Free labour from students, data visualisation and is the party over for social columnists? Today's best reading on new media.

Click on the headlines to read the full stories.

Reasons to buy newspapers

Manage for cash, not for investment. So, nothing new there, then. The Guardian reports. 

Cut out the middle man!

Publishers have let so many middlemen into their online advertising equation that they are losing a lot of revenue, according to Advertising Age

Location, location

Google wins the patent for location-based advertising – a “killer” card to have in your hand, writes Digital Beat.

Experience or exploitation?

The latest business model – get students to write your content. 

Twitter’s ad model

More about Twitter’s much talked-about advertising funded model. 

Internet killed the social columnist?

So says Sally Quinn, whose Washington Post column, The Party, detailing the lives of the power elite has been canned: “people don’t know each other any more … it’s just become far more toxic here.” 

Foreign language news struggling in Arabic market

International broadcasters are tripping over each other to get into the Arab-language news market. But it doesn’t seem to be winning hearts and minds, reports the Huffington Post

Links for sale

Should newspapers sell links as part of their business model? It raises interesting ethical issues. 

Net takes over

Americans are turning to the internet more for their news than to the TV, radio or newspapers, according to a Pew study quoted in the Washington Post

Everyone’s a reporter

The BBC’s crash course in citizen reporting.

Making information beautiful

And finally: get a load of this bloke’s work. A new breed of journalist/data visualiser