Future-of-Journalism story roundup

• Slate's Jack Shafer argues that the 20% profit margins to which newspaper publishers have become accustomed are a historical anomaly. He contends newspapers have a choice: 1) Lower profit expectations to 10% or so and invest anything above that back into the product. 2) Buoy margins with cost cuts that end up killing the golden goose.
• Jeff Jarvis says running newswire copy and maintaining costly non-local news bureaus don't make sense in an age of hyperlinks. In discussions with my wife -- a newspaper graphics artist making the transition to the Web -- I've come to the same conclusion.
• Cnet reports that bloggers think Microsoft's new Reader software (not to be confused with this Microsoft Reader) is dead on arrival. When I first wrote about this software several months ago, I praised its ability to prioritize stories and highlight photos and graphics with a newspaper-like layout. But I also wondered whether users would have to download a separate application for each publication they wanted to to read. Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Apparently no one at Microsoft or any of its publishing partners realize that most people prefer a single application to read everything: it's called a Web browser. As I said in my initial review, Microsoft's Reader should be a browser plug-in that can work with any specially formatted site, not a standalone application -- and certainly not a set of them.