Howard Owens

Christopher Wink sends this e-mail:

What is the line with all of these online networking devices? I read with interest through my Google reader your post on increasing one's searchability online , which was exactly why I started my Web site back in December. I have a Flickr account and Youtube and, as you know, LinkedIn and some others, use my actual name and use these products, all with links to my Web site, pushing all traffic to one place, so I can control what potential employers or others interested see and know about me.

But I never had a Facebook account or MySpace page. I dismissed them as slop and wastes of time. But I also know they can definitely direct traffic to my site. ...But do I want these readers? ...Do I sign up for Vimeo, and Twitter and a Tumblr - I understand their purposes, but don't think they serve me - though, I'm sure, they all, in their own way, would bring traffic to my site. So, do I set these accounts up and let them sit - knowing I won't really use them - just so I can have the opportunity to push to my site, or not? ...Should I pick and choose, or truly optimize and control my name search?

In a slightly related topic that I would be interested to hear your thoughts and could provide good blog fodder - when it comes to Google name searches, any advice about name variations? Howard Owens is fairly straightforward, but my byline is Christopher Wink, plenty of people call me Chris Wink - which happens to be the name of a founder of the Blue Man Group, and a pesky competitor for name recognition. People with names like James, John and Jack, and certainly names beyond the Christian tradition change form with popular nicknames. That is pesky for branding.

Do you think it's best to pick one name and run with it, or should I try to compete with Christopher and Chris Wink for example.

Just some thoughts. Discard or ignore any or all of them, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts and thought they might be good for your blog, too.

This is a good topic to cover because while I believe it's an ironclad rule that every journalist should own his or her name -- his identity, his brand --  in search, the are variations and nuances that I don't think are as important, but maybe others do.

You could drive yourself crazy trying to join all of the thousands of social networking sites out there.  Just joining and creating a basic profile helps, but there's also value that comes from participation and you lose some of that by over extending yourself.  There are only a handful of sites you need to join to get sufficient SEO juice, especially if you're blogging, because that is naturally going to generate links to your site.

As for owning variations of your name -- it's fine if you can do it, but I think most editors are going to understand if you don't own Chris when you go by Christopher, especially when there is a prominent person using the variation.  Anybody searching for you specifically, will probably default to the brand you've established for yourself.

One of the rules of branding is being consistent. If your brand is going to be Christopher Wink, you should always be Christopher Wink.  I'm always Howard Owens.  I'm never Howie Owens (though this post just gave me an idea -- not a bad idea to own the domain name variations of your name if you can get them, and I was amazed to find nobody had ever registered howieowens.com, so I just did; I already own howard-owens.com).

Anybody have any thoughts? How deep do you have to dive?  And in the future, will you need to dive deeper to stay competitive?

Interesting post from Howard Weaver about what some newspaper companies are going through (and I think his primary intended audience is McClatchy).

He says this:

Time is not our friend. Mark Zieman in Kansas City introduced me to the poem Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day, which includes the memorable couplet, “Time is the school in which we learn/ Time is the fire in which we burn.” (I think Mark probably heard it on Star Trek, but maybe he was an English major.)

That works well with some advice I offered a young editor at a non-McClatchy paper in an email exchange earlier today. Maybe I got a little wound up in my argument, but I closed by writing, “My current metaphor for our business is this: We have to move, and we can see a secure spot for ourselves right across the river. The good news is, there's a bridge; the bad news is, it's on fire. There's time to get across, but not to [screw] around. I intend to get to the other side before the bridge burns up. Who's coming with me?"

In the past, I've been a bit of an alarmist about the need for newsrooms to "get it," and I still think that is terribly important. But not because the bridge is burning, but because we have a window of opportunity to build a new business that will be better for journalism, better for society and better for the companies we work for. (I should note, I've always made a point of saying journalist should prepare for the worst, because the preparation will help them and their companies take advantage of the best opportunities ... there's nothing to be lost by becoming online intelligent).

It's a window in time, to be sure

Some hard choices have to be made by newsrooms (unlike Mr. Weaver, I believe there is a problem with modern journalism, that our revenue crisis has as much to do with journalism being broken as it does with competition from internet classifieds start ups), but I think newsrooms can find ways to evolve. Most journalists are pretty smart people.

Those newsrooms that do evolve will produce journalism that is better for society and because of that they'll grow audience, which will make their classified platform more valuable (Unlike Mr. Weaver, I don't believe that most newspapers are really extending their in-market reach with their web sites, and that's a problem).

