I’ve got another speaking appearance coming up.

May 9 in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Inland Press Foundation’s Small Newspaper Workshop. My topic: “A Step-By-Step Approach to Building a Future in New Media.”

My description: An overview of how to run a newspaper web site for the new to intermediate site manager at a small- to medium- circulation newspaper.

Topics I’ll cover:

• Business strategies (innovation and competitive advantage)
• Usability, site structure, design
• Audience Development
• Revenue
• Sales and Negotiating
• Personnel (hiring and staffing)
• Vendor Relations
• Changing Technology
• Metrics
• Budgets
• Marketing
• Project management
• Leadership

Doug Fisher riled up a group of copy editors. How? By suggesting they blog.

Wow.

Objections ranged from “nobody will read it” to “competitors will learn our copy editing secrets.”

Objections, in other words, that to anybody who really understands the web are utterly nonsensical.

Doug refutes them all in an update to his post.

The thread reminds me of an observation some of us interactive veterans have shared over the past few months: There is a growing number of journalists who just woke up to the web and think they have all the answers.

A newspaper executive at another company recently said to me, “The newsroom just discovered the internet in January and suddenly they’re all geniuses.”

He then added, “Be careful what you wish for,” to which he refers to how for years those of us on the interactive side have begged our newsroom colleagues to take an interest in the web. Now they are and they want to drive before they’ve even looked at a map.

You know what, it’s great that newsrooms are seeing the importance of the web. We need it. It’s the only way we’re going to survive, but before making judgments and strategic decisions about content and audiences, it would be helpful if newsroom types would spend a little time absorbing what the web is about.

Blogging is a big part of doing that.

Of course, taking up a blog and using it to learn and get the web only works if you jettison everything you think you know about newspapering.

The web isn’t about control, or ownership or one-way communication. It’s about participation, collaboration, sharing and communication.

Web publishing is very different from putting out a print product. You’re not trying to reach a mass audience with a single message, and you’re not limited to only one chance each day to get it right. The web is more fluid and more dynamic. You can publish any time, will probably reach only a slice of any given audience, and can fix it later if needed.

This is a more profound difference than you might think. It changes more than just what you publish. It changes how you work.

For any one who might think I’m complaining. I’m not. I’m just sharing what I find to be an interesting observation.

One clear advantage of this shift in interest is that it does force those of us who have been doing online for a while to constantly re-evaluate some of our assumptions. That is never a bad thing.

It looks like Angela Grant is moving her blog: News Videographer. Good, smart move.

News Videographer is meant to fill the gap in training and provide a robust feedback forum. The main service of this blog is to provide honest critiques of online news videos and related multimedia content. These critiques will be blunt, but they will always be constructive. Such feedback can help the videographer improve his or her work and can also help others develop their own shooting, editing and storytelling skills.

My advice would be concentrate on making better web video, not on trying to shoehorn old video conventions and traditions into web video. It’s about producing video that people watch, not the equipment or the time spent on it.

Will Sullivan links to a post by Vanessa Fox who says newspapers are investing too much in video and not enough, apparently in podcasts.

Here’s the problem with her argument: Nobody listens to podcasts.

Any news site manager who has tried podcasts and video need only look at the download stats. Video wins. Podcasts snooze.

Fox argues that podcasts work better in a our multitasking lives. I think the opposite is true. To really absorb a podcast, you must LISTEN. Personally, if I’m going to multitask, I want music blasting out of my iPod, not some pundit pontificating. I’ll save that for when I have time to listen, and I never have time to listen.

Sure, video demands my attention. It isn’t as conducive to multitasking, which is why I save video for those times I have time and want to take the time for just video.

If a podcast is on, I find it hard to sit still and just listen. Video can engage me more fully and quiet my compulsion to multitask.

Video, as I’ve discovered, is great on an iPod, and I subscribe to several vodcasts now, because it becomes video entertainment I can carry with me and use in airports, on planes, while waiting on things when there is otherwise nothing else to do but wait.

