Planet Janet’s in orbit — and reporting on the ‘freak-show’ of London G20 protests. No doubting her acuity — in the first line of her Oz blog post “Beyond the G20 freak-show protestors“, Albrechtsen identifies University of East London academic “Chris Night” as a leader of the protests. Most people would reflect on the fact that “Night” isn’t a common surname and do a quick google to find that “Chris Knight” is in fact the academic in question. The woman can’t even paste properly. — Guy Rundle

Molly Meldrum does a Derryn on ABC Adelaide Afternoons. Molly graced South Australian Aunty listeners with his rather interesting ramblings yesterday afternoon, when friend Russell Morris passed him the phone during an interview with Carole Whitelock. The highlight? Whitelock replies to Meldrum’s mumblings: “It’s 4:30pm there, Molly. So is this a late lunch or early start?” Listen here.

Twitter is O.V.A Twitter’s cred took a blow this morning when Kochie and Mel flashed their interweb credentials by referencing tweets when discussing the Sydney blackout. Kochie noted that Twitter had been stormed by zombies during the black out (check out PC World’s report on the subject) and Mel weighed in with “Twitter is cool.” Koch then pretended to be a zombie… Cue mass exodus from Twitter in the coming days…

News.com.au on privacy. Hmm… Is it in the public interest to publish the phone number of this man? We suggest Colin Strange switches his mobile straight to voice message:

Qantas not a happy working family. Baggage handlers at Sydney Airport staged a stop-work demonstration yesterday temporarily delaying passengers as they protested against job cuts, working conditions and safety concerns. Qantas produced its senior spokesman who proceeded to lash the unions and the work force. It was none other than David Epstein, until recently Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff when “working families” were all the rage. — Anonymous Crikey reader

Idol: Mathison out. James Mathison has quit as host of Australian Idol after six years with the Ten series, citing a desire to be out of the public spotlight and focus on his own music. “There is a part of me who has a little bit struggled with being ‘that guy from that thing’ and taking a step back totally allows you to do what you want to do without that scrutiny,” the 31-year-old told the Daily Telegraph . — TV Tonight

Record profits for newspaper publisher. Newspaper publishers may be suffering in Britain and the US, but Germany’s Axel Springer, which owns Europe’s largest-selling paper, Bild, recently reported the highest profit in its 62-year history. Springer’s 2008 core profit of €486.2m outstripped its 2007 total of €470m. Its revenue rose by 5.8% to €2.73bn. Chief executive Mathias Döpfner said: “I don’t believe in the end of journalism. On the contrary, I think the crisis can have a positive impact. The number of players will diminish, but the strong players may be stabler after the crisis.” — The Guardian

Announcing the launch of the Huffington Post investigative fund. The nonprofit Huffington Post Investigative Fund, launched by Arianna Huffington today, ll produce a wide-range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers. It will provide new opportunities for seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement. The pieces developed by the Fund will range from long-form investigations to short breaking news stories and will be presented in a variety of media, including text, audio and video. And, in the open source spirit of the Web, all of the content the Fund produces will be free for anyone to publish. — Huffington Post

How Twitter saved the celebrity PR. It turns out that media gatekeepers were really saving celebrities from themselves. As anyone who’s written a magazine profile knows, what editors and readers want is an appealing, well-told story — not a numbing stream of trivia. And that means discarding far more material than one can ever use. Facebook, Twitter blogs, and other media of the moment are a repository for that cutting-room floor — the ephemeral discards of mostly mundane lives. One man’s trash is sometimes another man’s treasure. But more often, it’s just trash. — Defamer

Metro USA newspapers to drop AP wire stories. In another sign of the recession’s toll on newspapers, free daily publisher Metro USA has terminated its contract with the Associated Press and as of Wednesday will no longer carry content from the wire service, the company announced Monday. The papers have small reporting staffs and have traditionally relied on wire service stories to fill their pages. Metro USA says its own staffers will now play more of a role. “We believe that the future of our titles lies in producing as much of our own material as possible,” Tony Metcalf, editor in chief of Metro USA, said in a statement. “By relying more on our own reporting staff, we make a substantial saving while protecting the newspapers’ quality and improving relevance to our local markets.” — Crain’s New York Business

Twitter celebrity: a guide. I accidentally raised a little controversy when I added myself as a joke to the #celebrity section of WeFollow. People either told me that I was dreaming (fair!) or that I actually was a celebrity, but only on Twitter. I wondered, what is a Twitter celebrity? After twelve minutes of intense thought, I have come to a conclusion. — The Mind of Alex

Vice online TV channel set for Aussie version . Australia is going to see a local launch for Vice magazine’s online TV channel VBS in the next few months, company founder Shane Smith has told Mumbrella during a flying visit to Sydney. The co-founder of the magazine was in Australia for talks with the TV networks about putting Vice content on air. Vice has created a series of programmes for its VBS online network. Among the best known is the documentary Heavy Metal In Baghdad . He told Mumbrella: “A lot of the networks are interested in putting our stuff on the air.” — Mumbrella

How to make your online video go viral. There’s a world of difference between building a video campaign intended to go viral and actually having the target consumer embrace and extend it. The interest gap between embraced and stalled viral video ad campaigns is massive: as much as 20 times in terms of total campaign reach. Here’s how your video can hit the ground running… — Advertising Age

Oh f-ck. Online advertising only grew by like, 11% in 2008. Okay this has got to stop already. A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers says that (dun dun duuun) online advertising grew by 10.6% in 2008. The Wall Street Journal , in its infinite wisdom, pins this as a bad thing since, after all, 2007 saw 27% growth. Yeah yeah, there’s a recession. And since there was so much growth, everyone and their brother got into the online adspace selling game, and holy crap ad space got devalued amidst a ricockulous recession. Can this stop being a surprise, please? — MediaBistro