For months now, I’ve said more newspaper companies will consider going private as a means to escape pressures from Wall Street and the rollercoaster of financial instability brought on by ignoring their expectations. As we all know, Tribune Co. accepted a buyout offer from billionaire Sam Zell and will soon go private. (And as you’d expect, I can’t help but say I told you so.)

The question now: Who is next? The answer, according to the Associated Press, is nobody. Their story argues that other companies are protected by financial maneuvers that make them impractical candidates to go private.

Let’s assume the AP’s analysis is correct. If no other newspaper company goes private, then the heat will be for making Wall Street happy. To please investors, all of the media companies want a larger portion of their revenues to have the word “Internet” attached to them. The fastest route to that accomplishment is selling non-Internet businesses and buying Web-based ones.

Wise newspaper companies will sell off oddball parts and use the capital to buy Internet competitors. (The implication of that last sentence is dumb companies will use the money to buy back bits of their own crappy stock.) The models for good deals are The Fresno Bee purchasing FresnoFamous.com and The NY Observer taking over PoliticsNJ.com. But I’m anticipating a much higher profile purchase.

Not only am I predicting that the newspaper fire sale is about to begin, but I’m also recommending it. Don’t become the next McClatchy. In a dunce-cap move, they sold the Star-Tribune at a substantial loss just to pay the bills, not invest. Sell now and do something productive with the money or sell later just to get by.

Newspapers should be buying their online competitors. But too often when newspaper's open their wallets it's to invest in trendy gadget sites (ones that don't produce content but offer a nifty tool for reorganizing it). Instead, buy content that just works online. Here are my top 20 recommendations. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments.

PerezHilton.com
My first-ever addition to this list comes because Perez is so freakin' popular and so undersold.

Huffington Post
This site has a large online following and is actually breaking news. One of the most mentioned among politicos on television and in blogs.

Drudge Report
Perhaps the most important editor on the Web right now is Matt Drudge. Lots of people want to know what he thinks they should be reading. Sounds like a valuable newspaper to me.

CollegePublisher
Although MTV recently bought this network of college Web sites, I still wish it had been newspapers who realized the way toward an automatic audience of young readers is through their college sites.

Gawker Media
This brilliant idea of covering national niche markets with snarky blogs has borne a host of sites that can't' be beat within their coverage areas. Gawker for media gossip, Wonkette for politics, Eater for restaurants, and Gizmodo for gadgets.

Media Bistro
Covers the world of media with a host of indispensable blogs.
UPDATE: MediaBistro bought by JupiterMedia.

Weather Underground
This and other niche weather sites are great buys. Not flashy, but filled with information.

Slashdot
A long-standing place for nerds who want news. Now owned by SourceForge.

CNet
A perhaps more reputable place for nerds who want news.
UPDATE: CBS buysCNET

Fark
Oddball news is popular, like it or not. And although there's no original content on this site, it's still an important editor to many readers.

Internet Movie Database
Newspapers have covered the entertainment industry for ages. This is a less narrative approach to that coverage. Now owned by Amazon.

TMZ
Britney Spears stories get a lot of page views. TMZ excels at celeb gossip, often promoting its site via the cable news shows.

Hollywood Media Corp.
The company includes a series of events listings services newspapers would find valuable, plus the ever-important Hollywood.com site with its entertainment coverage and movie times.

BeliefNet
Covering religion is an important and growing niche. The copy isn't high quality prose, but nevertheless it's highly read among its audience.
UPDATE: BeliefNet bought by News Corp.

Space
Hasn't everyone visited this very cool site about outer space sometime in their life?

Science Daily
Devoted to science news, there's real content here.

The Smoking Gun
Perhaps past its heyday, but a good brand and idea that has some life and news value. Now owned by CourtTV.

The Motley Fool
Personal investing advice and news from a well known Web brand.

Military.com
There are other military based Web sites, but I list this one because it's online only and oddly owned by Monster. Why does Monster own this site? It's a news site for the armed forces, not a job board.

MiniClip
Sudoku is friggin' popular. And so are the crosswords. So how about newspapers try some modern time-wasters.

