Working with numbers is becoming more important than ever for journalists. 

Vast amounts of data are being collected online, investigative journalism outfits like ProPublica are doing more and more work with large sets of publicly available data, and data visualisations are increasingly becoming a standard part of reporting. At the end of last year, Amy Webb, CEO of Webbmedia, named 'Big Data' as her first prediction of a major tech trend for 2011. 

The Washington Post is encouraging its own journalists to get more involved in the comment threads on its website. Comments from Post staffers are marked out by "WP staff" insignia, and their involvement may do something to soften the tone of discussion, writes Nieman Lab.

"So... What are you working on?" 

Now some Guardian journalists are prepared to give us the answer to that question, as yesterday the paper unrolled Newsdesk live, a blog that promises to "bring you the news as we break it, explain how we choose what we report and why - and ask you to get involved."

This new blog from The Guardian's national news team puts the audience at the heart of the news-writing process, asking them to get in touch via comments, emails or Tweets to provide editors with ideas and information to help create stories. 

The BBC's Community Reporters Scheme, which was launched in London last year, is set to be rolled out in Salford and Glasgow too, reports Journalism.co.uk. The scheme aims to give training to budding journalists at the same time as highlighting local stories in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. 

Nieman Lab has published a write-up of Weave, a piece of data visualisation software that has "a lot of potential for journalists".

The African National Congress said on Tuesday that an independent media appeals tribunal is the most effective way to regulate print media, news24 reported.
"The ANC believes in independent regulation. This may differ with the interpretation that is commonly assigned to our proposal, which has been misinterpreted as having state regulation of the media" said ANC executive committee member Jessie Duarte.

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof reports on the two Swedish journalists serving and 11-year prison sentence in Ethiopia. 

PBS Media Shift has published a guide to crowdfunding public media projects. 

Gavin Aronsen describes being one of the six journalists arrested at the Occupy Oakland protests. 

A former editor of Cosmopolitan, Helen Gurley Brown, has given $30 million on behalf of her late husband to establish an institute for media innovation at Standford and Columbia, reports Poynter. 

Post Politics wrote that, for the past few weeks, it had been asking readers to share links to their favourite election coverage by tweeting @PostPolitics or with the hashtag #campaignreads. The Post's political team now curates these Tweets using Storify, and publishes them on its new page. 

The initiative has potential benefits for Post journalists and their readers. Firstly it helps the Post "filter the deluge of campaign coverage" by asking its users for selection of the articles they enjoyed the most. Secondly it gives readers prominence by crediting them on the campaignreads.com if the Post uses articles that they've shared.

Twitter has announced that it will begin selectively blocking Tweets in some countries. 

Buzzfeed reports that in December 2011 Mail Online reached 45.3 million users, compared to 44.8 million reached by the The New York Times.

Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke told Buzzfeed in an interview that growing US audiences and the hiring of deputy editor Katherine Thompson, formerly of the Huffington Post, have helped fuel the Mail's boom in readers. The site has a strong presence in America, with permanent staff in New York and Los Angeles.