The other advantage of video is that it is more portable — it can be watched on computers, televisions and moble devices. The same could be said of a podcast, but it doesn’t work quite as well on TV, and getting IP video on TV is a pretty significant step forward for online video.

No, video is definitely where newspapers need to be investing multimedia resources.

All my life in California, I met people who moved from other parts of the country and they would say, “I miss the four seasons.”

To me, what I heard them saying is, “I miss fall. I miss the change of colors. I miss the leaves.”

I never thought about spring.

In California, spring is just another time of the year. Not much happens. Sure, some flowers that only bloom in April and May add some color, and baseball starts, and you might get a little more sun without it being too hot, but in Southern California, spring isn’t too much from winter.

This weekend, spring came to Western New York.

It’s very different. Within 48 hours we saw a dramatic shift from winter and death to spring and life. There are more birds, more bugs, more hum and buzz. In the harbor behind our apartment, the fish or jumping and the ducks are bobbing.

It’s a real transformation.

My first winter in New York wasn’t bad. The cold and the snow hardly bothered me.
I think I’ll like it here. I better. I expect to be here for a while.

Speaking of staying, we’re just entering into escrow on a house. It’s another mid-century modern, built in 1959. It’s on more than half an acre and offers good gardening opportunities. It has two fire places, including one in the basement, which also has a wet bar.

Tish Grier says some nice things about me, but that’s not why I’m linking to her post. She makes some good points about not forcing the “journalist” label on independent content producers who are clearly uncomfortable being put into that category.

By tussling over who’s a journalist and who isn’t, both Newspapers and the Rabble get distracted and pulled into a useless argument that ends only in “I know what you are but what am I?”

Though I’m not sure if I totally agree with the second half of that same graph.

Newspapers should view the new media landscape like bloggers–choose who you want to link to, but don’t insist they write the blogs *for* you. That’s utter nonsense and to echo Owens’ assessment, doomed to fail.

I see nothing wrong with a newspaper web site creating a blogging platform for the local community and allowing users to create and manage their own blogs. That’s not “insisting” users create content for you. It’s providing another tool for conversation. However, the other vital tool of conversation is not ignoring bloggers who are not on your platform. Newspaper sites need to surface the conversation of all bloggers relevant to the location, the story or the issue, no matter where the link leads.

Relevant to another of Tish’s points: I probably shouldn’t comment on Triblocal, since the product is a direct competitor with my company’s web sites, but I will say, their model is not what I would do.

Jean Yves Chainon has produced a two-part blog post suggesting that e-paper may save the newspaper industry. Part 1. Part 2.

Well, the newspaper world could do with a glimpse of hope. And there it came: after all the signals of steady decline, at least in the industrialised world, digital paper finally offers a perspective for innovation and growth of the beleaguered sector. The digital paper technology combines the best of two worlds: the look and feel of the traditional paper and the versatility of the online editions (see ‘E-Readers, Background’). The promise it offers is mind boggling: a newspaper era without newsprint, rotation presses and complicated distribution lines: all serious cost factors. The practice however is less convincing. The enabling e-ink technology is around for several years, but its application is still scarce and purely experimental. That is, until now.

While Chainon, in part 2, acknowledges that the best use of the new technology isn’t necessarily a repurpose of current print approaches, and while I’ve previously been optimistic about the arrival of e-paper, I’m going to now play the part of the skeptic.

One of the first rules of innovation is to pay attention to the job people are trying to get done. The infamous Cue-Cat is a classic example of technology trying to solve a problem that doesn’t seem to exist. While advertisers and publishers might have a problem with driving more consumers directly to advertisers’ web sites, consumers didn’t perceive the cue-cat as a solution. Heck, they weren’t even convinced there was a problem.

So, is e-paper more about solving a problem for publishers than a problem for readers? What “job to be done” will e-paper help consumers solve?

Sure, there are benefits for consumers — fewer trees killed, less pollution, no papers piling up or cluttering the house, an end to inky fingers, but none of those issues are necessarily the cause of circulation decline.

So what is the benefit to readers?