Rivals
College sports fans are crazy, page-view making addicts. Rivals grows and grows. Huge potential if it can keep ahead of even smaller niche sites being created.
UPDATE: Rivals.com bought by Yahoo.

Any hopes that print advertising revenues would recover during the last three months of 2007 should start withering with the announcement of first-quarter earnings in a few days. Optimistic executives might be tempted to retract earlier predictions of a late turnaround, having essentially proclaimed the downturn “in its last throes.”

The brutal reality is the decline might have just started and could worsen.

What some dismissed as a normal economic cycle has the potential to actually be a permanent correction. Pundits warned that boom days for print profits would end. Everyone agreed. Why can’t that be today?

When numbers for the first quarter of 2007 are released, I want you to look for something carefully. Each month of the quarter will have brought more disappointment than the one before it. That’s a trend carrying over from the fourth quarter, and the third of 2006.

Executives will start worrying about whether to revise down already conservative revenue projections. I’ve got one piece of advice: Be realistic. Be blunt.

With each puff of smoke you blow to investors and to your employees about how it’s the real estate market’s fault, or unemployment rates, or the gremlins, comes increasing risk of damage to your business when forced to announce further cuts during the months once scheduled as turnarounds.

Hold on, at least, to your credibility. You’ll need it to marshal the real turnaround.

The new owner of Tribune Co. says Google is stealing his content. And it has to stop. Here’s Sam Zell's quote, reported most completely by The Stanford Daily but most prominently by the Washington Post:

If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do? We have a situation today where effectively the content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, etcetera. That can last for a short time, but it can’t last forever. I think Google and the boys understand that. We’re going to see new deals and new formulas in the media space that reflect the reality of cost benefit.

I wish I could ask a few follow-up questions. It’s unclear to me exactly what Zell is complaining about. I see a few possibilities:

1) Google indexes newspaper content and then provides users links to it via its search engine. It sorts this same content on Google News, displaying our stories with computerized editorial judgment. If Zell wants to stop his sites from being indexed, he can easily accomplish that with a simple robots.txt file at the gate of every site.

You’re going to be shocked here, but I can see his point.

Ask users in your market where they get local news, and both Google and Yahoo will be on the list. This is a serious problem for our newspaper brands. And there’s a real solution: Neither Google or Yahoo originate any content, so block search engine spiders from indexing articles.

Sure, let them index our home page and section fronts. But not the stories. For those, they’d have to pay a licensing fee. The rules of the game would change overnight, only to the benefit of newspaper Web sites.

I know the other side of the argument, which is that we benefit from Google sending traffic to our sites. But aren’t we losing more than we benefit? Page views generated from search engine traffic are empty. Advertisers have no interest in them. And people accessing us this way are unlikely to become repeat users.

There’s also the legal argument that taking only a portion of an article (the headline and summary) and then linking to it is fair use. And that would be the case if it was a single article. A good lawyer for Mr. Zell could argue that doing this for every article on his sites is no longer fair use and becomes grand theft.

2) What’s the etcetera Zell refers to? "Content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, etcetera," he said.

The Associated Press is born from newspapers. When it started, member newspapers used it solely as a method to share news. Since then, the AP has hired its own reporters on national beats to provide newspapers with supplemental coverage. At some point, newspapers made the wrong decision and allowed the AP to sell content to non-contributing members such as Yahoo. Zell’s recommendation might be demanding the AP stop providing our stories to non-contributing members or his papers will withdraw. I think that’s a plausible strategy. Stop sharing stories altogether. This isn’t the 1900s; we’re all competing against each other online. Reality has changed. Shouldn’t the business model change, too?

Zell adds a quick disclaimer after his comment: “But remember, I’m a newspaper man since Monday, and not even that. Give me two weeks to become a genius.”

I think in two weeks, he’ll still suggest this change.

Eight reporters fired from the Santa Barbara News-Press have created their own Web site to compete against their former employer. The firings are the effect of a crazy labor dispute with the publisher.

Still, I envision a time when struggling newspapers cut budgets and reporters, who then unite to start their own rival Web sites.