Those newsrooms that don't evolve may survive despite themselves, because there will be a market left for a long time for the kind of stilted journalism that they produce; and, of course, some may be shuttered. And those that are shuttered will close because those local audiences will have been offered better alternatives from disruptive competitors.

The smaller the newsroom, the more likely it is to make the necessary changes.

But I no longer fear the crisis as I once did. I'm feeling surprisingly calm these days. Maybe that's just because I work for a company that is doing pretty darn good, comparatively. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the ability of many newspapers (but not all) to survive the current shake out -- and I'm thinking that may be all that's going on ... some papers will close, some papers will morph into different kinds of operations, but a good number may actually grow stronger.

And I'd like to think I'm in a position to help make that happen.

And most of the crisis in newspapers is about big metros, who get all of the attention, rather than the kind of community newspaper I've spent my entire career working for, caring for and being passionate about.

That said, nobody should think I'm going to let newsrooms off the hook for "getting it." The work still needs to be done -- whether it's motivated by a sense of crisis, or because it's just the right thing to do -- the work still has to be done. There's still threats. There's still defensive measures to be taken. (And of course, there's huge opportunities.) It's still an all-hands effort. We can afford to be confident, but we can't afford to be cocky or cavalier.

So, you can still expect me to get riled up at times :)

Ok, so I'm going to show bad form and gloat a bit.

I read this post from Beet.tv this morning with some sense of vindication.

With hand held cameras, video reporting is a natural extension of print reporting and holds great advantage for newspaper publishers, says pioneering news producer Tammy Haddad.

In the world of innovative television news producing, Tammy is at the top. She has produced “Larry King Live,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and others. These days, she’s reporting on the presidential campaign as a contributor to Newsweek.com with her small Sanyo video camera.

...

Newspapers, with legions of print reporters, are positioned to expand in video coverage, Tammy says. The equipment is not expensive . Tammy’s Sanyo costs less than $800. The Flip used by Kara Swisher and CNET News.com's Dan Farber is under $200.

Last week, we reported that the Washington Post has trained nearly 200 staffers in how to use video cameras.

In the fall of 2005, I handed out point-and-shoot cameras to the Bakersfield Californian newsroom (an idea I stole from Jack Lail). My earliest blog post advocating small-camera video can be found here. Of course, this line of thinking has pissed off a lot of people over the past two or three years. I've been called a few names and dismissed as a crank.

For some hint of that, look at this post and this post.

Now you've got Newsweek, the Washington Post and even some network TV people, going the cheap camera route.

The party is just getting started.

BTW:  GateHouse Media is approaching some 400 small video cameras in the field.  The results vary (some good video, some bad video, and unfortunately, some "no video"), but we continue to push the effort and are improving and refining our training efforts.

The blogosphere has been abuzz with chatter about the Orlando Sentinel redesign, so I'll skip hunting up some relevant link for this post -- you all know what I'm talking about.

The whole hullabaloo reminds me of a thought I've had many times recently: Why not just let a print newspaper be a print newspaper?

Spare me the big graphics and four-column photos and color splashes. Stop trying to turn your print front page into a web page.

Why not go back to pre-USAToday newspaper design? It's time to let stories meander, let front pages be grey and full of information; rather than stuffing as high a story count as possible into the A and B sections; why not just tell the stories that need to be told, and then tell them well?

On the web, frequency and quantity (much more so than quality or depth) is what drives page views.

Online is about information grazing. Reading print is a more leisurely activity, even if it's just 20 minutes over toast and coffee before rushing off to work.

Train your newsroom staff to keep that web site fresh, and then let them take their time on writing the really important stories in a way that provides meaning and context; for an added bonus, make sure those longer stories are well written, since print readers -- shocking revelation here -- like to read.

On a daily basis, a good reporter should be able to produce three or four web updates (some call it breaking news) and then pick one of those items to turn into a quality, longer print story (or have some other print-appropriate piece in the pipeline).

Rather than trying to figure out how to use graphics and space-wasting indexes to capture the attention of "time starved readers," or young readers, or soccer moms, or NASCAR dads, or whatever flavor-the-day your design consultant says you should reach, why not just cede the fact that local news is a niche interest, and your core audience for that niche doesn't care about fancy packages -- they care about the news, the information. Oh, and they also want comics, classifieds, stock listings and movie times (print is still a package).

If they want timeliness, they'll go online.

