Howard Owens released a list of online awards for newspaper sites, as judged by a sophisticated panel of one, and asked for some feedback. So, I’ve decided to finally admit . . . I don’t like the TimesCast from Roanoke.com.

Is everyone in love with that show except me? Folks seem to think:

1) It’s funny.

2) It’s newsy.

Howard awarded it “best vlog or web newscast” and said:

Roanoke serves up a nice recap of the news in a well-done, professional manner that makes no conscience attempt to be like a television broadcast. It’s fun and full of personality.

For good measure, I sat through an entire TimesCast today to see if anything changed since watching it originally. The result? Never laughed. And learned very little.

What I did get was about 15 seconds of information about each story and maybe a half-dozen invitations to click a link to an article that contained the actual news.

For me, the TimesCast is an elaborate teaser fest. It’s a lot of effort to repackage the day’s news with what should be witty repartee. Except, it’s rarely witty. So what’s left is a nice looking, and superficial, video project.

With the advent of niche content and niche presentation styles, not everything is for everyone anymore. But I think Talk Soup is hysterical. And my best guess is the TimesCast was supposed to be Talk Soup for Roanoke.

The folks over at Gangrey are brainstorming ideas for new beats, assuming that all of the traditional beats were thrown over a cliff.

What strikes me about the ideas is how narrowly focused they are, but not by geography. And culling a narrowly focused topic that isn’t limited by geography is my No. 1 requirement for what makes a good blog idea.

Imagine a blog focused entirely on finding stories about:

“Desperation. Or, the things people do when they are forced to do something (abandon morals, embrace new ones, kill others, kill themselves, learn things, beg, win, lose, ignore the problem, take risks, become the Wiggles).” - rlake

“Firsts and lasts -- first date, first kiss, first drink, first underage party, first baby, first house . . . first communion, first tooth, first lost tooth. last time you spoke with your grandma before she died, last day at a job, last day with a car before selling it, last day of school, last football game, last day in jail, last day in office.” - Janine

“Night security guards and the stories they could tell.” – Raja

Great ideas for journalism get past the esoteric stories of institutions and issues and go directly to the people. All of these ideas start with the real people and feelings we can relate to as human beings, and then bump into issues.

Any of these would be an intriguing local newspaper beat. But I like their potential as national topics for blogs. With enough of these blogs aggregated into a standalone site, it would become a daily must-read.

Found this site called The Newsroom, where anyone can get a video clip or news story and post it on their site. Oh yeah, and then you get a cut of the advertising dollars attached to the news story. I thought it was such an interesting idea, I found a clip relevant to this blog to try it out.

What you see above was provided by The Newsroom. We'll see how this progresses.

Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News explored tonight an interesting paradox about the current fortunes of the newspaper industry. Why is it that with such steep declines in circulation, some of the country’s most notable millionaires are exploring the possibility of buying these businesses?

Millionaires don’t get rich by making bad decisions.

Two camps are forming: the impatient Wall Street folks who react only to what is happening now, and the visionaries. Millionaires tend to have vision.

Newspapers don’t sell paper, they sell news. And the news commodity isn’t going away. If anything, news is in greater demand than ever.

Unfortunately, most folks running newspapers don’t have the millionaire’s vision or determination. Most have acknowledged a changing economic yet still walk the same line toward failure.

Millionaires don’t get rich by reacting slowly to changes in the market.

They are committed to doing anything that sells the product more and helps the business make money. Yes, that’s meant to sound scary. If the old journalists running the place won’t do something about declining revenues, then the corporate cut-throats will.

My guess is that although the millionaires will succeed, it will sometimes come at the expense of journalism. So stop talking about big ideas and actually get something done. Remember who is in line to take the job.

Something about the Washington Post’s story on the “mojos” at Gannett got journalists in a tizzy. Mobile reporters at the Fort Myers News-Press work out of their cars, filing several times a day to the Web site, without editing.

Interesting, but . . .