Take note of how these reporters are running the content on their site. Top headlines now:

Natural Gas "Floating Factory" Slated for Key Votes

Measure D Vote Could Impact County's Share of Bond Money

Council to Discuss Tightening Neighborhood Growth Law

Wow, boring. Sure illustrates what happens when you try to import newspaper judgment directly to the Web. It might also illustrate why people don’t read newspapers as much as they used to.

I’m not saying those aren’t stories. But they’re not top stories. The bond money story should be a brief, at most. I hope these reporters keep at it. If they watch the traffic, they’ll learn what readers actually care about.

The really sad news is the News-Press' Web site is even worse.

Google has never let a challenge come to court over its claim of “fair use” when copying every story’s headline, photo and first few paragraphs to repackage on Google News. And it’s done this because Google suspects it might lose.

It just settled a case with Agence France-Presse and signed a licensing deal with the Associated Press because it suspects it might lose in court. But to many bloggers reacting to Sam Zell’s comment that Google is “stealing” his newspapers content, things are so cut and dry. To them, Google has the right to anything it wants. After all, they say, it’s not even making money from Google News. What follows is my best explanation for why Google worries about its weaknesses more than the bloggers understand.

Fair use of copyrighted material is allowed under select circumstances. Let’s look to the exact wording of the law for a basic understanding of what defines fair use:

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Let’s briefly focus on the third bullet point, where Google scores poorly. It isn't taking newspaper content to use in a report it's written. It isn't commenting on a report. It's just taking the article and repackaging it under its own brand. Basically, it’s failed that test.

On the first point, Google also scores poorly, but less blatantly. After the flare up about Zell's comments, numerous bloggers claimed Google does not benefit financially from Google News. But they're not looking carefully.

Assume for a moment that all multi-billion dollar companies are in every project ultimately for the money, including Google. So how does Google make money off its Google News service, which doesn't have any ads? It benefits in two ways:

- BRANDING. By indexing and displaying newspaper content on its Web site, Google's brand is increasingly viewed as a reliable place to find any information. That brand reputation is making them a hell of a lot of money and creates loyal customers. Google converts loyalty into money in numerous ways across its entire site. Not serving ads in one section such as Google News doesn’t absolve it from the fact it makes plenty of money in the rest of its sections. Since increased usage and dependency on Google News drives traffic elsewhere on Google, it is making money from the product. Lots of money.

To counteract this argument, Google could relaunch Google News as a freestanding site similar to YouTube. Easy fix. But they won’t make that change because it counteracts their entire reason for creating Google News, which is making money.

- AD SENSE. By driving up links to newspaper Web sites, loads of remnant inventory is created on those sites. Since local advertisers have no interest in these one-off page views, the remnant space is most often filled with Google AdSense ads. This isn't coincidence. Google understands the effect of driving up remnant inventory via Google News.

All multi-billion dollar companies are in it for the money, Google included. They're not featuring Google News prominently on their ever-so-sparse home page just to be nice. The verdict: Google News fails a second important test of fair use because it is, in fact, generating revenue.

At this point, they’ve already lost the case. Still, our last test really seals the deal. The law requires some consideration of, “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.” In other words, by letting Google continually take this content, how are newspapers affected? Lucky for us, the effects are recorded over and over again in market studies across the country.

In nearly every market, when people are asked to name their sources for local news, many say Google. How can that be? Google doesn’t produce any content. Shouldn’t users know the difference between linking to content and actually providing it? Maybe. But they don’t care.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project asked people where they went to get their news yesterday, 16 percent went to a national TV news site, 14 percent went to Google or Yahoo, and 9 percent to the local newspaper.

The bottomline is newspapers’ entire business model is based on being the No. 1 source for local news. If this branding position is damaged or eroded in any way, then newspapers will lose customers and money. Studies show that Google News erodes the newspaper brand, and should be stopped for that reason.

Since Google obviously knows it’s in legal jeopardy, I suggest it do something proactive rather than risk losing court judgments (and millions or billions of dollars).

Spiders shouldn't be allowed to take content from any site without permission.