News isn't about a demographic (as in, "How do we target women, age 24 to 35, with one child and two cats?"), which seems to be the approach taken by the expensive design consultants. News is about meeting the needs of people of both sexes, all ages, religions and nationalities who want to understand the world around them. Sadly, that isn't everybody, but it's a lot of people, and surveys show newspapers are doing a poor job of meeting that need.

So fix it

Any copy editor with a pica poll should be able to put together a decent front page. It shouldn't take an eye for art or snazzy color combinations.

The print product and the online product should be different products. They may serve the same audience, but they serve different needs at different times. The print product should provide context and a moment's respite. The online product should say, "this is what is happening now."

Hey, Mr. Publisher -- you want to save your print circulation? Try digging into your archives and looking at your newspaper from 1971. Make your 2008 paper look like that. It should read like that. That should be your print design model and your print content model. I'd even bet that you would get some young readers back with such an approach, because your paper would finally appeal to what should be your target demographic -- people who like to read the news.

• Chris Jennewein, Ron James and Jim Drummond are out at SignOnSanDiego.com. We can only hope they land newspaper industry jobs soon, if that's what they want to do.
• Sean Polay left Ottaway for a magazine company.
• Bob Benz, Wes Jackson, Mike Higgins and Heather Lamm are now with Maroon Ventures, which consults for newspapers, but is more than just a newspaper-related company.
• Michael Bazeley now works for Berekley's law school.
• Lucas Grindley, according to his LinkedIn profile, is still looking for work.
• Joe Michaud left MaineToday.com to become a consultant. John Wilpers is consulting. Melinda Gipson is consulting.
• Ken Sands is now with Congressional Quarterly.
• Ed Canale, VP of Interactive for the Sacramento Bee, is moving on.

Wow, that's a lot of smart, talented, experienced people -- people who pioneered the online newspaper business -- who are not currently employed by newspaper companies. Though some still help newspaper online operations through consulting, that's quite a brain drain.

Of course, there are still lots of smart, talented, experienced people -- including many pioneers -- still in their newspaper jobs; it's just surprising to look at such a distinguished list of people who are in different roles now.

So far, 18 people have registered to comment on howardowens.com.  For a fairly low traffic blog, I think that's pretty good.

What's interesting is how many people have registered -- the majority -- without then leaving a comment.  They just registered.

That's a phenomena we've observed at GateHouse, too, where we recently launched a registration system for comments.  People just register.

I'm not sure why:  Is it a matter of trust with the brand; they want to affiliate themselves with that brand? Or just anticipation of commenting later?

I will say most -- but not all -- of the people who have registered on howardowens.com have commented previously.

Only two people registered without their real names, but in both cases they use handles I know and recognize (one person is somebody whom I know his offline identity).

Observationally, I would say my comment traffic is about what it was before registration -- some, but not much.

There's still some people who think all of this registration tied to participation is somehow anti-net, or that it kills participation, that people will never accept it.  It's a fool's delusion to fight against the web's built-in bias toward anonymity and unfettered communication.

Balderdash, I say.

At GateHouse Media, the level of participation and registration is quite healthy, and the feedback generally positive.  The vast majority of people want a safe, civil environment to hold conversations about topics of interest. They trust their local newspapers and don't mind giving up a little personal information in order to achieve that worthy goal -- if registration will cut down on the flamers, race haters, insult idiots, etc. -- then they see registration as not just a necessary evil, but an absolute positive step.

The information ethic of the web is trending toward a bias in favor of real identity, or at least reliable persona (we may not know your real name, but we know who you are -- you present a consistent persona online that we can trust).  In order to be credible, you need to be a trusted user.  Trust can be built over time in an open system, or a certain level of instant trust can be gained through a site owner's registration system.

Some of what inspired these thoughts this morning was a post from Nick Carr about Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia moving away from the language of the bazaar to the language of the club (Carr's characterization).

Wales described Wikipedia: "the online encyclopedia in which any reasonable person can join us in writing and editing entries on any encyclopedic topic."

Which makes his conception of Wikipedia today far more insular than it was ten years ago, when anybody could do anything.

I'm fine with that. Rules and expectations are good. Apparently, Carr, who advises Encyclopedia Britannica, thinks Wales is selling out.

In part, I go back to Kevin Kelly's post on how economic value is derived from something that can be endlessly copied -- such as digital content.  When content wants to be free, content only gains value through non-tangible values that cannot be copied.  One of those values is trust.

Registration in exchange for participation helps establish trust.

