The Guardian is about back to normal, still not many pages on Media or Education but similar to most of last year.

Emily Bell writes about "Native Advertising" , latest description for apparently editorial content actually written by advertisers. Expect lots more of this, especially in digital streams such as Twitter etc.

(By the way I just retweeted a Huawei guide to security, I'm not at all sure about the UK situation)

Anyway there is one paragraph I would like to explore

Every person and institution can now make their own messages and potentially have as much impact as the largest corporation. The occlusion of motive is becoming more problematic in many areas of communication, but at least in native advertising there is an identifiable commercial transaction.

Is this eventually getting closer to recognising the bloggers and citizen journalists? I think she probably means that only the motives of proper journalists can be trusted. As memory serves towards the end of last year she claimed that only journalists can hold power to account. So the stream of bits and pieces has little consequence anyway, wherever it comes from.

I still would like to know more about why Guardian Talk Unlimited was closed down. The readers have since been segmented into various communities selected by the marketing department. Why was there no warning of the closure? Is there a backup somewhere? Could the people who contributed content ever get a copy to recycle? Who knew what when and soforth?

Emily Bell is also concerned about the state of proper journalism, as in the conditions of an interview.

When CBS's primetime current affairs show 60 Minutes recently ran an exclusive interview with Amazon boss and new newspaper owner Jeff Bezos, it pitched him no hard questions and allowed him to demonstrate his potty scheme for deliveries by drone. This was not advertising, but nor was it really journalism; the access the programme gained reduced its appetite for inquiry and analysis. Advertising is everywhere, as fluid and malleable as the streams it inhabits. And increasingly there will be no lines, blurred, blue or otherwise.

Jeff Bezos is not going to answer any questions he chooses not to. The future of the interview is unclear but may depend on questions that achieve volume. Not this blog then, readers seems to be asleep this year so far.