Where did the FTEs for those mojos come from? After all, the News-Press is undergoing job cuts, not expansion. Step back to one of the original announcements about the mojos and Executive Editor Kate Marymont explains:

We redeployed reporters. The message from our corporate leaders is clear -- increase the attention our news staffs are giving to online, weigh our old goals vs. new ones and make hard, strategic trade-offs. We chose to reduce our Lifestyles Department from 6.5 reporters to 4.5 reporters. Decisions like this will be tough, but they will be necessary if we're truly going to make online a priority.

Allow me to revise a point I made a few days ago. The point was basically, “Get a local beat, or lose your job.”

I’d like to add, “Or worse, lose your desk.”

When the CBS Evening News quickly returned to its third place rank after the debut of Katie Couric, the higher-ups got nervous and started hacking away at new ideas, replacing them with what they deemed real news.

Here’s the actual problem. It’s not that Katie has bad ideas. They’re great ideas. The problem is the time limit. Katie’s experience hosting The Today Show’s daily marathon qualifies her to run the first evening news show to go for the full 6 p.m. hour.

Then bring back the infamous “Free Speech” segment, which was a great idea not because it had a huge amount of news value, but because it generated buzz.

For example, before Rush Limbaugh made his one-minute free speech, he talked at length about it on his radio show. Sean Hannity did the same before his appearance. The right-wingers actually felt their voice was getting through.

The show has to be a must-TiVo. Free speech helped make it just that.

Looks like the higher-ups also complained when Katie spent nine minutes of the show talking with Michael J. Fox about being accused of faking his shaking. I saw the interview and it was a rare intersection of pop culture and politics. The show had an exclusive interview on a topic being discussed all over the country. Katie’s instinct to go for nine minutes was on target.

Higher-ups wouldn’t complain about nine minutes if they had an hour to play with.

The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wa. is one of the first I’d heard of to create a weekly “Web internship” for the newsroom. Anyone – a reporter, copy editor, designer – can spend one week with the Web team instead of doing their normal job.

During that week, the “intern” usually learns about technology by creating a multimedia project.

The News Tribune is one of several newspapers, including mine, to participate in The Learning Newsroom program. The point of that program is to change the newsroom culture from defensive to constructive.

Such a huge transformation requires a lot of training. And the weekly Web sabbatical is a good way to teach the newsroom about multimedia while also increasing online content.

Tacoma’s isn’t the only Learning Newsroom to start a Web internship; there’s at least one other program that I know of.

Is Google the only company in the world that understands the potential for open-source advertising models?

Today’s washingtonpost.com reports on a new Google program that lets users create and book ads on any radio station, using Google for the entire deal.

Here’s how it works, as described by The Post:

A small advertiser logs into Google's Web site and creates a radio ad campaign online, selecting the geographical area, demographics of the radio audience, time of day and radio format. The advertiser bids on how much it is willing to pay to buy the air time, but doesn't know the exact station that will carry the ad.

If the advertiser doesn't already have a radio ad created, Google provides access to on-air talent and producers who bid on the job, allowing the two sides to negotiate the price and content.
The radio stations can see how many advertisers bid on each slot, listen to an ad and choose or reject one -- all online. Google makes a commission off of the transaction with the radio station.

You might remember that Google recently started a similar program with newspapers. Before that it tried a program for magazines. And the whole experiment started with its online AdSense program. Eventually, Google is going to get another one of these right.

There will be up and down sides to letting Google explore this territory all on its own. The company will have to spend an enormous amount of money to create these programs from scratch. The next company won’t have to blaze the trail.

Problem is that with a situation like this, it’s entirely possible for Google to gain so much market share that there won’t be a next company.

Disclaimer: The following revelation will likely not come as an eye-opener to many people.

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about Google’s acquisition of YouTube all wrong. When I heard the news, I thought, why is Google so interested in user-submitted video? And honestly I never thought of a reason except, well, it’s popular.

Something just clicked, and I got it.

Google has little or no interest in user-submitted content. Could care less. Google is interested in search. Obviously! And when I, as a user, wonder to myself where I can find video of Michael Richards’s breakdown, I think YouTube. Not Google.

That developing mental model was a potentially huge problem for a brand that prides itself on being able to find anything.

