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The trailblazing blog PaidContent, specializing in coverage of the business of new media, will be acquired by the Guardian Media Group, writes Kara Swisher tonight in a very sweet scoop. As Swisher says, it's a coup for new media - but it's another great move by the Guardian Media Group as well.

Kara Swisher expects an announcement tomorrow, but the deal was essentially confirmed a few minutes ago on Twitter in a conversation between the Guardian's Technology Editor Charles Arthur and travel writer Craig McGinty. Jeff Jarvis also says he's got embargoed info on it - so this sounds very real. Below are our thoughts about what it means.

Last night at Guardian News & Media's internal Future of Journalism conference, Arianna Huffington revealed that her Huffington Post property is planning to expand into local news. Initially, the site will launch an edited news aggregation site (similar to the main Huffington Post web site) localized for the US metro area around Chicago, Illinois. The site will be managed by a single editor to start. "We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news [sic], not just the political blogging the way we began," Huffington said to the conference attendees.

Sarah Perez wrote today: "When Amazon introduced their e-book reader, the Kindle, Steve Jobs made a strong proclamation regarding the book industry that received a lot of attention: "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore [...]" As it turns out, he was only half-right. People read, even those in the younger generation, they just prefer to do it online." Backing that sentiment up was a comment by Sean Mulholland, who said that he's a good example of a digital native: "I hardly ever read books. Probably only about one or two a year, and even then they're typically non-fiction as opposed to 'literature'."

When Amazon introduced their e-book reader, the Kindle, Steve Jobs made a strong proclamation regarding the book industry that received a lot of attention: "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore." As it turns out, he was only half-right. People read, even those in the younger generation, they just prefer to do it online.

The other day I was sitting in the bank watching a clerk copy information off a paper bank transfer to initiate a new wire transfer. Being a busy person I hate inefficiencies, and this was just plain bad. When I asked why the bank didn't use an electronic copy to speed up the process, the clerk replied that using an electronic copy can create mistakes and cause liability for the bank. In the same way that people are mistrustful of electronic elections, they believe that a human being copying from a piece of paper is less prone to make mistakes than doing the same thing electronically.