For journalists like the OTM crew, who report regularly on government transparency and the 4th Amendment, National security letters (NSL) are maddeningly opaque. The letters, issued by the FBI, are often sent to telcos, internet service providers, and other online entities (Twitter being a notorious example) to subpoena user information. They require no judicial oversight or probable cause. They also contain a preemptive gag order, which disallows a letter's recipient from even acknowledging they received one.

But thanks to a Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union, NSLs just got a tiny bit more transparent. The Justice Department has made public the templates they use for National Security Letters.

We’ve been following the Supreme Court healthcare ruling via Twitter today. We’re fascinated, both by the scope of the story itself and also because of all the great wrinkles in the coverage (CNN’s epic misreporting of the verdict! SCOTUSBlog’s brilliant explanations! The great work of our NPR news colleagues!)

We’ve been talking to a bunch of you on Twitter, and some of you’ve said, very nicely, that you’re psyched to see what OTM’ll do with this next week. The only problem? Our esteemed hosts are on a much deserved vacation, so we’re rebroadcasting our hour about Data instead of a new show. It’s a great show, and we’re proud to broadcast it, but we’re also frustrated that we can’t talk health care with you all.

So that’s the point of this blog post. We’re asking you for help. If there’s a story you’d like to see, whether it’s some question you have about the coverage, a trend you saw that thought was funny, anything really – then please drop us a line on Twitter. Our production staff is in office this week, so we can try to report out questions you have or just highlight stuff you’ve noticed here on our website. Just let us know what you're interested in!

As Dylan Byers noted on Politico earlier in the week, complex legal opinions about byzantine legislation aren't the ideal topic for instant TV news analysis. The pundits and legal analysts you hear later today will have to wing-it early on but if you feel like asserting your intellectual independence (and are able to take a longish lunch) there is a way you can reasonably do a little analysis of your own.

Reviews of Aaron Sorkin's new HBO show The Newsroom have so far been mixed. But are journalists the fairest judges for this TV show?

Earlier this year, two bills that would've curbed privacy in the US were killed following a campaign by some big names on the internet (Google, Wikipedia, dozens of others) and a tidal wave of popular opposition. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), would have deputizes internet service providers and search engines in blocking websites that would host infringing content.  This week, the Japanese legislature took a different tack in fighting piracy, passing an amendment to the country's copyright law which will result in penalties including jail time for illegal downloaders.

The past few weeks have seen bumper to bumper traffic in the streets of – pardon the conceit – new media cartography.

A lot of times, media stories we find funny, touching, or just plain interesting don't make it onto the show. Instead, they end up on our twitter feed. We're collecting some of our favorite stories every sunday in a blog post we call "Our Week in Tweets." To read the stories, just click on the links that appear within the tweets. Feel free to comment below, and follow us on Twitter to see all the stories we've been talking about!

This article originally appeared on the blog of the National Press Photographers Association advocacy committee. Mickey Osterreicher appeared on last week's show to discuss filming police.

All paparazzi are photographers.

But not all photographers are paparazzi.

The problem is that in a time of catchy phrases, it seems that many media outlets are unable or unwilling to take the time to distinguish between the two.

In the aftermath of actor Alec Baldwin’s assault on photographers who were waiting for him on a public street outside the New York City Marriage License Bureau this week, the distinction between the use of the pejorative “paparazzi” as a way to denigrate members of the media is not only unfortunate, but does a disservice to all photographers and journalists who strive to earn a living through visual storytelling.

Before The Simpsons and Futurama, there was Matt Groening's simple, caustic comic strip Life in Hell. Last week, after 35 years,  Groening decided to stop drawing the comic. Here's a few examples of its bleak humor. It's dark and dry and and gives you a little insight into where the Simpsons got it's edge. (Remember, The Simpsons was edgy when the series began airing). There were also moments of guarded hope in Life in Hell.