CEO Jim Buckmaster recently reiterated his assertion that Craigslist won’t allow advertising on his site because, “no users are suggesting we run text ads.”

Buckmaster’s supposed commitment to its users is invoked only when convenient.

Just ask people in the several markets where Craigslist is now charging: San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. I don’t remember any huge demand from users there that Craigslist let them pay.

Users: "Let me pay! Take my money!"

Craigslist: "Oh, OK. If you insist."

That’s the story line Buckmaster implies with his sanctimonious users-first mantra. Buckmaster will tell you that users did complain about all the spam ads being posted. He’d say the only way to answer their complaints and prevent spam was to charge users. Well, I’d say that was just one way.

The other way was to accept text ads and then use that new money to invest in anti-spamming technology. So what’s the real reason Craigslist won’t accept text or banner ads?

They just don’t want to.

Perhaps it offends their anti-business political beliefs? I don't know, really. What I do know is blaming users is a disingenuous way to avoid saying what you really think.

Try this Web site from Adobe if you’re in the market for a good color scheme. Designers are asked to submit combinations and then rank their favorites.

My former boss, Lou Ferrara, someone who I learned a lot from, left HeraldTribune.com in mid 2005 to become Online Editor for the Associated Press. A little more than one year later, the AP is promoting him to “deputy managing editor for multimedia.” From the AP:

In his newly created position, Ferrara, 36, will work with all news and business departments on planning special events and other coverage with an eye toward maximizing revenue opportunities and launching new products. His initial focus will be planned events, particularly in sports and entertainment.

The AP’s new approach to covering regular events such as the Olympics brings an online perspective to all of its planning. Imagine if at your own newspaper, a Web person was in charge of planning annual events. How would that affect the coverage?

A lot.

Technorati Profile

Blogging to peak in 2007? That’s what one report is predicting.

I’m not completely sold on these findings. But one thing is for sure. While it might be true that the outgrowth of personal blogs will slow, the tendency for people to share online won’t.

So assuming this report is correct that interest in blogging will soon decline, then interest in some other form of expression will come into vogue.

Perhaps its social networking. MySpace just eclipsed Yahoo for total page views.

Wall Street expects newspapers to maintain huge profit margins. But during this transition to a new reality, those margins must slide.

So investing in the online future means pissing off shareholders now.

Investing in the online future costs money. It will take an amazing talent to ignore Wall Street's demands for cuts and instead spend down profit margins.

An obvious solution for this problem is to go private. The heck with stock roller coasters.

Unfortunately, going private can come with some unsavory side effects, not all of which do I understand. Folks have told me that going private could mean giving power up to huge investors needed to buy back stock.

My guess is someone is going to try the private route anyway. No one wants to be the next Knight-Ridder.

With TIME magazine’s recent pronouncement that we are all the person of the year because we participate in this alter-world of media, I’m reminded of something I hear from folks in the online journalism world far too often.

It goes something like: “Why didn’t we think of that?”

When MySpace became so popular, I heard more than one person regret that newspapers weren’t the purveyor of social networking sites. And then I saw others kicking themselves when YouTube exploded.

All of us need to take a breath and recognize that newspapers are not the social network. Never have been. Newspapers benefit from the network, but we are not the network.

The way it has always worked, and works best, is when newspapers write something so provocative or important that readers tell their friends. And those friends tell someone else. And so on. The newspaper lights up the social network by inserting valuable news.

The only possible exception to this model is classified advertising. Here, newspapers serve as the connector of a community invited (for a fee) to talk directly with each other. It is a network.

Still, at our core, newspapers are about news. Let’s focus on ways to make it easier for people to spread the word about the news. Social bookmarking tools are an example of that. Another example: The Washington Post’s tool from Technorati that tells folks where a story is being blogged about.

E-mail a friend options are the most basic examples of how online newspapers make it easier for social networks to light up.

The next step for newspapers isn’t becoming MySpace or YouTube, it’s creating a way to integrate newspapers with those services.

