Left-wing U.S. bloggers, including Daily Kos editor David Waldman and former Moveon.org lobbyist Tom Matzzie, who now heads the Campaign to Defend America, will spend six days in Israel as the guests of the Israeli government. The trip is sponsored and organized by the Solomon Project. The bloggers will "meet with Israeli bloggers, journalists and Knesset officials," reports Yitzhak Benhorin. "The Foreign Affairs Ministry has long since been exerting considerable efforts to bring the prominent writers for an extensive tour of the country, in recognizing the influence many of the writers wield and the fact some of them represent websites that are less-than-friendly towards the (sic) Israel." The bloggers will receive briefings on Israel's perception of the security situation and will tour the area between Gaza and the West Bank, known as Israel's "narrow waistline," to illustrate the "true meaning of a return to the borders of June 4th 1967." These borders are spelled out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, and were the basis of the Oslo process. The bloggers may also meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni.

The CBS television network is discussing "a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN," reports Tim Arango. (The network denies the report.) The discussions reflect "a strategic shift in the face of changing market forces by the network that is widely credited as having invented television news. ... While broadcast television as a medium is in decline because new platforms -- the Internet, mobile devices -- are fragmenting audiences, the problems at CBS News are more acute. While overall evening news viewership across the three networks declined 5 percent last year, CBS’s fell 13 percent." But newspapers are feeling even more heat, according to Eric Alterman. "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years," he writes. "Most managers in the industry have reacted to the collapse of their business model with a spiral of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches. Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared." Alterman worries that the decline of traditional media and the rise of citizen journalism are creating "a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism." (Meanwhile, work for internet journalists has become so demanding that the New York Times says it may be killing them.)

After Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign announced that Burson-Marsteller (B-M) CEO Mark Penn was no longer its chief strategist, the PR firm distributed a set of talking points for "clients and staff." The memo states that "it is more important than ever for us as leaders of this firm to communicate that we are more focused than ever on achieving our clients' goals." The memo claims that B-M lost the $300,000-a-year contract with the Colombian government because "our work for them was reported in the media." However, the Embassy stated that the contract was canceled because of Penn's comment that it "was an error in judgment" to meet with the Colombian ambassador, which they believed demonstrated "a lack of respect to Colombians." The memo states that Penn "will continue to advise the Clintons and the campaign" but that no longer being "chief strategist" will "afford him more time" to advise B-M clients.

Olympic Torch Protest in ParisIn the wake of the widespread protests in Tibet and growing protests along the route of the Olympic Torch Relay, the Chinese government is looking to recruit a public relations firm to advise the government "on strategies to repair its image before the Beijing Olympics." Jim Pickard and Richard McGregor report that "several British and U.S. agencies were invited to interviews with Chinese officials to discuss a contract, which includes pre-games PR strategies, media training and market research on western perceptions of China." The new contract would be in addition to Hill & Knowlton's role in advising the Beijing Organizing Committee, which is responsible for organizing the Olympic Games. It would also be separate from "an invitation issued in Beijing several months ago by the State Council Information Office for pitches on how to brand China around the world."