The American Society of Newspaper Editors reports, "Nearly 2,000 journalists left the newspaper industry last year, the largest loss in 25 years, while the percent of minority journalists working at daily newspapers rose nearly a half of one percentage point to 12.07 percent." In their annual census of newsrooms, ASNE found that most of the losses were reporters at medium-size newspapers. "In 2001, many publishers and editors offered buyouts to senior staffers and laid off other employees as the industry struggled to cope with the recession and a decline in advertising," ASNE writes.

Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now reports: "Yesterday [Monday], Democracy Now saw a CNN news zipper announcing that the Ramallah offices of CNN, Fox and other networks had been raided by the Israeli military. It also said that the news organizations had been told to run their reports by the Israeli authorities. But after scouring the internet and wires last night, we could find no other reports of this, aside from a sentence buried in a CNN story confirming that 'Israeli forces raided the offices of several news organizations and one U.S.

Arctic Power, a lobbying organization that promotes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, has ended its $4-million account with Qorvis Communication reports PR trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Arctic Power says there is a conflict of interest since Qorvis also is working for Saudi Arabia. One of Arctic Power's key arguments for opening ANWR to oil drilling is that it would reduce US dependence on foreign oil, particularly Middle-Eastern oil. The US is Saudi Arabia's second top export market.