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La creación del Grupo de Río es quizás, junto con el Derecho de Asilo y la Doctrina Estrada, el mayor aporte mexicano a Latinoamérica. Su creación fue resultado de los esfuerzos exitosos del Grupo de Contadora, creado en 1983 para frenar la guerra centroamericana desatada por las oligarquías apoyadas por Washington contra sus pueblos, en aras de la mal llamada –y hoy reflotada– “seguridad nacional”. Obviamente en este proceso una Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) dominada por Estados Unidos no jugó ningún papel.

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United States determined to persuade Israel into substantive peace talks with Palestinians, Obama administration source says

President Barack Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, are on a collision course today in a row described by a senior Israeli diplomat as the worst crisis between the two countries for more than three decades.

An Obama administration source told the Guardian that the White House and US state department are intent on pushing Israel into substantive peace talks with the Palestinians and will not shy away this time as they did when the last effort ended in embarrassing failure in September.

"No one gets anywhere by accusing each other. We are hoping to lay the foundations for negotiations," the source said. In order to get negotiations under way, the US is demanding that Netanyahu cancel or freeze plans to build 1,600 planned Jewish homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem. But Netanyahu, speaking at a meeting of his own Likud party, showed no signs of backing down. "The building in Jerusalem, and in all other places, will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years," he said.

The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, in a weekend telephone call to other Israeli diplomats, expressed alarm about the extent of the confrontation.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the normally cool Oren, an academic-turned diplomat, as saying: "Israel's ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 ... a crisis of historic proportions."

Oren was called to the state department last week in a rare rebuke for a diplomat from a country the US normally regards as one of its strongest allies.

The crisis began last week when the US vice-president, Joe Biden, travelled to Israel in the hope of securing a start to the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But his hopes were dashed when Israel announced the new construction in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian cabinet reiterated today that it will not enter into talks while such construction is planned.

The White House has steadily built up the heat on Israel over the last few days, with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, berating Netanyahu in a 45-minute call on Friday and David Axelrod, the chief White House adviser, describing Israeli behaviour as an insult yesterday.

The US wants Israel not only to backtrack on the East Jerusalem building plans but to enter into talks with the Palestinians on substantive issues and not just talks about talks, as Israel wants. Washington also wants Israel to make gestures towards the Palestinians, such as releasing Palestinian prisoners and withdrawing more Israeli forces from Palestinian territory. The US special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian territories, the former senator George Mitchell, is to visit Israel this week in the hope of hearing that Israel will bow to at least some of the US demands.

Netanyahu is scheduled to address a meeting in Washington early next week of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the powerful Israeli lobbying group. The US does not yet know whether he will attend in person or make a televised address.

The Israeli prime minister faces the problem of whether to offer the US a concession, such as a short freeze on house-building in East Jerusalem, a move that might lead to the break-up of his coalition government. Clinton will address the Aipac conference in person, a potentially dramatic occasion if she opts to repeat her calls for Netanyahu to back down.

Yesterday Aipac issued a statement critical of the Obama administration and today embarked on an intensive lobbying exercise to secure the backing of Jewish or strong Israeli-supporting members of Congress.

The more liberal Jewish lobbying organisation, J Street, said the US should use the crisis to push for peace talks. Its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said: "Too much time has already been lost in getting the two sides into negotiations. We must not lose further time allowing a single development, as objectionable as it may be, to derail progress."

The US magazine Foreign Policy posted a report on its website yesterdaythat in January top US commanders briefed the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, that US failure to stop Israel continuing with settlement building on the West Bank damaged US relations with the Arab world. Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the Washington-based Institute of World Affairs, said there had long been a divergence between the US and Israel over various issues and a recognition of this fact was overdue.

She did not expect the US to threaten to withhold financial or military aid or intelligence and that going public was sufficient as a big stick.

Paul Scham, an academic at Washington's Middle East Institute, said: "What is interesting is that US has chosen to make a big deal of it. The reason for doing this is, it seems, to be ready to pull out some version of the peace offensive Obama has been promising for a year. Hopefully, it will not die down as it did last year."

• US politics
• US foreign policy
• Israel
• United States
• Palestinian territories
• Obama administration
• Binyamin Netanyahu
• Barack Obama

In recent weeks, conservative media have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods about the possible use of the budget reconciliation process to finalize passage of health care reform.