Found via Hugh Hewitt, here's a twist on the zoning by interest idea I posted here a while back.

Bo Sacks proposes a cooperative version in which newspapers are bundled with other printed products, mainly magazines. He calls it "consortium publishing."

There's a "basic plan" publishing package offers the local newspaper and two magazines of your choice to be received in either digital format, printed format or both. The next step up offers the local newspaper and four magazines of your choice from a comprehensive list of offerings. We keep offering tiers of participation up until you get to the "platinum plan" that delivers the customer everything ever printed.

The customer is allowed to make changes at any time. “Let’s see, this month, I would like to try Popular Science magazine instead of Discover.”

A newspaper that successfully zones its own sections by interest could take advantage of the business model suggested by Sacks. Even without that challenge, the "everything ever printed" option seems a little over the top. But you get the idea. And it's a pretty good one, on balance.

Much to the chagrin of its users, community Web sites Fresno Famous and Modesto Famous were bought by mainstream competitor, The Fresno Bee, for an undisclosed amount of money.

Buying a competitor is a last resort. So one can’t help wondering why The Bee had to buy a site like this. Here’s what The Bee had to contend with, according to a Famous story about the sale:

Since its launch, FresnoFamous.com has grown to a community of nearly 2,000 active users who submit blogs, articles, photos, event listings and comments about the community. Users frequent FresnoFamous.com to make entertainment plans, debate the latest issues at City Hall and submit news others can use. In September 2006, the site generated 25,604 unique visitors, 44,427 total visits and 138,458 page views.

With the reach and advertising of the newspaper behind Famous, I have no doubt these numbers will grow rapidly.

Famous does all those user-submitted, community driven things that newspaper execs talk a great deal about and rarely hire anyone to do. Four people worked on the site regularly. Goes to show how few resources are needed to create a solid product.

If only newspapers would invest in their own staffs then maybe they wouldn’t find themselves having to buy competitors.

If only newspapers would invest in their own staffs then maybe competitors wouldn’t exist at all. Community sites like Famous are created because there is a vacuum of coverage. The market had room for more arts and culture news, so an astute business-minded person took advantage.

News of this purchase should draw all of our attention to the demands not being met in our own markets. Be forewarned: do something about it, or someone like Famous creator Jarah Euston will.

In her blog, Jarah sounds a lot like the rest of us online newspaper people, except she hadn’t been working for a newspaper. Here’s how she addressed users' concerns that The Bee would ruin their community:

To those who want to say goodbye to Famous because it is no longer owned by me (even though I'll be sticking around), I suppose I should be flattered that you've allowed me to be your capitalist overlord. This venture has always been a for-profit business. Our business is creating online platforms for community; without the community there is no business. Transferring ownership is what I feel will serve this community best. It will allow it to grow, and allow it to evolve positively.

Good luck on wherever opportunity takes you next, Jarah.

I’ve been tagged, which I hate but it’s probably better than not being tagged, right? No one wants to be last picked for dodge ball. So five things you don’t know about me, mainly because, who the hell am I anyway?

1) During high school I dated the junior prom princess, which later made me the senior prom king.

2) Defying the wisdom of the crowd, we were voted “best couple,” or something, only to both come out during college as gay.

3) The bedspread in my dorm room matched the curtains. Of course.

4) As editor of my college newspaper, I was once stopped by a bicycling student who skidded to a halt only to tell me he hated my columns. “Thanks,” I said . . . Doh.

5) After I wrote about my coming out, the bicyclist sent a “remember me” note apologizing and saying the article helped him decide against suicide.

The next five unwilling participants in this game of tag:
Danny Sanchez, Patrick Beeson, K Paul Mallash, Will Sullivan (who was already tagged, but heck) and John Robinson.

If you're wondering: What is all this?

People really do use Google in place of their address bar. Users sometimes call me at work because they can’t find heraldtribune.com despite a specific URL provided in the newspaper, such as http://www.heraldtribune.com/building.

The /building part isn’t recognized by Google. So when Joe User types the redirect into the Google search instead of into their address bar, they’re lost. Obviously, some work on our end is needed to get that fixed.

