Is The Guardian investing in US expansion at the expense of its Sunday sister newspaper The Observer? It's a question worth asking as The Guardian tries to crack America again - just as a string of high-ranking staff quit The Obs, which has already seen its supplements and resources slashed.
The Obs business editor has left after only six months for The Times, the sports editor has also walked, and the editor of its weekly magazine has been moved after just over a year. Meanwhile, Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger is busy launching a news operation that "will be significantly larger than anything we've done in the States before". As part of this new bid to take Manhattan, The Guardian is hosting its first media summit in the US next month. It comes after the paper dropped its GuardianAmerica homepage in 2009 and its US boss Caroline Little quit last year, describing the effort to conquer America as "hard" and "challenging".
* Trinity Mirror boss Sly Bailey and other leading members of the alliance of media companies opposed to News Corp's BSkyB takeover brought along their lawyers, Slaughter and May, to meet Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt last Thursday in a last-ditch effort to persuade him to block the deal. Hunt, who plans to let the takeover proceed, is sifting through more than 38,000 responses to a public consultation which were received by last week's deadline. Meanwhile, News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch caught some of his own staff by surprise when he arrived in London late last week. It is understood that Murdoch has not seen Hunt. But it's not known if he has been meeting other ministers. Murdoch's bigger priority may be negotiating over the Sky share price with its deputy chairman Nicholas Ferguson, who represents the independent shareholders.
* The Times and Sunday Times clocked up 79,000 paying digital subscribers by the end of February, up from 50,000 on October 31. But this covers not only the paid-for website but also iPad and Kindle - so it remains hard to know just how well the internet paywall is working. Add in print subscribers who get free access to online and there are 228,000 digital users in all. Owner News International says it means total paid readership has increased 3% year on year - despite The Times' official print circulation falling 11.7%, or 49,000, to 446,000.
* Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but executives at The Guardian would like it to be known that The Times' two-page feature along the lines of "50 things you'll miss as a result of Government cuts" in yesterday's paper bears an uncanny resemblance to the same exercise that The Guardian did over six pages last Friday. "And they've even used many of the same case studies!" wails a Guardianista.
* News from clubland: News International boss Will Lewis, the former Daily Telegraph editor who scandalised Westminster by exposing MPs' expenses, is joining that pillar of the establishment - the Garrick Club. As well as many MPs, members include Lewis's old colleagues - Telegraph chief executive Murdoch MacLennan and columnist Simon Heffer.
* Amid the latest cuts and changes to BBC World Service, its radio transmission for European listeners on 648 kHz medium wave has been axed. To add insult to injury for hard-pressed World Service types, a report on Radio 4 announcing the closure repeatedly referred to it as "468".
