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We’re approaching critical mass on the bird-flu story, which has been several years in the making. Today’s Globe and Herald both cover Gov. Mitt Romney’s plans to deal with a pandemic, should it ever come. The disease has spread to Turkey, although so far bird flu remains primarily a killer of animals, not humans.

Is the panic warranted? Given that we can expect the story to overtake tales of missing white women on the cable channels any moment now, this is a good time to re-examine an article published by The New Republic back in September. The piece, by science writer Wendy Orent (free link here), argues that the incipient panic over bird flu is much ado about nothing – which is certainly good news if it’s true. Here’s the nut:

ORENT: Is the Big Flu coming? Judging from such predictions, it must be. But it’s not. The expert predictions don’t take into account the evolutionary events necessary to turn an avian flu virus into a mass human killer. In ignoring the evolution of infectious disease, flu experts, science writers, and public health officials are leading us down the same path we’ve followed too many times before, with Swine Flu, Ebola, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Read the whole thing. Orent explains, in a reasonably understandable manner, how unlikely it is that the disease would mutate into a mass killer of humans, and why this isn’t like 1918. For one thing, she argues, the packed, disease-friendly conditions of World War I trench warfare were crucial to the flu’s evolving into a deadly pandemic. Those conditions simply don’t exist today.

Then again, the first comment to Orent’s article begins, “That article was so poorly written and ignorant of flu history & fact as to be appalling. Amazing that they let it be printed.” So caveat emptor.

Update: Does anyone remember the old Dave Berg cartoon in Mad Magazine about the woman who tries to join a conversation about Greece and Turkey, only to start babbling about grease and turkey? It’s sexist, but apt, given that this post involves bird flu and the nation of Turkey – not bird flu and, you know, turkey. If you got confused, as one commenter did, forgive yourself. It’s an easy mistake to make

One of my media-law students called my attention to this article in Editor & Publisher about efforts to draft a federal law that would protect journalists from having to give up their confidential sources. The upshot is that Sen. Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who’s co-sponsoring the legislation, says those protections would probably not be extended to bloggers.

“As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along,” Lugar was quoted as saying at a media conference. “Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider real journalists? Probably not, but how do you determine who will be included in this bill?”

The article, written by E&P’s Mark Fitzgerald, notes an additional difficulty: the problems inherent in defining who’s a journalist and who isn’t would necessarily lead to government licensing of journalists, whether anyone would dare call it that or not.

Lugar says he was moved by the plight of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, as we all know, served 85 days in jail recently before she was given leave by her White House source, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, both to identify him and to discuss their conversations with respect to the Valerie Plame investigation. (At least that’s Miller’s version of what happened. Howard Kurtz has a good piece in today’s Washington Post on how the uproar over Miller’s credibility is affecting the demoralized Times newsroom.)

But it’s unimaginable that any shield law would be strong enough to allow someone like Miller to remain silent. That’s because the U.S. Supreme Court found in 1972 that there is no constitutional right for a reporter to protect his or her confidential sources if called on to do so as part of a criminal investigation. The decision, Branzburg v. Hayes, was muddled enough that it led many judges to use a balancing test, calling reporters to testify only if the information they had was crucial and there was no place else to get it. But even if that balancing test had been used, Miller probably still would have been called. And an absolute shield law could be struck down as an unconstitutional encroachment on the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, among other things.

Still, some form of federal shield law would be welcome. Every state except Wyoming either has a shield law or a state court decision recognizing a limited right by reporters to shield their sources. The questions, then, remain: Who’s covered and who isn’t? And what about the bloggers?

I think the solution is to protect journalism rather than journalists. If a blogger is engaged in something that can clearly be defined as journalism, then she should enjoy the same rights and protection as a card-carrying member of the MSM. It’s absurd to think, for instance, that a professional journalist such as Josh Marshall, who writes the blog Talking Points Memo, could be denied protections extended to Miller and Time’s Matthew Cooper.