On Fox News' Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the Senate process of reconciliation "was once called the nuclear option" and aired clips of what he claimed were Democrats criticizing the nuclear option "when Republicans were using it." Fox News hosts and guests have repeatedly pushed the falsehood that the term "nuclear option" refers to the budget reconciliation process. The Fox Nation and Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Dick Morris, Bret Baier, and Bill Sammon have all falsely compared reconciliation to the "nuclear option."

Fact: "Nuclear option" was coined by GOP to describe a process to change Senate filibuster rules. The term "nuclear option" was coined by former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), one of the leading advocates of a 2005 proposal to change the Senate rules on filibusters for judicial nominations. After Republican strategists deemed the term a political liability, Republican senators began to attribute it to Democrats. As Media Matters for America noted, at the time, many in the news media followed suit, repeating the Republicans' false attribution of the term to the Democrats.

The Washington Post published a March 2 op-ed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in which he claimed: "This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope. And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, degrade our system of government and damage the prospects of bipartisanship."

Fact: Reconciliation requires majority vote. The U.S. House Committee on Rules defines the budget reconciliation process as requiring a majority of both houses for passage. From the Rules Committee:

Once a reconciliation bill is passed in the House and Senate, members of each body meet to work out their differences. A majority of the conferees on each panel must agree on a single version of the bill before it can be brought back to the full House and Senate for a vote on final passage. Approval of the conference agreement on the reconciliation legislation must be by a majority vote of both Houses.

In a National Review Online column titled "Unprecedented," the Heritage Foundation's Michael Franc referred to reconciliation as "an arcane budgetary procedure." In a February 23 editorial, The Washington Examiner accused Democrats of "running a Washington con game" in considering the use of reconciliation to pass health reform, asserting that the process is "an arcane legislative magic act." Additionally, in a February 23 article reporting that centrist Democrats were weighing the implications of using reconciliation to pass health care reform, Politico claimed that Republicans may be able to convince voters that the procedure "is an end-run around the normal legislative process."

Fact: Reconciliation is part of congressional budget process. The budget reconciliation process is defined by the U.S. House Committee on Rules as "part of the congressional budget process... utilized when Congress issues directives to legislate policy changes in mandatory spending (entitlements) or revenue programs (tax laws) to achieve the goals in spending and revenue contemplated by the budget resolution."

Republicans repeatedly used reconciliation to pass Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." The Senate also used the procedure to pass a bill containing a provision that would have permitted oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (The final version of that bill that Bush signed did not contain the provision on drilling.)

In a February 25 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bill Frist claimed: "Using the budget reconciliation procedure to pass health-care reform would be unprecedented because Congress has never used it to adopt major, substantive policy change." In his February 25 Washington Post column, George Will suggested Democrats were "misusing" reconciliation for trying to pass health care legislation. Will wrote: "The summit's predictable failure will be a pretext for trying to ram health legislation through the Senate by misusing 'reconciliation,' which prevents filibusters."

Fact: Reconciliation has repeatedly been used to reform health care. On February 24, NPR noted that many "major changes to health care laws" were passed via reconciliation. Additionally, during a February 24 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, correspondent Julie Rovner quoted George Washington University health policy professor Sara Rosenbaum saying: "In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process."

Congress used reconciliation to pass Medicare Advantage and SCHIP. As part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, enacted through the reconciliation process, Congress -- which was controlled by the Republicans at the time -- created the "Medicare+Choice Program," currently known as Medicare Advantage or Medicare Part C. The program allows seniors to enroll in HMO-type plans rather than the traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan. The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), was also passed through reconciliation as part of the Balanced Budget Act. It provides federal matching funds to expand health coverage to children in low-income families who are not eligible for Medicaid.

Congress used reconciliation to pass COBRA. As part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, Congress gave "workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances."

Congress used reconciliation to pass Patient Self-Determination Act. As part of the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1990, Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination Act, which requires hospitals, nursing homes, HMOs, and other organizations that participate in Medicare or Medicaid to provide information about advance directives and patients' decision-making rights.

