I was in Chicago last week and I took a whole bunch of pictures — very photogenic town. The pics start here.

Television stations around the nation are getting more aggressive on the Web, but Cincinnati seems to be an exceptional fertile market.

Up until now, newspaper Web sites enjoyed certain competitive advantages against television sites:

• Newspapers generally have larger staffs and produce more content
• They already have content that works well on the Web such as calendar listings and classifieds
• Most newspapers are the biggest media in town, so they can better promote their sites

But in all but a handful of markets, newspaper Web sites have a tenuous hold on their market share lead.

Video is going to play an increasingly important role in attracting Web users. TV stations that get aggressive now could start taking over their markets in a few years. Newspaper sites should be ramping up their video offerings.

Yesterday, we visited the Huntington Library and I took lots of pictures.

This was my third visit to the Huntington (fourth if you count my trip to donate my Anthony Burgess letter). The first trip was led by Noel Riley Fitch and included a group of my PLNC literature department classmates. The second was with Billie and my step son. In both those trips, I was more interested in the library and art. This trip, is was primarily about plants, especially the roses and desert garden.

This time the trip was organized by the Kern County Rose Society.

It was a good day, and I got lots of ideas for the garden. On the West side of the house, I think I want to plant a Palo Verde and Mesquite, and I’m even thinking about taking out the lawn and planting some euphorbia, barrel cactus and more aloe. I’d like to include some native grasses, I think.

Jack White, one of the most brilliant musicians of the last decade or so, has a new project — The Raconteurs. Click the link. The site is marvelously chic old school geek. The music is great, too.

Of course, I suppose, if you don’t know pre-Mac user interfaces, you might not know how to operate the site. That probably violates several usability rules.

Lost Remote reports that tech-focused social media site Digg is planning to expand into general news coverage. Well, here’s another disruptor for traditional media.

Leonard Witt has published an academic paper on citizen media called “Constructing a Framework to Enable an Open Source Reinvention of Journalism “

It’s an interesting approach, drawing comparisons to the open software movement and open source journalism. However, if a publisher is looking for an actionable road map, this paper isn’t it. It’s more theoretical than operational. That may be understandable since of all the citizen media experiments being conducted by mainstream newspapers, none yet can be clearly defined as success, so we don’t necessarily know yet what success looks like, or how to get there.

Witt provides some bits of good advice, though, such as:

Just as with the Los Angeles Times’s Wikitorial failure, the Bayosphere’s poor showing could have been predicted by a close reading of open source software and commons-based peer production literature. Beneath what might look like an open environment there usually is structure and someone with a vision actively providing guidance.

There’s also this important bit:

An enduring criticism is that reporters and editors write for other reporters and editors and not for the audience — or the users. An open source content model should consider serving both users and possible content producers with the aim of producing a more robust product.

And I think that’s where a good citizen media effort should lead. It’s the whole “journalism as a conversation” model.

John Battelle has been experimenting with Google AdWords (as a buyer, not a publisher), and was confused to find many of his keyword bids inactive. More puzzling was that on many of his bids, he was the only apparent bidder.

Somebody at Google was kind enough to point him to a post on another blog (apparently, an official AdWords blog) that explains how Google AdWords “work.” Basically, if you don’t write a quality ad, you must bid more to get your ad to appear.

It’s policies like this that make me think Google AdWords will never appeal to local, mom/pop shops. Your average small business owner is too busy to optimize ads, check bid rankings regularly, try to figure out the magic formula for the best ROI. They just want their advertising to work. No fuss. And they don’t want to think Google is just jacking them around to make more money (which is certainly a reasonable suspicion). Keep it simple. This could be a key competitive advantage for local news sites.

Here’s something else interesting via CyberJournalist: Alexaholic. Site managers should use this tool to track their traffic against local competitors. Here’s a link comparing traffic for various San Diego media sites. Alexa is far from the final word in competitive traffic analysis, but in the absence of a better tool, it’s helpful.

Here’s an obvious path to personalization for newspaper sites: Use RSS.

The first I’ve heard doing this — not just using a branded RSS reader, but actually trying to get into personalization, is Austin.

