Sacramento, Calif. - McClatchy, the nation's third-largest newspaper publisher, announced a restructuring plan on Monday that will see the company lay off 1,600 employees, reducing its workforce by about 15% "as the company accelerates efforts to manage through an increasingly poor national economic environment." [more..]

New York - Member communities, which include social networks and blogs, now are visited by more than two-thirds of the global online population, making it the fourth most popular online category, ahead of even personal email, according to a new report from Nielsen. [more..]

London - After failing to agree on terms to renew a licensing agreement with the Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS) in the U.K., Google's YouTube has blocked thousands of music videos from its U.K. site, the company said in a blog post. [more..]

Stockholm, Sweden - Authorities in Sweden have conducted a raid and seized computer equipment allegedly used to host 65 terabytes of copyrighted material distributed on file-sharing networks, CNET News.com reported. [more..]

Washington - Deploying faster broadband Internet access to 80% of U.S. households that currently lack it, potentially could create or save 2 million American jobs, according to a new report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. [more..]

San Francisco - Pure Digital Technologies, maker of the Flip Video line of low-cost digital video camcorders that can upload video directly to the Internet, is considering a sale of the company, and Cisco Systems is among the interested buyers, TechCrunch reported, citing "multiple sources." [more..]

Stockholm, Sweden - Stardoll, a Sweden-based online entertainment site for young women, announced on Monday that it has merged with Piczo, a San Francisco-based online publishing platform for teens. [more..]

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Atlanta - Mother Nature Network (MNN), an environmental news and information site launched in January, said on Monday that it has acquired the assets and website of Plenty Magazine, a four-year-old, bi-monthly magazine that focuses on the "world in green." [more..]

Ned and I co-authored this article for the March issue of Consumer Electronics Association's Vision Magazine. It focuses on trends in the growing games industry, blogs Jay Baage. [more..]

San Francisco - MegaVideo, a video site launched by file-hosting service MegaUpload, has emerged as a destination where users can stream full-length episodes of many U.S. television shows -- including ones that have not been licensed for online viewing on sites like Hulu, Wired.com reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - Merlin, a consortium of independent record labels that includes Beggars Group, Domino, KOCH, Epitaph and PIAS, announced on Monday that it has signed a deal licensing its labels' repertoire to iMesh, a legal peer-to-peer download service. [more..]

San Francisco - A fifteen-year-old programmer has released Muziic, a free application that allows users to stream and create playlists from the massive quantity of songs available from Google's YouTube. [more..]

Redwood City, Calif. - Electronic Arts said on Monday that both Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson will grace the cover of its forthcoming "Fight Night Round 4" video game, scheduled for release this summer. [more..]