Trust is not one of the values mentioned in Kelly's post, but it is a value that obviously can't be copied, so it fits within his thesis.  Registration, however, does mesh with another one of his values -- authenticity.  Users want to know that there is a real person who stands behind the content -- be it a news reporter or a person leaving a comment on that reporter's story -- whom they believe to be real with a reputation to protect.

Of course, any registration system can be gamed, but gaming -- false registrations for the purpose of deceit or incitement -- can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by an engaged community manager.  It isn't difficult.

In an era when news is increasingly treated as a commodity by the market place, it's essential for news site owners to recognize the true value of what it is they can deliver to an audience.  Among those values are trust, authenticity and a safe environment for participation and conversation. Registration can help us achieve those goals.

As I suggested previously, it isn't a magic bullet, but it is a step toward better online communities.

There is much being made of the Orlando Sentinel redesign.

Yes, it's shocking. It's bold. It's wild.

But original? Hardly.

Just take a look at the Bakersfield California's front page from today.

Orland's plans seem tame by comparison, and Bakersfield launched that format on March 1, 2006 (I know, I was there; it was the same day we launched the current design of Bakersfield.com).

I'm surprised so few people have noticed the copy-cat nature of Orlando's new design -- and asked more questions about how well it's worked where it was first tried.

It would be interesting to see what the BC's current circulation numbers look like. After a major marketing push (Radio, TV, Billboards) launched contiguous to the redesign, the initial returns were not impressive. But maybe things have turned around. I don't know.

In defense of Bakersfield's circulation declines linked to above, it would be fair to note -- the bakersfield.com site upgrade was substantial (in all modesty), and may have pulled readers from print; Bakersfield has long been aggressive with other online and print products, which could pull readers from the core product; and in an unfortunate coincidence, the Bakersfield economy took a nosedive immediately after the redesign was launched (contributing, in no small measure to the fact that my former Bakersfield home was sold in a foreclosure auction today, at about $125K less than we paid for the house (UPDATE: I assumed it sold at the time of post; but it didn't, so the bank just took title -- so it's still on the market if you want a great home in Bakersfield at a bargain price).

UPDATE: Steve Yelvington tells us how to look up ABC circulation numbers.  For some odd reason, I've never been able to find that link myself, though I knew it was out there and have searched for it (so, Thanks, Steve!).  From the search, we learn that BC's circ has fallen to 59,433.

Again, we can't say for sure what impact the redesign has had on BC's circ.  There are any number of factor's at play.

Doug Fisher posted this:

Past experience shows newspaper makeovers don't necessarily translate into financial success. After the Bakersfield Californian underwent a drastic redesign two years ago, the 60,000-circulation paper in California's Central Valley saw a small initial jolt to circulation and revenue, sparked by the brighter look and expanded coverage of hot topics like immigration. But the gains have been erased as the area economy struggles. Bakersfield Californian Chief Executive Richard Beene says the steps were necessary to keep the paper relevant, but he has advice for others considering a similar redesign: "Don't expect it to turn around circulation or revenue overnight. It's not a magic bullet."

Which originally came from the WSJ

My post critiquing the online activity of SPJ's Mark of Excellence caused a stir. Predictably, not everybody liked it. But it also seemed to do some good. A few of the students mentioned came to the site with positive responses.

Claire St. Amant just left this comment on the post:

I came across your blog while googling myself, or “ego-surfing” as you call it. My site was in a bit of a holding pattern, but your critique spurred me on to further development—see http://www.clairestamant.com I’ve also started a technorati account in hopes of generating traffic. Thanks for the shout-out and constructive criticism. Glad to see you’re back online, too. Oh, and I share your disdain for the “Frat Boys News” byline. Any advice on how I could get that moved down and/or off would be greatly appreciated.

Her site is considerably improved. She's even got a blog going.

That is all to the good, I think, but if I were to go all Simon Cowell on her, and be "totally honest," I'd warn against calling her blog posts "blogs." I find that a common mistake among print people -- I've seen print people call comments on stories, forum postings and individual blog entries all "blogs," which isn't quite correct. A blog contains posts. "Blogs" is a collection of blogs, not individual posts. You don't post a blog; you post a post on a blog.

Also, I would recommend making her blog her home page, rather than a section of her site, and make everything else she wants to put on the site a section or separate page (such as her resume, pointers to her work, etc.) Blogs have mad SEO, especially if she can get some people to link to her, and would help her with that unfortunate byline on the Frat Boys site.

