Whenever an employee leaves, it’s a bittersweet feeling. Moving onto bigger things hopefully means you’ve done something right as a manager, not wrong.

The latest employee to depart my Web team is Jackie Luper, who starts work today as “Vice President of Interactive” for Bradenton.com. It’s a pretty impressive leap from “Online Producer for Entertainment.” And by no means is it all because of me. Jackie is a strong person, who is going to put up a good fight now that she’s leading a rival Web site. (Bradenton.com competes against HeraldTribune.com in our northern coverage area.)

If I reflect on the list of people who departed for bigger and better things, they’ve left me with a sense of pride. Damon Carroll was a longtime producer here and is now “Managing Producer” for OregonLive.com. Leigh Caldwell was our news producer and is now “Executive Producer” for SNN Channel 6.

I first learned this bittersweet lesson back in college, when making my own transition from writer to editor. It meant no longer seeing my byline and stories in print. Watching the staff writers grow had to become an even greater reward. And it was.

It still is.

It's always a good sign when the reporters who honed their multimedia skills while working with your Web team then feel comfortable/excited enough to go out and share what they know. In the clip above, Herald-Tribune reporter Steve Echeverria does just that.

I've been so busy I forgot to shout from the mountain tops (or at least this little blog) my favorite phrase: "I told you so!" Google News replaced those links that send loads of empty traffic to your sites with its own Associated Press stories, thus keeping the page views for itself.

Regular readers know I warned about this impending change in a post titled "Google could be waiting to use AP content."

Replacing the links is just the beginning. You'll notice Google hasn't started running any AdSense advertising alongside the AP stories. Seems odd for a company that makes basically every penny from AdSense. So why hasn't Google put ads on its pages yet? ("Yet" is the important word.)

Here's what I said a few weeks ago when drawing from my intense psychic abilities to make this prediction:

I'm guessing Google did plan on using the AP content to replace outbound links. That would quickly match their rival, Yahoo, in page views. But they couldn't do it politically. Not yet. The moment Google News blatantly starts making money, they risk shocking the news business (which it feeds off of) into realizing Google News is an enemy, not an ally . . .

One day, after the news business has completely capitulated to the idea that its content can be aggregated in any form or quantity, Google will start replacing outbound links with their own content and then taking the full share of AdSense revenue. At that point, newspapers will have eroded their copyright so greatly they won't have a legal leg to stand on.

Google is about making money, and so is Google News. That makes it a competitor.

Cue Newspaper Executive Homer Simpson: "Doh!"

It’s time to consider an uncomfortable reality: What if newspaper editors are doing a sucky job of picking the day’s top stories?

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism shows news lineups are far different from the norm when users are allowed to pick their own stories. Here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle reported it (found via Romenesko):

During a week this summer when the mainstream press focused on the immigration debate in Congress and a failed terrorism plot in the United Kingdom, the most popular stories on news sites where the users rank their favorites, like San Francisco's Digg, was - aside from chatter about Apple's new iPhone - not dominated by any one news story.

There are only two ways to interpret this study's implication for traditional newspaper lineups.

1) Traditional editors will blame dumb users for creating a lineup for other dumb people. They’ll say that when users are allowed to pick their own stories, they can choose to ignore what’s actually important. And, they’ll claim the world will end as we know it because everyone’s brains will turn into a pile of mush.

2) Or, the users are right.

Consider for a moment that thousands of users’ combined knowledge creates a more effective lineup than what comes from a very small group of old curmudgeons who create Page One each day.

Newspaper editors are trained in “news judgment” that is supposed to balance what people want to read against what the editors say is actually important. But too often what they’re selecting impresses other newspaper editors, not readers.

"The traditional news outlet wants to put a lot of gravitas on their front page. They want the readers to eat their spinach," said Kourosh Karimkhany, general manager of Wired Digital, which owns Reddit.

Everyone who works online, with its continuous stats about which stories are actually being read, knows that transporting a newspaper lineup to the Web site will spell disaster for page views. Those self-assured editors often pick stories that drop like a rock online.

And, boy, do they think that’s funny. Those silly online readers, they say, don’t care about good stories. With newspaper circulation in a state of perpetual decline, maybe it’s time to consider that print readers don’t like the way you cook your spinach either.

Tailoring news to your audience

The study also showed strong evidence that news must be tailored to match the interests of your audience.

The lineups presented by the user-aggregated lists were different from each other. For example, Digg trended more toward technology stories while Reddit users were more inclined to recommend government news and opinion. This isn't surprising. After all, each Web site attracts a different audience.

Newspaper readers are yet another audience altogether. So it's an oversimplication to suggest newspaper editors should just defer to whatever the folks at Reddit are picking that day. All news is relative.

Ask your boss why increasing video content is important, or why any of those buzzy projects happening now across the industry is worth your time, and the answer is likely to cite attracting new audiences or making money. Both are wrong answers. Too empty.

If any of you out there is seriously spending hours of your life shooting and editing video because it will make your company money, then it’s a life-sucking duty you do.

Too often the purpose of all this work is treated, at-best, as a subtext. It’s time we become more deliberate about stating why we bother showing up to work each day.

We show up because it matters.

Those statistics from analytics tools are more than numbers. Thousands of people depend on our Web sites.

I know you’re waiting for it, but I’m not going to tell you the meaning of life. At least half the benefit is finding out for yourself.

I’m supposed to talk with a journalism class on Monday at the University of South Florida, my alma mater. Knowing what I know about how frustrated young graduates become when they hit the wall that is newspaper culture, what should I tell them?

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune recently participated in the Learning Newsroom program. Among the study’s findings, compiled from an analysis of several newsrooms, was a revelation that young people are on the verge of leaving each of the newspapers. What’s sad is that so few people in the newsroom believed the study’s results, which is based on reports in hundreds of surveys.

People in the newsroom rationalized that it’s normal for young people to expect to leave their current newspaper. After all, they’re at the beginning of their careers. But the Learning Newsroom facilitators repeatedly tried to explain that young people weren’t just thinking about leaving the newspaper; they were considering leaving the entire industry out of sheer frustration with the very slow pace of change.

So when I talk to these future college graduates, I’ve decided against advising them to go into newspapers. Online media isn't limited to newspapers. AOL, Yahoo and Ask all have news sites that need journalists. Micro-local start-ups such as PegasusNews.com are viable alternatives. The truth is that if you’re looking to make progress, these competitors might be more productive places to spin your wheels.