It's a sad day in medialand when the Tribune, a company that's posting a 20 percent profit margin starts laying off reporters. Memo to newspaper companies: If you have less reporters and less news in your product, less people will buy it. Which will lead to less profit, not more. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.

We, of course, are non-profit and would never cave in to Wall Street by axing reporters. Or we wouldn't if we actually had a reporting staff, anyway.

After a day spent on the phone with the IRS, JP Morgan Chase and a host of other fine people, we are finally equipped to accept your online donations. So please... donate

One of the best things about putting this site together is all of the good music I've been listening to lately. I'm choosing mp3's for our Daily Download section, and the stuff Chicago bands are sending me is a reminder of how incredible this city's music scene is.

WaPo's Mary Jordan reports on a spicy new book by Britains former ambassador to the U.S. Prime Minister Tony Blair was so "seduced" by the "proximity and glamour of American power" that he failed to use his leverage with President Bush to slow the rush to war with Iraq. Who knew that Bush and glamour would ever appear in the same sentence?

One of the challenges of running a fledgling non-profit is paying the bills. I'm hoping to do that by freelancing for magazines and newspapers. Because I had a series of cushy newspaper jobs for most of the last decade, it's been a long time since I've looked at Writer's Market.

Two things struck me immediately:

1) This is 2005. I don't care if you're the largest magazine on earth. You should accept e-mail submissions. Paper is for mortgages and newspapers. Or perhaps just for mortgages.

2) Freelance rates haven't gone up since 1995. A...more