So far, pretty basic, but it’s a step in the right direction. (Via CyberJournalist).

One of the first rules of Web usability is, “keep it simple.”

If you make users puzzle over how to find the information they want, you are more likely to frustrate them than impress them with your creative talent. Link labels should be simple and declarative. Don’t hide vital information behind obscure references or metaphors. First and foremost, allow your users to get quickly the information they want.

And for gosh sake — if you want to sell somebody something, don’t make them guess.

With that in mind, check out the online media kit for Boston.com.

Sure, it’s snazzy. I love good Flash as much as the next Web geek. But if all I’m after is banner rates, do I really want to sit through this? Once it downloads, it takes a second or two to figure out that you can’t just click anywhere to go some place (the obvious answer … like, “just take me to the next page where there is real information, please,”) you have to mouse over specific, subtly highlighted areas of the picture. At least, they labeled the boxes, but what’s the metaphor here? Why is a certain box in one spot of the picture and not another? How can I quickly recognize I want this box for rates and another for ad specs (not that those common advertiser questions are easy to get to)? And if I’m a neophyte advertiser, and many are, I’m not going to know what “behavioral” means, so why should I click on that box? OK, now I’m frustrated (I’m pretending to be an advertiser here). I just want to contact somebody to ask my questions. Cool, here’s a link to “e-mail.” I can e-mail somebody. Click. Oh, no. This isn’t an e-mail link. It’s some more Flash telling me about Sandy and how she likes to shop for clothes. Drat. Maybe I’ll go to Google AdWords after all …

How is any of this helping advertisers quickly get the information they need so they can make buying decisions? The tag line of Boston.com advertising is “Find Your Focus.” Ironic, isn’t it?

Lesson: Don’t let your Flash guru build your media kit.

Yahoo! has revamped its home page. I like it. Smart, clean, well organized. But really got my attention was an ad for Citibank. The ad opens initially as a standard big box (300×250), then collapses to a 300×90. Links under the ad say: “e-Savings Details” (the subject of the ad, “Open Ad” (which is just another call to action) and “Ad Feedback” (Yahoo! wants to know what you think of the ad).

What a great, interactive, less-intrusive way to present a banner ad.

There’s also a great text ad under the search box.

Times may be tough for the business of newspapers, but apparently there are still plenty of young people drawn to the allure of life as an ink-stained wretch, however virtual that may be.

I took Billie to Tehachapi today as a Mother’s Day treat. We ate at a very nice restaurante (Jake’s) and looked around the town a bit and then went for a Sunday drive.

Of course, I took pictures.

Among my favorites:

• This one and this one of an old slaughter house.
• A picture of a dirt road in the hills.
• These hills.
• The Tehachapi Loop.
• An old stove at the Tehachapi Museum.
• The Tehacahpi Museum itself.

Tomorrow it’s back to work after a week off.

I relaunched HowardOwens.com on May 3.

At the time, HowardOwens.com was ranked #4 in the Google search for “Howard Owens” In #1 spot was my Buzznet site, followed by two articles I’m quoted in. Now, this domain and Buzznet have changed positions. Page rank for the home page remains 5/10.

This is all of interest to me just because I was curious if the search position for this site could change once it was back online, or if I had irreparably damaged its rank by referring all traffic to my Buzznet pages. I wanted to see how long it would take HowardOwens.com to rise back to #1 if I didn’t do anything, but just waited. It took about a week.

Tim Rutten enters the fray between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times over the worthiness of stories that recently won Pulitzers. Rutten is more interested in the politics. I’m more interested in the journalism. Rutten quotes Times’ editor Bill Keller:

“I leave to others, including the court of public opinion,” he wrote, to decide “whether the government officials who spoke to reporters about secrets that troubled them were partisan evildoers, as the Journal contends, or conscientious public servants, or something more complicated. Since most of them, including the nearly dozen who were cited in the first warrantless eavesdropping story, have not been publicly identified, it’s hard to know how the Journal is so certain of their motives.

In his own words, Keller admits the chief flaw with these stories — we don’t know who the sources are and we cannot possibly judge their motivations. Without knowing their motivations, we can’t possibly judge the merits of their assertions.