The entire way the robots.txt file works is backward. The file should award permission instead of opting out. Google and others have no legal right to copy your content without asking. And you, as the content owner, have no requirement to tell anyone they're not allowed to just take content. You've already told them they can't take it simply by holding the copyright.

Google ignores copyright. But it's not just Google. The entire Web is still set up this way because Congress hasn't yet understood the implications.

Google should lobby for a law that reverses the flow of the robots.txt file, so that content providers are forced to grant them permission for indexing the content rather than simply not opting out. There’s a big difference legally.

And if Congress won’t make a law, I suggest Google change the rules on its own. Obviously there are a lot of businesses who will take the five minutes needed to reformat their robots.txt file to grant permission.

If Google News is automatically included in that permission, some won’t participate, and they shouldn’t.

Seventy employees at The Tampa Tribune will soon be told that they've been laid off. The cuts are evidence that not even the once heralded savior of newspapers -- convergence -- can protect us from the downturn assailing revenues.

The Tribune is one of the only newspapers in the country that owns both a newspaper and television station, which is No. 1 in its market. The Web site serving both, TBO.com, is well respected. And yet, 70 people will lose their jobs.

I'm a big believer in convergence. It's a big reason why I work at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which owns a 24-hour cable news station. Convergence helps offer readers the story in whatever medium they want. Achieving that level of service should result in happier customers, and hopefully more of them. Access to experienced videographers and professional video production equipment should be an obvious advantage for any Web site. But not even convergence was a strong enough tactic to overcome the continuing drop in revenues felt across the industry.

In the end, The Tampa Tribune faces the same dilemmas as every other newspaper. Convergence is just one tool among many needed to complete a turnaround.

When your newsroom leaders are faced with cuts, is your job on their list? Movie critics, you're on the list. Right at the top.

The Tampa Tribune revealed who on their staff is most expendable. I know, "expendable" sounds harsh. But it's one of those harsh realities. Here's how the St. Petersburg Times reported it:

The Tampa Tribune laid off five members of its newsroom Wednesday, including well-known movie critic Bob Ross . . . Janet Weaver, the paper's executive editor and vice president, said managers cut positions with an eye toward keeping strong local news coverage and enhancing the online product . . . The paper will no longer produce local movie criticism. It will run reviews from other sources, Weaver said.

Ross was with the newspaper for 21 years and is truly a recognizable journalist in this area, having regularly appeared on WFLA, the Tribune's TV station. Cutting Ross is proof that no movie critic is immune from being replaced with AP content.

My advice for you all. Quit the movie beat now and find a more local beat.

Beginning to contemplate how Google might leverage ownership of Doubleclick will quickly give you a brain cramp. Possibilities are endless.

A story at washingtonpost.com focuses on how the combination could affect online advertising.

"It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful," Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and president for technology, said in a statement. "Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers."

Sure, Google plans to make Doubleclick a home for its advertising operations. But the first thing that comes to mind is whether Google can use Doubleclick to somehow help it become a one-stop location for buying ads across all mediums, from the Internet to the radio and, one day, onto television.

Remember that Doubleclick generated about $300 million in revenue last year, according to the New York Times. Yet, Google paid $3.1 billion for the company. That's triple the $1.1 billion it took to take DoubleClick private in 2005.

My guess is this purchase is about making money in a lot more places than only the Internet.

It's only fair that if I'm going to mention the cuts happening in Tampa, where the Tribune cut 70 employees, that I then direct attention to changes happening here at the Herald-Tribune. The Herald-Tribune is also a favorite stop on a tour of American-led convergence efforts.

Most prominent among recent cuts is the Sunday business section. Here's how our executive editor, Mike Connelly, explained the end of the section for readers:

Starting today, we are suspending publication of the Sunday Business & Money section. We hate to do this, but the Internet has changed the value of Sunday business.

For decades, Sunday business sections were built around weekly stock listings. But as more people use the Internet to check stock prices, it didn't make sense to run nearly the same stock information on Saturday and Sunday.