And why would readers choose e-paper over a good mobile device? Mobile content delivery and display gets better and more ubiquitous every year. I love mobile video now. I read a lot less when traveling than I used to, thanks to my video iPod. I’m sure others will like mobile video a lot, too. Can e-paper really find a market in a world increasingly saturated by mobile content?

And what about interactivity? Increasingly, users want to be part of the conversation. Will e-paper allow comments on stories? Easy access to blogs? Links to supplemental information? All of those things and more are now essential to the digital experience. How many consumers will chose a seemingly more static (unless I’m wrong about this) experience of e-paper over a computer or mobile browser?

Finally, what about the advertising? Consumers have repeatedly rejected disruptive advertising on the web and mobile. Will the same hold true with e-paper? Without a sustainable advertising model e-paper will do no better for newspapers than the web has done so far (and let me emphasize so far, because I believe online advertising models will improve and soon).

Presumably, e-paper will offer a more customizable experience for users, which means, potentially, advertising could be customized out or marginalized. Without that user control, e-paper might face a tougher adoption rate.

I’ve said before that publishers might drop print editions when the day comes where they could deliver the same product without the cost of printing and delivery, but I also wonder if that will work.

If consumers buy their own e-paper devices, then publishers are still faced with a pull rather than push delivery model, which means paid subscription isn’t likely to work.

If publishers supply the devices (either for free, or for fee), consumers are likely to reject anything that allows them access to only one publication. They won’t want to carry multiple devices. That puts publishers back in the pull business rather than push, because consumers will still own all the power for which publications, stories and ads they see.

Also, the trend in consumer devices is toward small, mobile and multitasking — web, video, e-mail, SMS, calendar, phone, etc. all in one device.  Where will e-paper fit in the mix?

I applaud publishers for experimenting with these devices, but I think the best chance for success to is think of the reader/user/consumer first — what do they want, what problem can you solve for them, what job do they need to get done, and then design a content and revenue model that helps consumers first and foremost. If publishers put their own needs, wants and desires first, e-paper will do no better than the Cue-Cat.

I’ve said it before: Be the platform.

Rich Gordon has a lengthy, comprehensive essay that advises newspapers to be the network, not a destination. You must read the whole thing. It’s full of the right ideas.

Same thing. Different words.

I’m going to suggest a different approach: Instead of trying to build the best destination, build the best network.

The kind of network I’m referring to is a web of interconnections — links between content and between people. In essence, I’m arguing that on the Web, news organizations — perhaps, all media — should focus on building themselves “into the clickstream.” The goal: make your Web site a network hub that connects content and conversations.

If you’re not linking in, linking out, joining the conversation, telling people what’s good on the web, you’re making mistake.

Newspaper managers have traditionally believed they needed to build “sticky” sites and try to capture people and pretend the rest of the web doesn’t exist. That is a strategy doomed to fail. Only by being part of the clickstream can you hope to succeed.

I just upload nine of my recent photos, starting with today’s snap of my California Mustang getting its first taste of snow — in April, no less. Burrrr!

Our cars finally arrived from California today (just in time for the big snow storm coming in tonight).

Bill took a picture of the Mustang. Click on the image for a high resolution version suitable for desktop wall paper.

Travel can be tiresome. It can also be interesting and fun. I travel a lot in my job.

The thing about travel is it gives you a chance to meet interesting people. I’ve met some pretty cool cats the past two trips.

Last week, I went to NYC. In leaving JFK I shared a cab with a guy who turned out to be a VP at a major e-mail marketing firm. It was a very cool and educational conversation about targeted e-mail.

Yesterday, however, I hit the trifecta of meeting cool and interesting people.

At Reagan National I shared a dinner table with a guy who works for a non-profit in DC that promotes religious freedom around the world. It’s a pretty non-sectarian outfit and we had a pretty broad conversation about freedom, religion and the media.

On the plane, I sat next to a reasonably high ranking government staffer who works for a VIP with a very important government agency. We talked non-stop for the entire hour-plus flight. I was as curious about his job as he was about mine. I didn’t get to ask as many as I wanted because he had his own coming at me rapid fire.