In today’s world, the journalistic attitude of “just trust us” is no longer good enough. Reporters must get their sources to go on the record, or verify their information through public documents or alternative, on-the-record sources. Certainly, anonymous sources should never be used as a sole-source of information, and anonymous sources should never be allowed to speculate or hold forth with opinion. Too much of this kind of reporting comes out of New York and Washington. If Keller is going to allow reporters to produced anonymous sourced stories, then he hasn’t a leg to stand on when it comes to defending those stories against attack.

The LAPD has launched a blog (via LA Observed).

Our online journal is an interactive tool that we use to deliver real-time, unfiltered information. We invite you to take a look inside the Department to learn more about the men and women in blue who have sworn to protect and to serve you.

By using this Blog, the LAPD hopes to maintain an open dialogue with the communities we serve and those who have an interest in the men and women of this organization. We encourage you to express your opinions about current events through respectful and insightful discussion. We reserve the right to refuse to post those comments that contain inappropriate language and/or material. In the near future, we intend to expand our Blogging capabilities to all 19 Area Stations.

They’ve even enabled comments (moderated).

This is interesting as a form of disintermediation of the media. Big-J journalists might argue that it’s merely flakery and doesn’t replace the need for real reportage. And that may all be true. But I also believe most readers are pretty smart and can separate the flakery from the useful information. While I believe in aggressive journalism in covering government agencies, I also think it’s a good thing for agencies to open up and try to reach the public in an unfiltered manner. The more voices the better.

Of course, the best thing the LAPD could do is not just sugar coat everything. They’ll have more credibility if the voice is authentic and honest, and credibility will be important in those times they want to use the blog for a pissing match with local media.

Here’s a screen shot of an unfortunate juxtaposition: it’s banner ad promoting newspapers as a great advertising vehicle next to a story about declining readership. Ouch.

It’s a good thing that online traffic continues to grow rapidly.

Interesting idea from Indeed.com — pay-per-click, contextual job ads. This could be a logical evolution for top jobs — the industry-standard recruitment up sell. Another possible spin for newspapers, as an additional up sell, place recruitment liners as contextual ads in Google and Yahoo! searches. That would be hard to manage, so it would need to be automated, and maybe even self-serve, but I could see it producing a tiddy bit of revenue.

I find it somewhat surprising that Yahoo! is apparently scaling back its original content ambitions.

“We don’t have the ambition to do a lot” of original content, Semel said at a meeting with industry analysts, executives and reporters. “We have the ambition to help lead the way and encourage others to do it for us. … We don’t aspire to have 2,000 creative people working for Yahoo. We are an Internet company.”

That makes some sense, but it’s also a mixed signal. For the past two years, Yahoo! has given every indication it wanted to produce more original content, from hiring Lloyd Braun to launching the Hot Zone.

I’m not sure I agree with the assertion that Yahoo! is an Internet company. It is, I think, first and foremost, a media company. I see no reason, with its resource and ability to attract talent, that it can’t become a very competitive source of original content.

This is what I’ve learned about roses this week: Double Delights don’t like to be sprayed. With anything.

A couple of my roses in the front had this tiny little bugs on them, and I was also having a minor problem with earwigs. On an impulse, while in Wal-Mart, I bought some Ortho rose and flower insecticide. That evening, I sprayed five plants. This morning, I found a large portion of the Double Delight dappled in black spots. On closer inspection, I found it wasn’t only the leaves, but the stems and buds, too. On even closer inspection, I saw it was only one side a leaf, stem or bud. On even closer inspection, I could tell any leaf that was sheltered by another wasn’t spotted, and the back of leaves, if pointed in the direction from which I sprayed, were spotted.

I called Ortho (nice of them to put an 800 number on the bottle for just such situations), and the rep said she had NEVER heard of anything like this. After talking everything over in detail, such suggested I go to a reputable nursery and see what they tell me.

So I went to White Forest and talked with Charlie. Yup, it’s chemical burn, he said. He said Double Delights are particularly sensitive plants and should never be sprayed with anything. Ever. He also recommended cutting away all the damaged canes. Drat. They are all the ones with unbloomed buds.