When looking for cuts, this is a practical one to make. Still, not everyone is going to agree. Feedback about this change is welcome -- somewhere else. Comments are closed on this blog entry because I'm not a total moron.

What follows is a word of caution about the ongoing love for search.

Newspapers have long frustrated users with terrible search functions. Recent improvements using FAST and Planet Discover are long overdue.

Google has proven contextual advertising around search results makes money nationally. But does evidence show that a newspaper can sell its search in a local market? I don't know. There is no proof yet. Suggestions that local search is a cash cow are pure speculation.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for speculation. Experimentation often leads to actual innovation. What I’m against is treating speculation as certainty.

A series of newspaper chains agreed on Monday to let their search engines be powered by Yahoo in exchange for a cut of any revenue generated by text ads placed around their results. Seems like a practical approach to making money off search. The assumption here is Yahoo will be able to sell more ads, more quickly into search than any newspaper.

The business case for Yahoo makes sense. In this deal, though, I wonder whether the user loses. It’s probably safe to assume Yahoo will provide nothing on the newspaper Web site that it doesn’t already provide on its portal. In other words, the newspaper search has no competitive advantage.

I like the idea of newspapers creating local search engines, such as one we’re creating for the Sarasota market, Searchasota.com. Through an agreement with the city, Searchasota is the landing page for anyone who logs onto the growing downtown wifi network. Development is an ongoing work in progress, believe me.

With any product, my feeling is that revenues follow eyeballs. If you’re riding the wave of search speculation, allow for time to create a product that people really will use. My guess is advertising will follow – eventually. If you’re not willing to wait, Yahoo-type solutions are a short-term answer.

A few posts back, I predicted first-quarter earnings would make even the most optimistic newspaper executives question their predictions of a natural turnaround. Here's a roundup of actual first-quarter results as reported in news releases.

Dow Jones

Dow Jones & Co. on Tuesday posted a 63% decline in first-quarter profit due to a year-earlier gain, but the publisher reiterated that it expects 2007 earnings before special items to grow 25% to 40% from the 2006 total. (Source is MarketWatch on this one because company press release was oddly worded.)

Gannett

Total operating revenues for the company were $1.87 billion in the first quarter compared to $1.88 billion in the first quarter of 2006 . . . Operating cash flow (defined as operating income plus depreciation and amortization) was $471.6 million compared to $488.2 million in the same quarter a year ago. Net income was $210.6 million in the first quarter of 2007 compared with $235.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

Lee Enterprises

On a combined basis, print and online retail advertising decreased 1.5 percent, and classified advertising decreased 2.0 percent . . . Income from continuing operations decreased 11.1 percent, to $11.9 million. Net income decreased 17.6 percent to $11.9 million.

McClatchy

The McClatchy Company today reported first quarter 2007 earnings from continuing operations of $14.5 million . . . compared to earnings from continuing operations of $21.8 million . . . in the first quarter of 2006. The company's total net income for the 2007 quarter was $9.0 million . . . compared to total net income of $27.7 million . . . in the 2006 first quarter.

Media General

Publishing Division profit in the quarter declined by 31.3 percent. Total Publishing revenues decreased 5.7 percent, and newspaper advertising revenues were down 6.6 percent from 2006.

New York Times Co.

Operating profit decreased to $54.5 million from $60.5 million in the first quarter of 2006 . . . Total revenues decreased 1.6 percent to $786.0 million from $799.2 million. Advertising revenues decreased 3.4 percent; circulation revenues increased 1.0 percent; and other revenues rose 4.3 percent.

Tribune Co.

Tribune’s 2007 first quarter operating revenues decreased 4 percent, or $55 million, to $1.2 billion . . . Operating cash flow was down 12 percent to $238 million from $271 million, while operating profit declined 16 percent to $181 million from $217 million.

The bottomline for all of these companies is profits are declining because revenues are falling faster than they can cut expenses. The risk is that cuts become desperate and begin irreparably hurting the product. Cutting print resources eventually dilutes the quality of the companion online product, which is supposed to ensure newspapers' bright futures.