I realize that if deciding who’s a journalist is difficult, determining what journalism is could be even more vexing. Certainly you’d need some guidelines. And, as another one of my students pointed out, you’d have to make sure that the shield didn’t extend to someone who set up a blog solely for the purpose of avoiding the grand jury.

But judges have to make these kinds of decisions all the time. Surely it would be better to handle it on a case-by-case basis than to exclude all bloggers from whatever protections Congress might pass into law.

Yesterday I had a chance to take part in a panel discussion at Northeastern’s Snell Library titled “Public/Private: Intersections in New Media.” The event is over, but the Web site lives on. An essay I wrote for the site is online here, but please be sure to read those of the other participants as well.

Here’s the lead of a Washington Post story today on the White House’s attempts to use religion in order to shore up the prospects of President Bush’s embattled Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers:

POST: President Bush said yesterday that it was appropriate for the White House to invoke Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s religion in making the case for her to skeptical conservatives, triggering a debate over what role, if any, her evangelical faith should play in the confirmation battle.

Bush said religion is part of Miers’s overall background much like her work as a corporate lawyer in Texas, and that “our outreach program has been just to explain the facts to people.” At the same time, his attorney general went on television and described Miers as “pro-life.” But the White House said her religious and personal views would not affect her ability to serve as a neutral justice.

“People ask me why I picked Harriet Miers,” Bush said in response to a reporter’s question at an Oval Office appearance with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. “They want to know Harriet Miers’s background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers’s life is her religion.”

But when White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked about this yesterday, he said the inordinate public attention on Miers’ religious beliefs was – you guessed it – the fault of the media. Here is the end of a long exchange:

Q: It seems that what you’re doing is trying to calm a revolt on the right concerned that Harriet Miers isn’t conservative enough, by saying, it’s okay, she is conservative enough, because she goes to this church.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, it seems like the media wants to focus on things other than her qualifications. Maybe your news organization would rather focus on things other than her qualifications and record. The President believes we should focus on her qualifications and her record and her judicial philosophy. And that’s what we emphasize.

Talk about trying to have it both ways.

The Post also reports today that some Bush administration officials grumbled that Miers wasn’t even qualified to be White House counsel when she was named to succeed Alberto Gonzales, now the attorney general. Supposedly they’ve changed their minds.

The incredibly ugly duckling gets a makeover. Check out this front page. I hope this doesn’t lead to an identity crisis.

Even as the New York Times Co. shrinks its second-largest newspaper, the Boston Globe, the corporate side continues to invest in ventures of dubious journalistic value. Sidekick, of course, is the most visible example. But Media Nation reader M.S. found this yesterday on the Globe’s BostonWorks.com Web site. Here are the first few lines:

Globe Specialty Products

(a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boston Globe) is launching a series of small circulation, 100% household penetration publications, the Exchange.

* We need an Account Executive NOW (6 more by January ’06)

We will pay $30k salary + Commission + Bonus + Expenses + Medical, Dental, Disability, Life Insurance, 401K, Pension Plan, Stock Purchase Plan, Paid Vacations, Holiday and Sick Pay.

You should expect first year earnings of $55K. 2nd Year $75K+

So what is the Exchange going to be? It sounds like a freely distributed suburban shopper, primed to compete with the Boston Herald’s chain of weekly suburban newspapers. But “small circulation” suggests something else.

This is fine if the Exchange makes money and enables the Globe to invest in news-gathering. But that certainly hasn’t been the case with the nearly ad-free Sidekick, has it?

WRKO Radio (AM 680) has announced the format of its new morning show, “Boston This Morning,” which will be helmed by current morning host Scott Allen Miller. From the sounds of this press release, it could be a step in the right direction, with more news, regular traffic updates (“Traffic on the Ones”) and a closer relationship with the Boston Herald.

It’s hardly revolutionary, and it still doesn’t explain why the station’s managers thought it necessary to part with Miller’s co-host, former congressman Peter Blute. Nevertheless, a newsier format should help ‘RKO carve out a different audience from that of sister station WEEI (AM 850), where frat-boy hosts Gerry Callahan and John Dennis rule the ratings roost with a mixture of sports, right-wing politics and execrable taste.