She asked for advice specifically related to pushing down the Frat Boys link in a Google search. I'll offer some advice below, but hopefully others will jump in (and we could all do her a favor by linking to her site as Claire St. Amant, to improve her page rank and help her own her own name in search (which shouldn't be hard, because it's a fairly unusual name).

My advice:

• Get a Facebook profile going. Use it to link to your site.
• Start a LinkedIn profile (be sure to take advantage of the service that allows you to create a URL containing your name). My LinkedIn profile page does well in Google. Also, link to your site.
• Start a profile page on Wired Journalists. Link to your site. My profile page hits the second page of a Google search for my name.
• My Buzznet site ranks real high for my name in Google, so start posting photos to Buzznet.
• Ditto for Flickr.
• Grab your name, as in "clairstamant," as a Twitter account. My Twitter account ranks high on Google.
• Start a Digg account. Be a good Digg member and digg worthwhile links, but also when you do a good post, digg your own post. This will help with SEO, too. My Digg account ranks high on Google.
• Start a YouTube account with your real name as your account name. This should rank high, then, in Google searches for your name. Of course, you'll want to post some videos. I don't know how other hiring managers would feel, but I'm going to look more at the spirit of the effort than the quality of the content. I'm not expecting your personal creative expressions online to be NBC ready.
• Start a second blog. This is an opportunity to add a little SEO juice to your main, professional domain, and it gives you an outlet for personal expression, while keeping your name.com site for professional purposes.
• Always use your real name online -- for EVERYTHING you do. Never leave an anonymous comment. Never use an assumed name. You want people to know you, find you, look for your, know who you are and what you do. Not only is posting anonymously unethical for journalists to do, it robs you of a chance to increase your visibility. Also, cheap and easy anonymity can lure you into a career-ruining mistake. Remember, you can always be found out.

Clair has two big advantage for owning her own name in Google (and other search engines). First, she a unique name; second, she's had the forethought to register a domain with that name. All journalists with unique names should follow suit, and the Jim Smith's of the world should work out some variation of their name, register tha

One other thing for Claire -- who owns the copyright to the Baylor Lariat piece? The amount of the excerpt looks to go beyond fair use, so you or the paper might want to issue a DMCA takedown notice. That should get it out of Google eventually.

I've told you before, Topix is not your friend.  They've been taking your headlines and links, even your photos, and using them to build a community of people interested in those local topics, your franchise. And all the while, trying to build a local classified network of FREE classifieds.

Now comes word that they're going after your event listings, your business listings and your movie listings.

So why are you still letting them scrape your headlines and links?

It would be one thing if they were sending you traffic, but they're not.

Topix wants to own your local information franchise.  How much help are you willing to give them?

Here's a fairly dramatic bit of cellphone journalism -- it's of a three-car crash in Brookline, Mass.

Just sharing as yet of another example of how spot news can be reported by anybody these days. I recommend clicking through to YouTube and reading the eyewitness account.

Would you run something like this in your traditional newspaper?

I'm a bisexual woman, age 20, and I am threesome-ing it with my best friend and her boyfriend during a stay abroad. I knew the girl (who's mostly straight) beforehand. The girl thinks it's hot when I participate — i.e., when it's all three of us in bed ...

I don't think many publishers would. Most newspaper editors would fly into a eye-bulging rage if this accidentally appeared under their mastheads.

But what happens when your newspaper uses the same CMS as your wannabe alt-weekly? Well, such edgy content just might appear as if it was published in your mainstream news edition, as it does currently in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. The column originally appeared in the D&C's Rochester Insider.

A Rochester-area blogger writing for Rochester Turning found the post by accident while using the D&C's Planet Discover-powered federated search engine.

Personally, I think most old-line editors will think this kind of double posting is more damaging to the brand than it is, but it is something to consider if you're sharing a CMS (apparently, especially Saxotech) with a racier sister pub.

Hat tip to Rottenchester.

I can think of some very good ideas for brining in people from outside the newspaper industry to help us save ourselves:

• Outside perspective means a fresh look at our problems;
• That other industry perspective might mean new ideas that haven't been tried in our industry yet;
• Somebody who has been successful in one industry is probably a very creative thinker and can really help us brainstorm;
• The new person doesn't know our sacred cows, or isn't afraid of them -- he or she can really blow things up and start over.

So it should be a good thing that Sam Zell brought Lee Abrams into Tribune, right?

Here's what we get from Abrams: 15 trite ideas that have been espoused and debated in the industry for more than a decade. If there's a fresh, significant thought in there, I can't find it.