During the February 25 edition of Hannity (accessed via the Nexis database), Fox News contributor Sarah Palin suggested that congressional Democrats plan to "cram through via reconciliation this scheme, this government growth takeover of too many aspects of our health care." She went on to warn about "the risk is this one-sixth of our economy being so controlled and 1/6 of our society being so controlled by government with this takeover of health care." Similarly, Politico published a February 4 op-ed by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) warning that "Democrats may attempt to use reconciliation to short-circuit every senator's right and responsibility to fully debate a measure that will affect one-sixth of our economy." Also, CNN political analyst Gloria Borger asked during the March 12 edition of The Situation Room (accessed via the Nexis database): "[S]hould you pass something that affects one-sixth of the American economy with just a majority vote?"

Fact: Dems say they plan to use reconciliation only to tweak aspects of bills already passed by House and Senate. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein reported, congressional Democrats are planning to pass "the 11 pages of modifications that President Obama proposed to reconcile the House and Senate bills with each other." From Klein's March 1 blog post:

Second, Democrats are not proposing to create the health-care reform bill in reconciliation. Rather, they're using the process for a much more limited purpose: passing the 11 pages of modifications that President Obama proposed to reconcile the House and Senate bills with each other. This is not a particularly ambitious use of the reconciliation process, and it's certainly not unprecedented. Republicans are arguing otherwise, of course, but the record belies their rhetoric.

The Hill: Reid says Dems "would likely use the budget reconciliation process to pass a series of fixes to the first healthcare bill passed by the Senate." The Hill reported in a February 20 article:

Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

"Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster.

"I've had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi," Reid said during an appearance Friday evening on "Face to Face with Jon Ralston" in Nevada. "And we're really trying to move forward on this."

The majority leader said that while Democrats have a number of options, they would likely use the budget reconciliation process to pass a series of fixes to the first healthcare bill passed by the Senate in November. These changes are needed to secure votes for passage of that original Senate bill in the House. "We'll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we've already done," Reid said, affirming that Democrats would use the reconciliation process. "We're going to have that done in the next 60 days."

During the February 25 edition of Fox News' Special Report (accessed via the Nexis database), correspondent Carl Cameron reported that "Republicans demanded Democrats abandon any plans to drive health care through the Senate with only 51 votes under the rarely used legislative maneuver known as budget reconciliation, instead of the normal 60 votes needed to advance major bills."

Fact: Senate already passed health care bill with 60 votes. On December 23, the Senate passed a cloture motion on H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, with 60 votes. On December 24, the Senate passed the bill with 60 votes.

Numerous right-wing media figures have promoted video of Obama discussing the difficulty of governing with "50 plus one" votes on legislation to assert that Obama has broken a promise not to pass health care using reconciliation. For instance, during the March 3 edition of his radio show, Glenn Beck said: "New audio for you from Barack Obama saying that we cannot, cannot pass it with a simple majority vote. Health care has to be supermajority, has to be done that way. You can't just slip it by the American people, which they are now saying they're going to do. Yet another broken promise from Barack Obama." Similarly, Jim Hoft posted the video at his Gateway Pundit site and wrote: "But, of course, like everything else Obama promised, this statement came with an expiration date. Today Obama will announce that Democrats will force their unpopular nationalized health care bill through Congress using a simple majority to ram it through."

Fact: Obama didn't "promise" not to pass health care with 50 + 1 votes. In fact, in the video promoted by conservative media figures, Obama said it would be more difficult to govern without broad support, not that he promised not to use reconciliation to pass health care reform. The video shows several clips of Obama on the campaign trail in 2006 and 2007 discussing how he expected to pass health care reform. For example, in a September 2007 speech, Obama says of health care reform, "This is an area where we're going to have to have a 60 percent majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We're going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-1 majority." In another clip, Obama discusses how he wanted to campaign in a way that brought more than a "50-plus-1" majority because "you can't govern" after such a victory and predicts that "you can't deliver on health care. We're not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-1 strategy." In a 2006 speech, Obama says, "If we want to transform the government, though, that requires a sizable majority." At no point does he "promise" not to use reconciliation in health care reform.

We are just starting to announce the first speakers at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City on May 24 – 26.

TechCrunch Disrupt is a three-day, single-track conference and startup competition to immerse you in the debate about what’s changing in media and technology right now, what’s causing it and what we need to do about it to survive and thrive in real time. Join 2,000 or so of your closest friends to talk about what’s most important in the collision of technology and media.

