Kevin: Rafat Ali reports at paidContent: "as bigger portals continue to buy local sites (Patch, EveryBlock), newspapers continue to close them: latest example is Washington Post (NYSE: WPO), which is closing its only standalone local site LoudonExtra, two years after the hyperlocal site launched. The rationale from the company, as told to Loudoun Independent, by a WaPo spokesperson: 'We found that our experiment with LoudounExtra.com as a separate site was not a sustainable model.'"

Kevin: Steve Rubel highlights a nice feature that allows you to save articles to read on any mobile device via a service called Instapaper. Google Reader now allows you bookmark any article either on the desktop or via the mobile application and be able to read it using Instapaper. Very useful.

Kevin: This article says that Twitter and other social networks are increasingly the focus on hackers, but the Web Hacking Incidents Database report comes with a pretty significant health warning, it only focuses on 44 hacking incidents. Any change in a dataset that small will seem large in percentage terms.

Kevin: Patrick Smith at paidContent:UK writes: "All you need to know about newspaper circulation is that it’s dropping rapidly, and the decline shows no sign of slowing."

Kevin: John Ridding, chief executive of The Financial Times accuses general news publications who don't consider paid content guilty of fatalism. However, looking at the purchases that Person has made, it's quite clear that they are looking to target lucrative speciality finance verticals. This makes perfect business sense, and you can use this strategy to support journalism, just not by trying to charge for generic news content. Think of how newspapers have supported their businesses in the past and reconstruct premium verticals around it.