First, his questions were about newspapers and the state of the industry. Then we morphed into a conversation about blogging. He’s very, very interested in seeing his agency establish a blog.

If this significant government agency starts a blog, I hope he takes my advice:

• Be totally transparent
• The blogger should be conversational, respected and establish credibility, and comment on and link to other blogs
• Comments should be open and only filtered for hate, spam and abuse of legally-vetted policies (unique situation here in that the government has to be much more careful about First Amendment issues than private bloggers); no censorship … if there is criticism of the Bush Administration on this blog, it can’t be deleted, but this also allows a chance to respond to criticism and clarify issues.
• Break news and share news and clarify news on the blog

We exchanged cards. I hope the conversation will be ongoing, which is why I’m being very vague about who this guy was and who he works for. If he ever gives me permission to share more, I will. If the blog is launched, I imagine can tell you more then. (Ironically, we are both of the opinion that Beltway journalists overuse and abuse anonymous sources, to the detriment of both journalism and to the public, and here I am not revealing the guy’s identity! I’m such a hypocrite!:-))

I did tell him that once the blog is launched, it’s going to be targeted by bad actors, people who want to abuse policies and be abusive. There will be days where he buries his head in his hands and says, “Why did I ever do this?” I told him, “stay the course.” If you stick to your strategy and policies and manage things correctly, you’ll get past the dark days and have something very worthwhile.

The third cool cat I met was a Wall Street private equity investor type. He thinks I work for a very cool company, but that’s not why he’s worth mentioning.

The most interesting thing we talked about is when and why he reads the New York Daily News. When he’s in a public situation where he might be spotted by peers he wants to be seen with Wall Street Journal or New York Times in his hand, but his favorite paper is the Daily News. That’s his guilty pleasure. He said the writing has verve and personality and reporters aren’t afraid to tell you what they think. Forget the veneer of objectivity — put some personality in that writing. He thinks my whole notion of “personal journalism” is right on. Money quote: “The Daily News is link a blog on paper.”

It’s no wonder the Daily News is one of the few metro papers reporting circulation gains.

Mac Slocum has produced a trilogy of must read posts on what he wish he had learned in school.

• How to be a guide and a researcher
• How to grow audience
• How to lead communities

He’s absolutely right on all three points.

Interestingly, if your school won’t teach you these web essentials, or if you’re out of school, there is an easy and free way to learn all three: Blog.

From the Onion: Most e-mailed list tearing NYT newsroom apart:

Nagourney, currently stuck covering Barak Obama’s presidential campaign in Minnesota, said he’s been trying to make his stories more e-mail-friendly. But so far, success has eluded him.

“I thought my Elizabeth Edwards breast cancer article the other week had a great chance, as it was at the intersection of politics, health, death, and family—and had the word ‘breast’ in the headline—but it didn’t even make the top 10,” Nagourney said. “Whatever.”

I’ve seen first hand how much consternation the most-viewed and most e-mailed lists can cause among newsroom staffers. “What do you mean, my 40-inch think piece on the new county budget only had 10 page views?”

(via Romenesko)

On the Feds-NewMedia e-mail discussion list (run by the NAA), a discussion about nation and world news has come up — should it be included, or how should it be played on a local newspaper.com site. Here’s my most recent post to the thread:

The web isn’t about getting people to your web site and keeping them there. It’s about providing the best user experience possible so they keep coming back. If you’re including world/nation on your site under some false notion that you’re providing a reason for people not to go elsewhere, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.

You better have some unique user experience, or unique content if you want world/nation to contribute anything meaningful to your traffic stats. Even then, I think it’s an open question as to weather a local newspaper.com can win against the likes of Yahoo News, Google News, CNN, NYT, WaPo or several other sites that have greater pull (and the new McClatchy/Yahoo! Deal even strengthens Yahoo!’s unique value proposition).