Half of the event is a March Madness style startup competition. We’re sorting through hundreds of applications to find the most interesting startups launching this Spring. You’ll see live on stage demos, rapid fire Q&A sessions with expert judges from a variety of backgrounds (product, finance, team building, leadership and more) and highlights from behind the scenes mentoring sessions.

The other half of the event will put leading experts from around the world on stage to talk about the stuff that matters most in technology and media. A few of the speakers and experts are listed below. Keep an eye on the Disrupt Blog and Speaker list for more updates.

Get your ticket here.

Ron Conway
Angel Investor, SV Angel
Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.

Jack Dorsey
Co-founder and CEO, Square
Software engineer Jack Dorsey is the Co-Founder of Twitter, and was the CEO until October 2008. Dorsey had the original idea for Twitter while still at Odeo, a podcasting startup which was a project of Obvious Corp. He is now the chairman of Twitter. In May 2009, Dorsey announced his latest startup, Square. Square, originally code-named Squirrel, is a mobile payment startup with both an app and a piece of hardware that allows the iPhone to accept credit card payments.

Brad Garlinghouse
President, Internet and Mobile Communications, AOL
Brad Garlinghouse is President, Internet and Mobile Communications at AOL since September 2009. Until 2008 Brad served as SVP of Communications & Communities at Yahoo, which includes the world’s most popular webmail product, Yahoo Mail, Messenger and Groups. During his tenure, Brad has also overseen the primary starting points to the Yahoo network, including Yahoo.com and My Yahoo. Prior to joining Yahoo, Brad served as CEO of Dialpad Communications. Earlier in his career, Brad led VC investments in communications and Internet businesses at @Ventures. He also spent time in leadership roles at @Home Network and SBC Communications.

Katie Geminder
User Experience and Design Expert
Katie started her career in Seattle, working to produce and publish print and web content for clients including Microsoft, Intel, and Expedia. She joined Amazon as the managing editor of the e-Cards business and led large cross-functional and customer experience initiatives including the Amazon.com Kitchen Store, re-launch of Tab Navigation, Target.com, and the Amazon Services e-Commerce platform. In 2005 Katie moved to work on the Apple Online Store team as a Sr. Manager focused on content and customer experience, collaborating with engineering, marketing, and design teams to improve online shopping for Macs and iPods. Katie joined Facebook in early 2006 and led the product management, design and user experience teams. She played an integral part in launching the News Feed and Mini Feed products, making Facebook available to all users (beyond college and high school), opening up the Facebook Platform to application developers, and the Facebook redesign. In August of 2008 she set out on building a design and consulting business with her co-founder, designer, and husband. She then rejoined Owen Van Natta at Myspace in July of 2009, a job she would leave in February 2010 after Van Natta’s departure.

Charlie Rose
Host, Charlie Rose Show
Charlie Rose is an American television interviewer and journalist. He entered television journalism full-time in 1974, when he became the managing editor of the PBS series Bill Moyers’ International Report. He currently hosts the Charlie Rose Show, where he has developed a reputation as a skilled interviewer.

Brian Sugar, CEO & Publisher, Sugar Inc.
Brian Sugar is the CEO and Publisher of Sugar Inc., the company behind PopSugar. As CEO & Publisher, Brian Sugar sets the overall direction for Sugar Inc. Prior to founding Sugar Inc., Brian served first as Vice President of Marketing then as Vice President & General Manager of 2Wire, Inc.’s media business unit. Before joining 2Wire, Brian was founder and CEO of Sugar Media, a digital media software company, which was acquired by 2Wire in October 2003. Brian was Chief Web Officer at Kmart’s BlueLight.com, Vice President of eCommerce at J.Crew, and a founder of Neptune Interactive, a Washington, DC-based ISP.

Michael Wolf, Board of Directors for Entercom Communications and iAmplify
Michael Wolf currently serves on the boards of Entercom Communications Corporation (NYSE: ETM), the fourth-largest broadcasting company in the United States, and iAmplify.com, a Web-based content publisher and syndication network and the world’s largest selection of expert video and audio downloads. He was formerly the president and former COO of MTV Networks. Michael was a Director of McKinsey & Company and head of its Global Media and Entertainment Practice. Before joining McKinsey in 2001, Wolf was a senior partner with Booz & Company, where he spearheaded its media and entertainment group. Wolf is the author of publications on the subjects of entertainment, economics, non-fiction, e-business strategies and the development of global media. His bestselling book on entertainment economics, The Entertainment Economy: How Media Forces Are Transforming Our Lives was published in the U.S. in 1999 and then globally. He is frequent contributor and op-ed columnist for newspapers, journals and business publications.