Overall, though, I think a wait-and-see attitude makes sense when it comes to WRKO. This afternoon, Howie Carr invited callers to play what I think he calls “Celebrity Death Watch,” in which people predict which well-known person will be next to die. Carr chortled that it was something the previous station managers – recently departed (in the employment sense, that is) – wouldn’t let him do. Well, good for them. And yes, I should disclose here that I was able to cash a few checks from WRKO thanks to their willingness to put me on the air.

If you’re hoping the new regime cares about quality, Carr’s sneering putdown of his former bosses’ half-hearted attempts to impose some standards wasn’t a good sign.

Last night I did something I don’t think I’d ever done before. I hadn’t had a chance to spend much time with the Sunday Globe. But instead of grabbing the paper, I reached for my iBook.

Obviously this wasn’t the first time I’d read the Boston Globe online. But it was probably the first time I’d read it that way even though the paper version was close at hand. I simply didn’t want to fumble through the sections or get my hands dirty. I also wanted to be able to make the type bigger. And since the light in our living room isn’t ideal for reading, using my laptop enabled me to read on a screen that provides its own light.

As I observed a couple of days ago in my post on Ken Auletta’s latest, we may finally be reaching a tipping point. I’ll use our household as an example, and I don’t think we’re that unusual. We have a family iMac with a DSL connection that’s generally on 24 hours a day. The DSL modem is plugged into an AirPort base station, which transmits a WiFi signal throughout the house. Mrs. Media Nation and I each have an Apple laptop with built-in WiFi reception. So it’s effortless to take our laptops anywhere in the house and log on to the Web.

Combine that with the fact that newspaper Web sites are now good enough to become real alternatives to their print counterparts, and the need for a newspaper is beginning to vanish.

Frankly, I’m not crazy about the Globe’s Web site. Many photos are omitted, stories are listed in no particular order, and the designers conspire at every turn to dump you into Boston.com, the Globe’s übersite. But some newspaper sites are better than print.

For instance, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina came during a week when I lacked ready access to the print version of the New York Times. Every morning I’d spend about an hour on a public computer at Northeastern, reading the Times’ coverage – and looking intently at the photos, which were brilliant and on-register in a way that print can rarely achieve, and organized into Flash-based slide shows. Given how attractive and well-organized NYTimes.com is, it’s starting to become difficult to justify the $600 (plus $180 or so in tips) that we spend each year on the print edition. That’s a heck of a lot more than the $60 a year the Times is now charging for online access to its columnists.

I’m also rethinking my print subscription to The New Republic. I’ve started to get renewal notices asking for upwards of $70. Yet if I subscribe to the digital edition only, it will cost me just $30. Moreover, I’ve already read this week’s edition online, and have yet to receive the print edition in the mail.

In today’s Times, both David Carr and Katharine Seelye have worthwhile features on the increasingly digital future of the troubled newspaper business. After years of hype, it’s starting to feel like the future is finally here.

It’s rarely his main argument. No, it’s some throwaway line that he appears to have given zero thought to so that he can get to his main point. It’s like Dylan tossing off the cringe-inducing “What’s the point of changing horses in midstream?” before chilling you to the bone with “I’m going out of my mind with a pain that stops and starts.” (Don’t get me wrong: Brooks is no Dylan.)

Today’s example is the lead of an otherwise halfway decent column (sub. req.) on how tired Brooks is of business as usual in Washington. Brooks’s first sentence: “After a while, you get sick of the DeLays of the right and the Deans of the left.”

Try to wrap your mind around the logic behind that particular sentence. If you visit Media Nation often, then you know that I am not a fan of Dean. But still. To compare a moderately successful former governor with not a whiff of misconduct on his C.V. to DeLay, the luxuriantly corrupt House Republican leader, is idiotic and offensive.