The sad things is, though, there are probably a lot of journalist who might find the whole memo radical and scary.  And maybe that's the only reason the Abrams memo is important at all -- not that it's new, but that Abrams has a loud enough voice to be heard over the complaints of change resisters in newsrooms across the land.

I just got through saying that registration doesn't cut down on participation on a newspaper.com. I'm pretty sure the same doesn't hold true for a blog.

There is something fundamentally different about a blog audience and a newspaper.com audience -- whether it is that the newspaper.com audience is less web savvy, or not as busy sucking up every morsel of information, or just more trusting of the local newspaper brand ... I don't know.

But it is highly likely my already pathetically low level of reader comments will decrease with registration, and it is unlikely that participation will ever again return to its current levels.

In part, maybe it's because while adding registration to a newspaper.com helps solve a problem that both readers and editors recognize (getting rid of the idiots), such idiots aren't really a problem on most blogs (especially ones mainly trafficked by same-industry professionals, such as this one).

Really, I'm not solving a problem for readers with registration. I'm solving my own problem, so why should you want to help? What's the benefit for you?

Well, maybe, just maybe, without open comments, it will make howardowens.com a little less easy to hack.

I'm just damn tired of getting hacked, and can't imagine when I'll have time or energy to convert to Drupal, so I'm going to try the WordPress registration scheme (which is pretty simple, but does require an e-mail confirmation).

So, I'm really solving my problem, not yours, unless, of course, you find howardowens.com valuable enough that you would rather see it escape a few future hacks (with the subsequent downtime), too.

UPDATE: Pretty cool -- six people registered within 30 minutes of this post going up.  Though, one of them might not have been a person, but a computer.  Since the default WP registration is very, very basic, I went out and found a plug in that contains CAPTCHA (though very simple CAPTCHA) and some additional registration fields.  It would be cool if I could link a person's name on a comment to a profile page -- that would add some value to registration, I think -- but I haven't been able to figure out how do do that yet.

For newsrooms willing to take control of their participation and conversation on their own sites, here are some tips and suggestions I hope they find helpful:

• Make checking comments on stories, forums and other venues for reader-submitted content a routine part of your job. There's no need for this to overwhelm your other work. Keep a browser window open to your latest story, or the RSS feed or e-mail inbox for where comments appear as they come in. Glance at it between phone calls or before you get up to get another cup of coffee. Make it a habit to periodically check.
• Make sure your site has an enforceable terms of service and guidelines or rules for all participants to follow. Here's the GateHouse TOS. We also have something we call "pool rules" adjacent our comment box (you need to be registered and logged in to see it). The Star has something similar on its stories. (Of course, Terms, rules and posting them aren't something the average news staffer can control, but they can advocate).
• Registration should be required. This helps cut down on the drive-by nuts, makes it easier to ban bad actors and streamlines moderation time. No technical solution, however, relieves a newsroom of its responsibility to pay attention and participate. Ideally, your registration system includes publicly available user profiles. Contrary to myth, registration does not stifle participation. (Again, the typical newsroom staffer has no ability to require registration, but he or she should advocate.)
• Take ownership. Top editors own the entire web site. Sport editors, for example, own the sports section on the web. Sports writers own the stories they post (or get posted for them -- really, though, every individual in the newsroom should be posting his or her own stuff). Ownership means you pay attention and you care. You won't let guests trash your house or apartment, so don't let them trash your stories. Assert your ownership on your section or your stories -- readers should recognize you as the owner.
• Participate. When a reader posts incorrect information, offer up a correction or clarification. When a reader posts an assertion that would benefit from factual support, ask for it. When someone makes a statement that reminds you of an interesting quote or event that didn't make your story, leave your own comment about it. Your participation not only makes the conversation more interesting, and keeps people coming back, it gives you credibility when it comes time to play cop.
• Say "thank you" when people say or do something you appreciate. This also gives you credibility and it encourages future participation from others.
• Act quickly to remove the most egregious rule violations. The worst of the worst posters should be banned immediately. It's a judgment call on who gets a second chance.
• Ban and remove only for violations of rules, not simply because you don't like a post. This might seem obvious, but I've found that some journalists struggle with this point. Editors are tempted to remove posts simply because they contain factual errors or don't like the tone of the comment. We had a situation recently where a post was removed because the writer had referred to Obama as a Muslim. By removing this post, we missed an opportunity to offer up a correction, and left ourselves open to charges of bias (because now the original writer is left to think the post was removed for political reasons, not because it was factually incorrect, since she still believes Obama is Muslim).
• Learn how to deal with trolls. Trolls are people that know how to push your buttons. Their comments aren't quite over the line, not quite personal attacks, but they get under your skin. If you take the bait from trolls, you get into arguments you can't win, that make you look bad, and get the conversation off topic (I know, because I've too often taken the bait). It's important to learn to recognize trolls and ignore them, and encourage others to ignore them as well. It isn't outside the bounds of good community management to ban habitual trolls.
• Keep your emotions out of it (see trolls, above). While your communication style must be personal, you can't get personally involved in the community. Be friendly, but not a friend. You can't take sides. You can't get sucked into arguments. You can't show anger. You need to treat everybody fairly and equally. (This is advice I could do well to follow better myself.)
• When you remove comments or ban a user, you may want to let the community know. The public act of policing lets everybody know there is an owner of the forum asserting control. The good participants appreciate it, and once you set the tone, some volunteer moderators may even arise. In fact, good ownership will eventually give the owner the ability to step aside and let the community run itself.
• Don't forget the back channel communication. You should know who your regular participants are and how to contact them individually via private e-mail. And they should know how to contact you. Back channel e-mails might be about moderation issues, attaboys or just a little personal chit-chat. These e-mails foster better relationships and lead to more civil communities.
• Reward your frequent contributors. Host a picnic, give away movie tickets, acknowledge them on your web site. These people are helping you build your business, so show them some love. They'll appreciate it, be more likely to continue the participation and others will be encouraged to become one of them