I digress. The real reason for mentioning this nagging problem at all is a story in the The Post that suggests it might affect Google’s annual list of most-searched-for terms. Topping the list this year were “Bebo” and “MySpace.”

Were people looking for information about these sites or were they actually trying to get to them? My gut tells me there’s something wrong with the Google-as-navigation argument in this case. Without exception, every person who calls me, lost in cyberspace, is a senior citizen. Aren’t users of social networking sites savvy enough to know how to use an address bar? Probably.

But neither Bebo nor MySpace have organized advertising campaigns. New users are rarely or never provided a URL to go check out. They hear the name from a friend or on the news. If I’d heard of MySpace for the first time, then typing the name into Google seems like a good first step toward finding it.

Perhaps most of those searches were potential first-time users of Bebo and MySpace.

Demonstrates how important it is that your site come up as the first result whenever a user is looking for your site. That’s solid SEO. Nevermind about all those related keywords. The most important keyword is the name of your site.

Are we artists? Or, should I ask: aren’t we?

Journalism is about making the community better. It’s about challenging people directly, with information. Newspapers, like artists, are out to affect the world.

If newspapers die, then some part of society dies with them.

And none of us should let that happen. But what a frustrating endeavor this is, saving newspapers from their tendencies. At work, I hint and nudge. Pushing or shoving toward the future has a way of inciting more rebellion than cooperation. So many little steps comprise only one full step.

At what has seemed the fastest possible pace of progress, I’ve been running a Web site in the way it should be operated, with page views increasing and awards on occasion. But it has not evolved from a personal vision. Not yet. Maybe some of you feel the same?

Artists require vision. An example of my imperfect, still-forming vision would be that magazine I created during college. The name was “static” and the slogan was “making sense of the noise.” A visionary site would be in the words of its users. Stories would be lessons learned and told in the most personal way possible. People would be touched, they would feel related to. They would feel not alone.

That’s what we should be doing with newspapers online and in print.

All of these problems that people face, they too often face alone. The Web site, the newspaper, can pull those people together. And all it takes is one truthful story around which to gather. One story can intrigue them and entice their reaction, and then their action.

Thanks to an e-mail from Amazon with the subject line: "New Amazon Startup: Askville.com," I might soon find out what song those fatalist musicians play during a montage in the movie, Titanic, as the ship sinks. It's probably "Amazing Grace" or something simple. I honestly can't remember.

On new site Askville, I've posted my question and now must wait for five people to respond. Looks like there are already hundreds of other questions asked and answered. Here's a sampling of questions to help demonstrate what you'll find there:

"How do you throw a screwball?"

"How do I get my one year old to nap?"

"Is Anderson Cooper gay?"

"If you were Bill Parcells, would you invest in a bra?"

I can see how this site could eat up a lot of time.

What started out as a way for the San Jose Mercury News to attract new readers has now been cut to save money.

The “Read This!” section for teens and written by teens had appeared on the back page of the A&E; section once a week. But circulation declines lead to revenue declines, and then all those programs designed to stop circulation declines got cut.

It’s one of those vicious cycles. And the consequences are best described by those affected. Here’s student Sasha Guttentag in a letter to the editor:

"Read This!" is one of the best ways to get young people involved, because reading something written by people our age helps us understand how each issue is related to us, and makes the stories more appealing . . . I can promise you that every issue with "Read This!" is the first section I turn to, and I will read every word on that page.

And student Rachel Wolf brings the point home in her letter:

As high school students, we begin to follow the news by reading newspapers - "Read This!" enables the transition into readership by covering important issues that are relevant to teens and by doing so in students' voices, to which teens can relate.

The Mercury's readership looks for "Read This!" on the back of the A&E; section every Tuesday. Most weeks, the page is even clipped and posted in my school's Academic Resource Center. To strip the paper of "Read This!" would be to do a disservice to all the teen readers (and possible future subscribers) for whom it has provided a gateway to greater interest in the world.

Don’t take only the students’ word for it. Read the studies done by the newspaper industry that back them up. The headline on this one from 2005 was: “Study: Newspapers that attract teens retain them as adults.”