The real correction we're realizing is newspaper companies cannot continue operating at the profit margins to which they're accustomed while transitioning to an online-focused business model. Smart companies will accept smaller profit margins while also outlining a plan for investment online that Wall Street can get behind.

Once upon a time, as co-host of a weekly television segment about online trends, I compared Netflix to Movielink back when they were both new.

Netflix mailed movies. Movielink played them right on your computer. Idealists were hot for Movielink because sending anything in the mail seemed old-fashioned. Turns out, Netflix's good-enough solution trumped Movielink, which was ahead of its time.

You'll know the day has come for online video when Netflix adopts a Movielink-esque model. Well, only recently Netflix created the option to "watch now."

If your newspaper.com lacks a strategy for developing video coverage, then a big opportunity is about to pass by. A recent study showed that newspapers are successfully using online video as a chance to steal advertisers from television competitors.

Most local TV sites are underdeveloped because when the Web was born, it was slow, and TV news had nothing to post except video.

Newspapers boast a huge headstart in the race to snatch market share online. With video's arrival, it won't be long before local TV stations stake a greater Web presence.

Advertisers follow audiences. Get their advertisers while the getting is good.

Google is still working on its plan to launch advertising on YouTube’s video clips. Most sites use 30-second pre-roll ads, which still seem pretty darn annoying to me despite what some optimistic studies say. Perhaps the reason Google hasn’t followed suit is they agree. So what is the right solution?

I can tell you what HeraldTribune.com is doing because I think it's smart. Check out the ads on our newest video player, launched on Friday.

There’s a 30-second ad AFTER the video clip and a 5-second pre-roll. The pre-roll works a lot like NPR sponsorships. “This segment is brought to you by so-and-so, your tagline here.”

A recent Online Publishers Association study shows (on Page 24) that the shorter the ad, the more people are likely to pay attention. The goal of a compelling 5-second tagline is to interest the viewer in watching 30 seconds more.

No statistics yet on whether this is working. But, anecdotally, the ads have affected me. It’s a short message, but also a repetitive one. Any marketing specialist will attest that frequency is an important part of successful branding campaigns.

My suggestion is YouTube combine sponsorship pre-rolls with surround sessions, where the ads follow a user around the site.

News is a supply-and-demand business, like any other. Critics of NBC News’ decision to air the video and photos from the Virginia Tech killer ignore this point.

Critics allege the public is outraged that the video was aired. Meanwhile, it’s quickly becoming the most-watched clip ever on the Associated Press’ video network. And NBC clobbered its competitors the night of the release of video not because people were disgusted, but because people were interested.

Give me a break. Someone please ask these hypocrites whether they watched the video. If it was so wrong to air, then it was equally wrong to watch.

During CNN’s “Reliable Sources” today, commentator Hugh Hewitt was on one of his rampages, this time predicting NBC would have “blood on its hands” if someone tries to emulate the killer. Hewitt says the murderer used this killing to get on TV. Ironic that I’d not seen Hewitt on TV until now.

This entire debate is esoteric, at best. The mainstream media forgets that if they choose not to air clips, it won’t matter in the future. The killer could upload them to YouTube instead, or one of the other numerous video-sharing sites. Copies would quickly proliferate online and people could read or watch it there.

The crux of this argument is really whether to air something that most people want to see, for better or worse, regardless of whether some people will complain.

I guess it depends who the news media is supposed to serve.

In this case, the market worked perfectly. The content was released because of high demand. After it was seen, demand subsided. And now networks won’t air it.

Stop cramming Katie Couric into a half-hour long program. She needs at least an hour, just so she can breathe. I've said it before, and I'm going to repeat myself because the anti-Courics are at it again. Here's TV critic Gail Shister:

CBS executives deny it, but there's a growing feeling within the network that Katie Couric is an expensive, unfixable mistake.

Shister claims to have interviewed numerous anonymous CBS folks who say Couric is too weak for hard news. Of course, when Couric interviewed John and Elizabeth Edwards she was criticized for being too harsh. You can't please the haters.