Even though this is 2010, some people still use fax machines. There will, inevitably, be a point in your life where you have to fax something to someone. More and more people are accepting scanned documents and eSignatures, but it’s simply unavoidable. You will have to fax something.

When that time comes, it’s best to have some easy way to send a fax without having to keep some big clunky machine on your desk for the once every two year occasion you have to send a fax. First things first, what do you want to do?

Send a fax via email
Also known as “I need to send a fax but I don’t have a fax machine,” this one is really easy to fix. Well, it’s easy as long as you have a scanner. You don’t have a scanner? How are you going to send a fax? Take yourself to the nearest postal store and pay to send your fax. Ok, the rest of you have a scanner. Scan your document or whatever into a .DOC, .DOCX, or .PDF file. Then take that doc to faxZero, type in all the info, and send your fax – for free!

Receive a fax
Also known as “I need to get a fax but I don’t have a fax machine,” this has a couple of answers. First and easiest, is to go to K7.net and sign up for free. This is a free fax and voicemail service, but you can check the ‘fax tone only’ option and your number will only be answered with a fax tone. The only tricky part to this is it has (for some reason) a Washington state only option where you can only receive faxes and calls from inside Washington state. Obviously pick the other one, unless that’s you. This actually works! I got my confirmation email in a minute or two, and lo and behold you don’t have to verify anything and the number was already working! I sent myself something from faxZero and it went right through, maybe a minute and a half before I got the with the attached fax.

Now while these two options will get you through a once in a while fax scenario (for FREE!!!), they are not the most professional. The best and cheapest service online is eFax. If you get on to chat with their service reps you can pretty much get any kind of fees waived and get to their minimum $4.95 charge per month. Also, if you just have a temporary need for faxing, they have a 30 day free trial which can be canceled at any time without any charge to you.

Here is a transcript of a conversation I had with a sales rep of theirs:

You are now chatting with ‘Alexandra’

Chris: Hello I heard there was a free level of servide with eFax but I can’t seem to find it? Does it still exist?

Alexandra: yes we have a free 30 day trial Chris

Chris: Ok do I get a fax # for that 30 days? And do you need a credit card?

Alexandra: yes

Alexandra: and yes

Alexandra: Pricing depends on your usage. Can I ask how many pages you plan to send and receive per month?

Chris: just a handful, that’s why I was asking about the free service.

Chris: maybe 2-3

Chris: If I sign up for the demo and cancel before the 30 days is up is my credit card charged?

Alexandra: no, there is no contract service is month to month

So the bottom line is if you need to just send or receive a one-off fax every once in a while, there is no need for an extra phone line or clunky fax equipment. Send faxes for free with this guide, be sure to share with your friends.

Michael Arrington's recent TechCrunch post about old media "guys" who don't get it made me realize how far things have come -- and how much better they've gotten -- in the world of journalism.

I worked for more than 15 years in what's now called "legacy media" as a reporter, news editor and business person. All along, there were a bunch of things that made me scratch my head.

Why, for example, could we could lift from other sources without offering attribution? I remember when a librarian at ABC News taught us how to use news databases to find stories from local media that could serve as grist for our mill. On another occasion, I pretty much re-reported a Japanese magazine's story for Newsweek. The Japanese magazine's editor called me out privately, but I never paid any further price.

I marveled at how expensive databases with reams of news and information benefited us at big media companies, but weren't readily available to the public. One of the reasons I worked for large media companies (such as ABC, Newsweek and AP) was because of the information access they afforded.

I saw how my colleagues and I could resist calls for transparency in disclosing sources or methods because it was very hard for people to vet what we did and then share their concerns widely.

Meanwhile, the viewer or reader or listener pretty much had to take whatever we thought they should be given. At top-flight news organizations, we seldom talked about what the consumer might want. I would get sometimes looked at cross-eyed if I brought the topic up.

I remember the frustration I felt at always having to repeat the nut graf and essential information in a story, just in case someone reading it might not know the basics of what had already happened. I remember the Newsweek bureau chief in Tokyo telling me he was annoyed at being assigned a story that would cover the same ground as one done well by another news outlet.