There is a tendency among some (many? most?) editors and newsroom staffs to take a "set it and forget it" attitude toward online community.

"We've got comments on stories? Great. Now we can get back to real journalism."

Here's a headline for you: Online community is real journalism.

In 2008, the notion that all a reporter needs to do is uncover a few facts and write 12 inches, while editors edit "professional" content is a quaint relic of antiquity.

The modern journalist participates.

It should have been that way since 1995, frankly, but getting newsrooms to see it that way has been like trying to make a rock float.

Last night, while looking for something totally unrelated, I came across this old Alan Mutter post about the Ventura County Star when we first launched comments on stories in 2005 (when no newspapers I knew of had active comments on stories (though it had been tried before)).

The experience “showed the unfortunate underbelly of the Internet,” wrote the chagrined John Moore of the Star. “The anonymity offered by the Internet on comments like this seems to encourage people to say the meanest, ugliest things about other people."

UPDATE: The Star now has reinstituted public comments with a number of restrictions, including filters to remove a growing dictionary of offensive words. Earlier the paper said it would permit comments only if it didn't"require us to hire a full-time babysitter.”

First off, I don't recall John being at all chagrined. There was no embarrassment over the situation.  Bringing direct participation to our site was an expression of our desire to make our web site more webby. In fact, the editorial leadership of the Star was quite committed to finding a way, within limits, to make comments work (the Star has always been one of the most progressive newsrooms when it comes to the Web). The Star has continuously had comments on stories May 2005, and today, they even have them on racially sensitive stories.

Of course, as the quote above shows, that commitment stopped short of dedicating a full-time staffer to community moderation, or asking reporters to police their own stories.

Neither suggestion got much traction during our internal discussions.

And in the past three years, I can't say that much has changed in newsrooms across America (and I have no specific information on the Star's current moderation practices).

It's not that news staffs see comments as a nuisance, or an undesirable appendage foisted on their news sites by over zealous web heads.  It's just something that isn't important enough to waste time on.

That's a shame, because participation is basically the way digital journalism works these days. It's all just a conversation, whether the individual journalist sees it that way or not.

By not participating, journalists cede that competitive advantage to others, diminish their own journalistic output, miss opportunities for better stories (and rob  their employers of business opportunities for growth).

If any news rooms are ready to make a commitment to participation and community management, here's a helpful post Tish Grier on the traits of community managers.

There was this big deal about how Wikipedia beat Associated Press on Tim Russert's death.

Well, I just thought I'd note -- it's been, what, two weeks since the world learned that Rob Curley left the Washington Post and his Wikipedia entry still hasn't been updated.

Come on, I thought Wikipedia was on top of things.

My friend Matt Welch, a former LAT opinion editor, has some not very nice things to say about the Times:

A small detail, but perhaps illustrative (or counter-illustrative) at a time when the Holocaust itself will soon be blamed on Sam Zell -- my former newspaper, in fat times as well as lean, does a l-o-u-s-y job of retaining, harnessing, leveraging, or even knowing about the information and talent percolating within its own walls. Some of the better writers in the country are kept far off the page, saddled with bureaucratic tasks while mediocrites churn out column inch after column inch and editors whine about there not being enough writing talent to fill the daily hole.

