The Age Lowdown. Paul Ramadge, acting editor of The Age was on ABC’s 774 this morning, explaining the opportunity emerging from the meltdown, new headquarters, redundancies, editorial line up, the future for Fairfax cadetships, and so on. Listen here.

An Obama Presidency May Be Rough Going for Political Cartoonists. The last eight years haven’t been kind to many, but political cartoonists did have George W. Bush’s puffy face to expand, his ears to tug, and his policies to ridicule. The prospect of less easily mocked president is a challenge for cartoonists like Michael Ramirez, who is better than most at finding a way to satirize Obama and his policies without crossing lines real or imaginary. — Gawker

I’ll fight for ABC and SBS: Conroy. Australian television risks being flooded with overseas programs unless the resource-starved ABC and SBS are given more money, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says. — The Age 

Our Office Snacks Suffer at the Hands of the Bradley Effect. In what was perhaps a nod to the election year, the powers that be at New York Magazine recently allowed the entire staff to vote on which items would be sold via the vending machine in the kitchen. In what is, we hope, not a nod to the election year, the results demonstrated a strong Bradley Effect. — New York Magazine

Tech giants and human rights groups plan effort to protect online speech. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a group of human rights and public interest organizations plan to introduce a global code of conduct Wednesday that they say will better protect online free speech and privacy against government intrusion. — International Herald Tribune

Google settles dispute over online books. Google has reached a landmark agreement with authors and publishers to make millions of books available online, in a deal that includes a $125m (£80m) payout and the end to lawsuits filed by companies including Penguin. — The Guardian

Why McCain is getting hosed in the press. Okay, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico. And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues. So what? — Politico

Christian Science Monitor to cease publishing print newspaper. The Christian Science Monitor will end weekday publication of its print edition next April, concentrating on a daily Web model. The Monitor will also be adding a Sunday magazine. Please excuse the wildly-misleading New York Times headline that says the Monitor will be online only. In fact, the new magazine will cost more per issue than the old weekday publication. — The Journalism Iconoclast

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace. His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination. David Wallace was an A student through high school, he played football, he played tennis, he wrote a philosophy thesis and a novel before he graduated from Amherst, he went to writing school, published the novel, made a city of squalling, bruising, kneecapping editors and writers fall moony-eyed in love with him. He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive in the contemporary world, accepted a special chair at California’s Pomona College to teach writing, married, published another book and, last month, hanged himself at age 46. — Rolling Stone Magazine