Perhaps Brooks gave it no thought whatsoever. The more sinister interpretation is that Brooks did think about it – and that he looks at it as his little contribution to the media-driven flattening-out of political discourse, in which one man’s politically inspired threats, ties to lobbyists who happen to be under investigation, and his own possible criminal wrongdoing are equated with another man’s … unpleasantness.

Sheesh.

I’m late to the party in commenting on Ken Auletta’s article about the corporate wars being fought at the Los Angeles Times. The New Yorker chose not to post Auletta’s story on its Web site, though it should show up eventually at Auletta’s own site. Editor & Publisher posted highlights earlier this week. But it wasn’t until last night that I finally had a chance to read the entire article for myself. So I don’t have much profound to add to what’s already been said.

I don’t read the L.A. Times except for an occasional article on its Web site, and only then because a blogger – usually Romenesko – has pointed to it. Still, there’s no doubt that the Times is one of our great papers, and I’ve taken some interest in it since reading David Halberstam’s “The Powers That Be” in the 1970s.

Auletta, in his patented polite, understated manner, details the clash between the Times’ top two editors and the Tribune Co., whose executives appear to be suffering from a combination of profit-crazed greed and journalistic envy. The problem is that Tribune’s flagship, the Chicago Tribune, is both a bigger money-maker and a lesser newspaper than the Times. The ostensible good guys in this piece are Times editor John Carroll, who recently left, and Dean Baquet, who moved up from Carroll’s second-in-command to the top post following Carroll’s departure. But Carroll and Baquet, in Auletta’s telling, come off as editors with some flaws of their own.

Auletta is sometimes criticized for excessive delicacy, but I think that criticism is wrong-headed. People say things – sometimes outrageous things – to Auletta, and if he refrains from plunging in the knife, he nevertheless affords them every opportunity to perform ritual suicide. My favorite moment comes from Baquet, commenting on his and Carroll’s efforts to staff up the Times with talent from across the country, often at the expense of building a local identity. Baquet told Auletta that “we still haven’t mastered making the paper feel like it is edited in Los Angeles.”

Good grief. Is this really the man who is Los Angeles’ best hope to stave off the bean-counting barbarians from Chicago? As Mickey Kaus – entirely up to the task of offsetting Auletta’s bile deficit – observes, this lack of a local sensibility is so pervasive that the Times this week didn’t even manage to report that Al Qaeda may have targeted Los Angeles’ tallest building. This Kaus post on Auletta’s piece is worth reading, too.

Though Auletta’s article is ultimately about a great – or perhaps potentially great – newspaper’s soul, what really struck me was its end-of-an-era feel – not just for the L.A. Times, but for the newspaper business in general. For years, everyone has predicted that the Internet would eventually kill the newspaper industry as we know it. Lately, though, it seems that it’s finally happening.

Auletta writes, for example, that even as newspaper circulation is falling, the L.A. Times’ Web site attracts 4.6 million unique visitors per month, the Washington Post’s 10.4 million and the New York Times’ 12.5 million. These sites are loaded with advertising, and though their content is free (except for N.Y. Times columnists), their corporate owners also do not have to pay for printing and delivery. Somehow, though, the Web versions of these papers have not been successful enough to relieve the financial pressures on these papers. And, as Auletta notes, the industry is going through another round of cost-cutting, with the New York Times Co. recently announcing reductions at its flagship, the Times, and at its second-largest paper, the Boston Globe.

Theoretically there’s no reason why large daily newspapers can’t make the transition to the Web. I suspect that the biggest problem right now is that newspapers have been forced to invest in their Web sites even as they continue to pay for printing and distribution of the paper product. Eliminate that enormous production cost, and the bottom line might look a lot better.

Still, there’s a real question as to whether large, centralized newsgathering operations can survive the transition to an online world. They’re needed as much as ever, but the Web – and blogland, the sexy subset of the moment – favors opinion over fact, speed over depth, emotion over analysis.

Blogs – good ones, anyway – are wonderful in many ways, but they’re no substitute for the fair, neutral reporting that is the central mission of newspapers and other mainstream outlets. Ultimately, Auletta’s article is a meditation on whether that mission is on the verge of being abandoned.