A new study shows that most teenagers who read the newspaper continue the habit as they get older. According to the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, 75% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 who said they read the a newspaper when they were younger (13-to-17) now read their local paper at least once a week.

If newspapers conduct studies that detail how to create future readers and still totally disregard the findings, then they deserve to die. RIP, Mercury News.

In the interest of disclosure (and probably only supporting my argument that cutting teen news in print equates to shooting oneself in the foot), I wrote for the counterpart of Read This! in my local newspaper during high school.

This analysis of how newspaper redesigns affected circulations numbers should make us all wonder why American papers haven’t followed the Europeans and replaced broadsheets with a tabloid size.

The graphs from NewsDesigner.com demonstrate that switching often results in higher circulation. That’s a plus. And here’s another.

Most every college newspaper in the country prints a tabloid-sized paper. And recent studies show that most students read their college newspaper. For some reason, these same collegians leave school and stop reading.

I’m not so naïve to suggest that switching to tabloid-sized newspapers immediately solves all our failures in attracting young readers. But I am suggesting that switching retains more of these readers by offering a format they already like and use.

Did I mention that almost every college newspaper in the country is a tabloid? They have been for years. And isn’t pretty much every alternative weekly in the country a tabloid size? And aren’t all those popular, free newspapers being launched around the world mostly tabloids? So tell me again, why isn’t any American newspaper switching to tabloid size?

Oh yeah, because it might scare advertisers. Or so we’re told.

Guess what will scare away more advertisers than the loss of broadsheet-sized ads? Loss of readers.

Howie Kurtz makes a typical veteran mistake of logic in his Monday column, “Ink-Stained to Link-Strained: A Kvetch.” See if you can catch it:

Now, liberated from the stranglehold of CBS, NBC and ABC, we can watch news channels that match our political predilections. Read Web sites that reinforce our opinions . . . In short, we can now get anything we want, at the precise moment we want it, tailored to our merest whim. Who'd want to give that up?

Not me, that's for sure. But isn't something lost if you can wall yourself off from views and information that challenge what you already believe? If everything is ordered a la carte? If -- and this really dates me as an ink-stained wretch -- you like turning the pages of a newspaper because you might bump into an unexpected story you would never have found online?

Kurtz assumes that when services such as iTunes or Netflix let users pick and choose or when a news Web site is personalized, it means blacking out that once omniscient editorial voice. He worries that people will become self-reinforcing piles of mush.

What folks who posit this untruth are missing is that in every modern case of personalization, the exact opposite occurs. Whenever a service allows you to pick exactly what you want, then the user becomes more likely to listen to recommendations from that service. Not less likely.

For example, because Netflix allows me to pick my own movies, I sometimes listen when it recommends flicks. Even if the recommendation is a documentary (which equates to eating your vegetables), I sometimes rent it.

The same can be true for newspapers. If we give users more control over which stories they read, then they will eventually rely more on our recommendations about stories they should read.

What have we learned from the sale of the Star-Tribune to a private equity firm that was just created in 2005 by a bunch of richie-rich business men?

1) Newspaper industry analyst John Morton told the Associated Press that newspapers are looking to sell: “"Clearly what is happening to McClatchy is that they are much more concerned about their overall financial performance than they are about publishing newspapers.”

2) Avista partner OhSang Kwon says now it’s a buyer’s market: “We think it's just a good time to buy. I think they've been oversold. They're terrific platforms, they have very broad reach, and we think they're going to be around for a long long time."

Combine these two points and it makes for a volatile financial future. Big media companies are under pressure to meet high financial expectations. Meanwhile private interests such as Avista are looking for bargains, companies that look bad now but could turn around over time.

As I’ve said, going private (or in this case, being bought by a private firm) is a real option for a newspaper industry that has to suffer before finances will get better.

Expect to see more variations on this theme.

Web sites are about to repeat a big mistake that newspapers once made, according to an article in the New York Times.

When newspaper ad rates spiked, small advertisers had no place in which they could afford to advertise. So they left newspapers and started advertising in community newsletters and other alternative media.