But Shister's critics do have one thing right:

For starters, the 6:30 p.m. news and Today call for totally different skill sets. And those sets are not easily transferrable. Couric's effervescent personality and expertise with live interviews and ad-libs were perfect for morning TV, particularly over a leisurely two hours. On a 30-minute evening newscast, however, what's required is the ability to read the TelePrompTer and not display too much emotion.

"I guess the evening news isn't ready for the morning news," quips Robert Lichter, president of Washington's Center for Media and Public Affairs.

I agree. You can't play Shaquille O'Neal as point guard and expect him to be a superstar. That's just dumb. If CBS has the guts to move Katie to center, then it will blow out competitors. The big problem with all of the evening news shows is they appeal to people who watch that kind of thing. Those people are, franky, old and dying. Instead, appeal to the gigantic potential audience who don't watch.

The first step is going the full hour with the Evening News. Then you'll have time to import some of the "Today" show format with newsmaker interviews, discussions, and maybe even a little "Free Speech." Don't buy a sports car for driving to the market.

She isn't Dan Rather. She isn't Walter Cronkite. She's Katie Couric, and she's expensive. So, CBS, grow some courage and start getting what you paid for.

I'm so honored to report that HeraldTribune.com is a nominee for two very important EPpy awards. Here are the specifics:

Best Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site, fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors
BoomerGirl.com (The World Company)
HeraldTribune.com
PilotOnline.com and HamptonRoads.com

Best News Web Site, fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors
Arizona Daily Star's StarNet
asap (The Associated Press)
HeraldTribune.com
PilotOnline.com

This is the second consecutive year HeraldTribune.com has been nominated for Best Newspaper Web Site.

Oftentimes, nominations are announced and folks learn little about why judges felt the site was deserving. The nice thing about traditional print contests is we can just go read the story or series being recognized. That's not possible in these categories.

To help combat that, starting tomorrow, I'm going to highlight projects each day that were mentioned in the nomination letter. I don't know which of our projects might have impressed judges, but it should help add perspective.

Again, we're all grateful just to be nominated among such a great crowd, especially two years in a row. Congratulations to our Web team and to the entire newsroom, which helps ensure excellent journalism happens online every day.

As promised, here is a look at the first of several projects highlighted in the nomination letters sent to the EPpy folks. The hope is this provides insight on what might have led judges to name HeraldTribune.com as a finalist for best news site and best newspaper-affiliated site.

By 10 o'clock election night, Herald-Tribune political writer and blogger Jeremy Wallace knew something was wrong. The number of votes Sarasota County was reporting in its nasty and hard-fought Congressional race – the most expensive U.S. House race ever – was too low. Way too low. Reporter David Gulliver, covering a local hospital board race, walked up and said the county was reporting more votes for hospital board than Congress.

Thus began a fury of reporting to find out what happened – and whether the missing votes would have changed the outcome of the second-closest House race in the country.

By the time the newspaper’s first story about the undervote hit doorsteps, the investigative team’s analysis had been turned into an interactive map. The map plotted Sarasota County's disputed undervote by precinct, letting readers investigate for themselves whether their polling place was affected – and whether solidly Democratic precincts were more or less likely to have a high undervote.

The next step online producers took really made their work standout. The voting results database was tied to user-submitted reports from voters, who described what happened at their precincts. Were you cautioned by a poll worker about the District 13 race? Did you see the race the first time you went through your ballot? More than 300 voters replied. Their answers helped prove that poor ballot design caused the undervote. All of our multimedia coverage is archived at www.HeraldTribune.com/District13.

Covering the undervote began with converged coverage of Election Night that included video from the winners and losers speeches, a live blog contributed to by dozens of reporters stationed in our three-county coverage area, and live election results that fed into the Web and then reverse-published to the newspaper and in live graphics on our 24-hour television news station, SNN News 6. And election coverage began months earlier with “topics pages” on each of the major races and Web-only interviews with 68 participating candidates.

Credit for this project belongs to too many people to name individually. Obviously, the entire investigate team was a vital cog. And on election night, every member of the Web team was on hand.

Charlie Szymanski and Maurice Tamman, creators of IBISEYE.com, created the election results reporting system and the precinct map.

