person who wonders how we’re ever going to create self-sustaining businesses out of the content free-for-all on the Internet, then point your browser to the symposium held earlier this year by Intelligent Television and scan the panel discussions that are now available for download. Topics include “The Economics of the Music Industry” and “Business Interests in Open Content.” Thanks to Peter Kaufman of Intelligent Television and all concerned for letting all of us tap into the conference in this way.

From new media to old. This evening I plan to attend a panel discussion in San Francisco on the recent merger that has put most of the daily newspaper readership of this region into the hands of two owners — one of whom I work for and the other a rival chain that now has some sort of unrevealed alliance with my employer’s corporate parent. The East Bay Express, a weekly paper not associated with either of these two daily empires just published a series of articles highly critical of the deal. I expect tonight’s discussion to be depressing but that only reflects the stress on my industry and by extension my own livelihood.

Inside every cloud there is a silver lining and in contrast to the gloom surrounding print journalism consider this MediaPost report that online advertising once again grew at some astonishing rate that I don’t even care to contemplate.