The end of Life in Hell is a reminder that someday, eventually, by the laws of nature, The Simpsons will come to an end. The series has never gotten back to the greatness of seasons, say, 2-8* but it has stayed on the air for 23 seasons. And there have been some good moments in the last, say, decade. The Simpsons is a collaborative effort, Life in Hell was, from what I've read, Groening's baby entirely. The Simpsons couldn't just end in one day. There will be an earth-shaking announcement and gnashing of teeth. That's too bad. There was something nice about Groening just pulling the plug without the culture-shaking, preening send-off The Simpsons will probably get.

*reasonable people can disagree on how long the golden age of The Simpsons lasted.

After decades of being one of the most oppressive and isolated countries in the world, Myanmar (also known as Burma) has abruptly changed course.  In just the last year, the vestiges of a military junta who run the country have allowed for free elections, freedom of speech and, increasingly, freedom of the press.  On the occasion of elections in April that saw opposition candidate Aung San Suu Kyi elected, we asked Phnom Penh-based journalist Brendan Brady to travel to Yangon and report on how one veteran reporter is handling the rapid change.  Brendan brought back a radio piece, photographs and a video (which he produced with Adam Kaufman) that provide a fascinating look at a new paradigm for Burmese media.

The staff of OTM choose a few of our favorite things.  Please, please leave us comments below and enjoy.

A lot of times, media stories we find funny, touching, or just plain interesting don't make it onto the show. Instead, they end up on our twitter feed. We're collecting some of our favorite stories every sunday in a blog post we call "Our Week in Tweets." To read the stories, just click on the links that appear within the tweets. Feel free to comment below, and follow us on Twitter to see all the stories we've been talking about!

On this week's show you'll hear an excerpt of Lexicon Valley. I hope it speaks to your inner word nerd. There is nobody on earth, I assure you, more word-nerdier than Mike Vuolo, who is the brains behind this operation.

If someone's downloading your copyrighted work illegally, suing them is no easy task. The only public facing information that identifies you to the internet are just numbers in the form of IP addresses. To actually get the name of the person doing the illegal downloading, intellectual property owners have to request or subpoena the information from Internet Service Providers like Verizon or Time Warner. But earlier this week, Comcast, the largest cable provider in the country, refused to honor court ordered subpoenas of customer identifying information.

Did I mention Mexico City has some of the most beautiful architecture I have ever seen? Well it does, and a shining example of that is the Palacio de Bellas Artes, or Palace of Fine Arts. Opened in 1934, the enormous theatre is made of white Italian marble, with an entire roof of crystal. Seriously, check this place out:

I’ve been interviewing people who write about depressing things. Journalists, currently in Mexico City, who’ve spent a good part of the past decade (or more) covering horrifying murders, over and over again. The death toll since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on the drug cartels in 2006 is in the tens of thousands. Thirty five thousand? Eighty thousand? Many here dispute the number of murders and disappearances and that’s because only a tiny percentage of them are ever investigated, much less solved.

Brooke Gladstone and producer Sarah Abdurrahman are in Mexico and today Brooke took some time out from recording next week's show to speak with WNYC's Brian Lehrer.  Listen to a preview of what Brooke and OTM will be exploring next week on the show.

OTM Producer Alex Goldman is on Reddit today. If you've never visited Reddit, it's a website that collects interesting links and lets users vote on their interestingness -- it's a great way to quickly find some the best stuff on the internet on a given day. Reddit also has an interview series called IamA, which lets Reddit users do a kind of crowdsourced interview of an interviewee. People submit questions, other people vote on their favorites, the interview subject answers them. Reddit IamA alum include Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings, pornographic thespian Ron Jeremy, and now, OTM producer and nearly adequate video game player Alex Goldman. Submit your own questions (or read other folks) by following this link. 

The massive demonstration on Sunday included a march to the Independence Angel that originated at El Zócalo, Mexico City's main square which is surrounded by the Presidential Palace, the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the Mexico City government offices. The demonstration was big, but there was a stage being set up in the square that indicated something even bigger was on the horizon: the arrival of Justin Bieber.