When the Supreme Court's health care ruling was announced, it was almost a full day before the next morning's newspaper was published. Yet most papers played the day-old news as if it were fresh. Sam Kirkland, a copy desk intern at a Florida newspaper, offers a theory: "Here’s my hunch: We went through the motions because it’s how we’ve always done it — and because it makes us feel important ... But newspapers don’t write the first drafts of history any more."

A foundation-backed effort aimed at improving environmental coverage is falling flat, Curtis Brainard writes in Columbia Journalism Review's The Observatory. At first, the Project for Improved Environmental Coverage tried to get news outlets to endorse a vision statement, but no major organizations agreed to sign on. Now, Brainard quotes project director Tyson Miller: “we’re kind of rethinking our strategy — being more advocacy focused than partnership focused.”

Emily Henry throws down the gauntlet on the Online Journalism Review by listing 10 things that make online journalists better than their hidebound predecessors. For one thing, they write better: "SEO will not allow us to write vague headlines or use bad puns, and we only have the attention our [sic] audience for about three blinks, so we have to practice all of George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing at once." Henry's bio identifies her as a Patch.com editor.

When was the last time you checked a newspaper to see what's playing at a movie theater, or to find out how your favorite sports team did? If you're like most Americans, it's probably been a while, Stijn Debrouwere writes. Instead you go to a web site that specializes in that subject: "Much of what they facilitate or do doesn’t look like journalism at all," Debrouwere says. "But you’d be naive if you thought their services aren’t often consumed instead of news."