Melissa Worden was charged with harvesting as much raw video from our TV photogs as possible. The results, in the form of speeches and reports from candidate HQs, are more numerous than even we'd anticipated.

Leigh Caldwell built the topics pages, candidate interviews and helped organize the newsroom to collect data from users about the undervote. In our latest election, not mentioned in this letter, Leigh brought in each candidate for video interviews that were then "reverse-published" to our TV station in clips.

The Herald-Tribune’s new landmark building in downtown Sarasota was explained in a special section online that included a virtual tour of the building, video and photo galleries. Plus, read online-only articles that included an interview with the architect and explainer on the “Sarasota School of Architecture” that the building pays homage to.

Credit goes to Melissa Worden, who organized the entire section's online-only content and worked with the newspaper's graphic and photo teams to create the interactive tour.

When President Bush sent a video message to Booker Middle School on Sept. 11 to honor what happened there in 2001, HeraldTribune.com was the only site in the country to post the video. The news became part of an enterprising online package. By working ahead with the newsroom, our multimedia producer Melissa Worden created a memorial section for 9/11 that was not only multimedia, but also it was a truly local take on what happened. Talk with the students who were in the room when President Bush was told the nation was under attack. Or meet residents who lived and worked with the terrorists.

For Florida residents, our hurricane tracking service is a vital tool that shows how Web programming can also be excellent journalism.

A team of reporters contacted Florida’s 67 counties and used public records requests to obtain the property tax roles. Now about 8 million buildings, almost every one in state, is in the database. If a hurricane’s path points to land, IBISEYE.com calculates the number of buildings at risk based on whether it is inside a forecast or actual hurricane or tropical storm wind field. As a hurricane approaches, it puts the danger in perspective.

During the 2006 hurricane season, IBISEYE drew more than 80,000 visits.

The IBISEYE database became the foundation for a Herald-Tribune investigation of hurricane paths. Though nowhere along the southern U.S. coastline is safe from hurricanes, there are hurricane hot spots -- areas that are far more likely to be struck than others -- according to a Herald-Tribune analysis of all known hurricanes since 1851.

The busiest and largest hot spot is a 300-mile swath of the South Florida coastline from Key West to St. Lucie County. It is centered on Miami Beach, which has been struck an average of once every 4 1/2 years -- five times the average for coastal counties.

The analysis required performing about 45 million calculations that examined 13,400 storm segments dating back to 1851 and calculating each segment’s distance to 1,227 coastal places. All the geometry was programmed and run on a SQL Server. All the information was stored in a database and tied to each storm so the storms could be listed and then mapped under the name of each place.

Once the data was created, we used the Google Map hacks to overlay the update points and path lines onto the map.

The hot spots were determined by taking the average number of storms that stuck places in each coastal county. The counties in the top third were considered high; and the bottom two thirds either moderate or low. These maps were created using ArcGIS, a mapping application, and then converted to KML, the native format used by Google Earth. We then developed a technique to use those files to overlay the thematically colored counties.

The "we" referred to there are Maurice Tamman and Charlie Szymanski. Everything written above is a compilation of several nomination letters and samples quite liberally from their own words, not mine.

NewsFirst launched in June 2006 and is a continuously updated section for breaking local news. Instead of posting a handful of stories during one day’s news cycle, editors now regularly post more than 20 breaking stories.

That’s because we’ve empowered newspaper editors with the ability to post news directly to HeraldTribune.com. The result is better online journalism and about 150,000 new page views per month. The number of return visitors to the site per day is about 70 percent more than before NewsFirst was created.

When Herald-Tribune investigative reporters became the first in the nation to identify the priest who U.S. Rep. Mark Foley said molested him, the news broke online in NewsFirst.

Credit for the content goes to the entire newsroom. But Leigh Caldwell, the one person we depend on for wrangling daily news coverage at HeraldTribune.com, deserves special recognition for this project. We launched NewsFirst during her first week on the job.

The inspiration for this idea came from JSOnline.com's Daywatch blog. When smart people see a good idea, they know to copy it fast. We do breaking news at least a little differently, of course. But many thanks to JS for paving the way.