If you’re including nation/world on your site out of some sense of journalistic obligation, you’re also making a mistake. While a noble intention, your user doesn’t care about your intentions. He or she wants out of your site what he or she came there for, which 98 percent of the time (for local users, which is all you should care about at a local newspaper.com) is local news and information. Including nation/world can be downright detrimental to that goal and to your brand as a local source of news and information. If you’re going to include nation/world, be careful how you play it. Never lede with it, unless there’s another 9/11 or some such “effects everyone’s lives” story.

The average newspaper.com is reaching way too small of a local audience. Most local newspaper.com sites need to see their daily unique count increase four or five times over present reach. Nation/world isn’t going to get you there and could in fact hurt. What is going to get you there is being a great local news and information site (along with a few other things).

Yes, if you totally drop nation/world, you will get a very few complaints (like five or six, all from older readers). Just tell them to go to CNN or Yahoo! You won’t lose them because they still need you for local, if you’re doing local right. What you give up in a few page views (and most of those page views are of little or no economic value because they’re generated by out-of-market search engine results) will be made up for in local unique visitor growth.

What if you could search pictures the same way you search text and find the exact picture you’re looking for?

UCSD researchers are developing just such a search.

The UCSD system uses a clever image indexing technique that allows it to cover larger collections of images at a lower computational cost than was previously possible. While the current version would still choke on the Internet’s vast numbers of public images, there is room for improvement and many potential applications beyond the Internet, including the labeling of images in various private and commercial databases.

There’s a new blog for those of us into local media: Evans Ink from Perry Evans. It’s RSS worthy.  Check it out.

I’ve said for a long time that people who dismiss YouTube as just a big compilation of stolen content sell short the site and miss the real lesson of the revolution.

Now there’s a study that says copyrighted material makes up only a fraction of the content of the site and a small percentage of the overall video views.

Vidmeter, which tracks the online video business, determined that the clips that were removed for copyright violations — most of them copyrighted by big media companies — comprise just 9 percent of all videos on the site. Even more surprising, the videos that have been removed make up just 6 percent of the total views (vidmeter.com).

There is criticism of the study.

But the consensus might not have been so far off after all, writes Adario Strange on the Epicenter blog at Wired News (blog.wired.com/business). The study is flawed because it examined only those videos that YouTube removed after receiving a complaint from a copyright holder, he writes. It “fails to take into account the vast number of copyrighted videos that slip under the radar daily, existing on YouTube sometimes for months before any removal request is made.”

I would counter that to anybody who has given YouTube more than a cursory glance would find some validity in vidmeter’s claims.

From a newspaper video perspective, this issue is relevant because what is actually popular on YouTube (as opposed to the myth) is a good barometer of the kind, style and voice of the video we should be producing.

Sam Zell hasn’t even closed the Tribune deal yet, and already he’s interfering with news coverage.

David Olive offers up a pretty solid, well-reasoned piece on the state of newspapers and the appropriate solutions.

His prescription for reinventing newspapers for the digital age are pretty standard fare but right on target.

A point where I diverge is with his blame-placing. The problem for newspapers hasn’t been public ownership so much as it is the structure of some stock offerings. I also think the “blame Wall Street” meme lets too many newspaper company CEOs off the hook for misreading investors concerns and not providing sufficient leadership to set the agenda for their companies’ growth.

A minor point, but I don’t get this part:

Indeed, it was the paucity of divergent views in U.S. mainstream papers on the activities of the Bush administration that spurred the growth of political websites – one of the largest subject categories on the Internet. It also drove readers away from the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Toledo Blade to the online editions of the Toronto Star and the U.K. Guardian.

I’m not sure how Olive is supporting that statement. Fact is, SignOnSanDiego.com has consistently been one of the large U.S. newspapers with relatively high online readership.

Yesterday I was at the New England News Forum in Lowell.

Noted video blogger Steve Garfield and I were on a panel together about blogging and mainstream media. Steve had with him a demo of the new Nokia N95 video camera phone (which I first wrote about here). He taped most of our session and posted it on his blog, SteveGarfield.com.

The quality of the video is pretty darn impressive. This is what reporters should be carrying with them. Not only is it good video, you can edit it onboard and use wi-fi to send it to your web site right from the phone.