As both a news professional and a news consumer, there was a constant feeling that I was missing something.

Digital media -- can we please stop calling them "new"? -- have changed it all.

I was exhilarated in my early years at ABCNews.com, where I was its founding international producer, when I got a Serb from Belgrade within the NATO bombing zone to email me missives, which I posted on the site. Sure, they were biased and sometimes myopic, but it was great to have someone who had bombs falling all around him making observations from his window, sending images, showing his feelings.

I remember, too, the enjoyment I felt getting screamed at from China for allowing what I believe was the first real-time chat between people in China and a major news website. In both instances, the experience was raw, unfiltered and direct from the source -- without any correspondent to tell us what was being said. The unlimited space, flexibility of time, and ability to bring others into the conversation broke down the barriers that the journalist can place, even inadvertently, between those involved in the news and those interested in it. (These were adjuncts, not the main story, and I don't believe we can or should do without journalists, editing and packaging. But I do think coverage is greatly enhanced by direct access to those involved.)

While watching the Paley Center's recent session, Education of the Entrepreneurial Journalist, I was glad to see Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, promise that, "We will have journalists who need to care about where audiences are and how they are going to reach those audiences."

But I was almost shocked that it had to be stated. Isn't it a given that journalists have to care about the audience? Are we still in an era when they don't?

Access to information has, obviously, improved as well. Search engines such as Google and myriad other information sources, from Twitter and Facebook to Digg and Delicious, have made it easier to be sure we don't miss what's relevant. They can also enable us to find serendipitous links that take us on new journeys. Sure, there's still proprietary information locked up in Factiva, Nexis and Bloomberg terminals, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me we have less access to good information today than we did before the web.

Journalists are also now held to a higher standard, and have to be more transparent. As everyone from Dan Rather to The New York Times and Reuters and many solo bloggers have found, any mistakes or distortions will be called out and publicized. You'll be hounded until you make a prominent correction. You may even have to find another line of work. No longer is it simply enough to say, "Trust us and our integrity. We have the brand and the access and the information."

The ability to link and refer to source documents has helped, too. I remember how I had to convince a boss in those early days of ABCNews.com to let a link or two replace a few paragraphs of background in order to save us space and effort, while also sparing readers the annoyance of repetition. Today, the link and search are our friends, and can give us not just the background, but also the source documents, raw interviews, and much more. Done right, journalism has new authenticity and credibility.

Democratization has also come to the business side. I used to wonder how it was that advertisers could place their ads without ever knowing much about the effect of their placement. Of course, we all knew that even though a placement in the front of a publication was deemed a choice spot, readers might pick up Newsweek just for the arts section and never get to the "front of the book." In the Washington Post, they might not go beyond the Style section, so a chunk of subscribers weren't being reached by ads in the front section.

Today, in digital media, advertisers can at least tell if their ads have been served to (and presumably seen by) a viewer. Yes, it's imperfect, but you can't convince me that digital media is less accountable than print or broadcast.

While I feel the pain of those who've lost their jobs -- I've both laid off people and been laid off myself -- there are now business models for news that work on the web, even if the traditionalists don't like it. Just ask Gawker Media, Gothamist, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos or Drudge Report, all of which are said to be profitable. I know it's still fashionable in some circles to curl your lip when referring to "bloggers," or to lament the mediocrity of so much web journalism. But there is real, strong journalism taking place, too.

I'm not saying today's media have made things all sweetness and light, that digital is saving us and everyone is holding hands and dancing together in sun-filled meadows. But we're getting some clarity about information sharing and attribution, fraud is being detected, fairness and even-handedness are being demanded, the megaphone is being shared, and advertisers are able to demand evidence that their ads are actually being seen.

Meanwhile, there is huge disruption. This is not a time for the faint of heart or those unwilling to learn and change. But, for so many reasons and in so many ways, things are better than they used to be.

Dorian Benkoil is consulting sales manager, and has devised marketing strategy for MediaShift. He is SVP at Teeming Media, a strategic media consultancy focused on helping digital media content identify and meet business objectives. He has devised strategies, business models and training programs for websites, social media, blog networks, events companies, startups, publications and TV shows. He Tweets at @dbenk.

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