In effect, newspapers inadvertently created an atmosphere for small competitors to survive. The accumulation of small competitors in the market is now at least part of the reason for declines in ad revenue.

Don’t get me wrong: Web ad rates in general must increase as the newspaper business continues to move online.

But remember the small advertisers. Remember that small businesses eventually grow into big businesses. And establishing a relationship early on will only help your newspaper’s future.

Create affordable options like text ads on search results, highly-targeted campaigns with small buys, or enhanced directory listings. Some things should just be free.

The most basic home or car listing or anything available on Craigslist should be free. Freebies get small advertisers using and learning about the site. When some money is floating in their budget, the business owner is likely to spend it some place familiar.

For readers of this blog, it comes as no surprise that Google sold out its newspaper ad inventory. The real surprise is how few newspaper executives fail to understand the implications of using Google’s program.

As I’ve warned, allowing advertisers to use the Google ad program inherently means giving up at least part of the important newspaper-advertiser relationship. The person or entity who owns this relationship will make the most money from the advertiser. Under this new program, the entity that establishes the relationship is Google.

That’s a huge shift in power.

At least one executive seems to get it. Todd Haskell, a New York Times vice president, told the Washington Post that his company plans to treat all ads from Google as leads.

"We think it's a wonderful way to introduce advertisers to the New York Times and print overall," Haskell said. Once the program gets going, he added, "we'd look to up-sell and migrate those [smaller advertisers] to bigger programs and better positions [in the paper] and move them out of the Google system. And we've been very upfront with Google about that."

Listening to Haskell is a good first step. Before starting the Google program, have a plan to move new advertisers into the normal channels. But don’t stop there. I stick by my original recommendations:

1) Ensure potential competitors to Google can easily enter the open-source advertising game. Don’t let Google become the only option.

2) One-up Google by offering services locally. Isolate Google to the national market.

The much anticipated lucasgrindley.com blogroll debuts today. During the last couple months, I've used the "most visited" tool from del.icio.us to monitor the blogs I frequent. As a result, the blogs are listed in order of how often I visit them. And I've decided to post only the top 10.

Congratulations to Will Sullivan's Journerdism, which I apparently use the hell out of.

1. Journerdism, Will Sullivan

2. Journalistopia, Danny Sanchez

3. Media Blog, Howard Owens

4. Teaching Online Journalism, Mindy McAdams

5. The Editor's Log, John Robinson

6. Yelvington.com, Steve Yelvington

7. Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis

8. Journalism Hope, K Paul Mallasch

9. Martin Stabe

10. Innovation in College Media, Bryan Murley

There are more of you out there who I read, but some I've learned about just recently. I'll update the top 10 list whenever it seems to have changed permanently.

Expect the blogroll to be added on the right side of the page shortly.

Howard Owens disagrees with Wired Magazine’s prediction that a major newspaper will stop printing and go online-only in 2007. Although Wired’s punditry might be a little overly optimistic, Howard’s rebuttal is equally pessimistic.

Howard alleges that newspapers can’t possibly support their operations without revenue from the main newspaper. Not so.

If a newspaper stops printing, about two-thirds of its operating expenses are thrown out the window. No more newsprint. No more carriers. No more circulation department, sales kiosks and all that.

When ad reps no longer have the newspaper to sell, they’re going to find a way to make commission. And that means sales online are going to increase fast.

Those who can’t sell will jump ship because they can’t support their families on a waning paycheck. The newspaper shouldn’t replace those positions, in most cases, because the market is actually adjusting. Not all of the original advertisers will move online right away, so fewer reps are needed to address the demand.

An online-only version is more likely in a one-paper town. And my guess is that although the main newspaper is eliminated, some niche publications that still have large profit margins will be retained, or even expanded.

Going online-only is a painful option – and probably the wrong option – but not an impossible option.

Do I think online-only will happen in 2007? It’s possible that with several newspapers experiencing declining ad revenues that don’t turn around and costs increasing, the only apparent option for survival will be eliminating the printed version.