...

Yet how many times have managers looked around for the (many) people not pulling their weight, or for the staffing models dating from a half-century ago (or more), and said "You know what, let's cut the bloat first"? Not bloody often. There are few writers in L.A. more hated within the Times than Mickey Kaus, but I agree with him, not them, that you could do much more with 500 very good people than you can with the 900 or so in the newsroom now.

Which reminds me of Mark Potts:

Well, maybe. The dirty little secret of big-paper newsrooms is that, well, they aren't all that productive. That's what gave a little edge to that alleged anecdote about the Post's productivity–there usually were a lot of reporters and editors just sort of sitting around, reading papers. Every big newsroom has its share–more than its share–of reporters who write only occasionally, of editors who spend an unfortunate amount of time sitting and waiting for the next piece of copy to come in. For a lot of reasons, big newsrooms just aren't very efficient–as a high-ranking editor at a big daily said to me recently: "We could put out the same paper with half has many people as we have now–but they'd have to be different people."

Bold added to the last quote to connect the dots with Welch.

Sorry for repeating an anecdote from a previous post, but when I was a reporter at the Daily Californian (El Cajon, Calif.), our reporters would laugh at San Diego Union and Evening Tribune reporters who complained about writing more than two stories a week, while we routinely wrote more than that in a day.

A friend of mine who worked for the Times at the back then, complained about about a pair of journalists whom nobody had seen in the office for two years, nor had their bylines appeared -- can you imagine getting two years to work on a story? A newspaper story?

The Times bloat and waste is legendary.

So I understand where Matt is coming from. And Mark, also, who was writing about a Tribune memo indicating Sam Zell has plans to cut staff and newshole dramatically, reasoning that some of the less productive staffs at the bigger papers can become as productive as some of the staffs at smaller papers.

That's not an entirely unreasonable thought.

The Internet punishes inefficient business models, and one of the biggest inefficiencies at many, many newspapers are staff writers who aren't as productive as your average part-time blogger.

I realize "quality journalism takes time," and that most bloggers don't do as much solid reporting as your typical newspaper journalist. What I am pointing out is: this is what the competitive landscape looks like. Either newsrooms adjust, or they die.

The modern journalist, whether cloistered in a big-media newsroom, or working independently as a journalist-blogger, must be more productive than was required under the old print-only paradigm.

That may be an unfortunate truth for many, but it is reality.

Returning to a quote from Matt that I excised above:

I think one of the worst things to happen to modern newspapers is the Buyout. Not because I weep for journalists losing their fat newspaper jobs -- truly, I do not. But because a generic get-out-of-jail-free card is too often taken quickest by those who have genuinely interesting prospects outside of the Velvet Coffin, instead of the lifers just looking to hang on to the meal ticket.

It seems logical that the most entrepreneurial, the less risk-adverse, the most creative, the ones who can imagine a future outside of print journalism would be the first to take a buyout. That has got to be a problem for our industry.

But one of the things that crossed my mind during my forced hiatus from blogging, when the debate around Tribune's productivity increase started, and reflecting on all of these staff reductions and buyouts -- the question came to mind -- if a newsroom, under economic pressure, can afford to lose 10, 20, 30 or even 50 staff positions now, why couldn't those same newspapers have lost them five years ago -- and lost them to the Internet side of the business?

Imagine if the Los Angeles Times had shifted 50 or 100 positions to web-only content production five or 10 years ago how much further along would LATimes.com be in audience growth today?

When the history of the newspaper industry from 1995 to 2005 is written, the historians won't wonder why the Tribune Co. didn't invent Google itself, or Ebay or Facebook, or that Hearst didn't react more quickly to Craigslist, or ask why the New Century Network didn't buy Yahoo!?

No, the big question will be -- why didn't newspapers invest in online when they had the chance?

Not only were opportunities squandered to shift more resources to the Web, but starting in about 2000, most well-run (well-run being a relative term) newspaper web sites started to turn a profit. Very little of that extra cash flow went into hiring more people, investing in product development or buying up Internet start-ups (one notable exception, E..W. Scripps buying Shopzilla). Almost all of it went to the bottom line.

And again, I'm not talking big, grand, innovative R&D -- but simple stuff ... doing what we already knew worked, such as user participation, social networking, blogging, web-first publishing and so on -- stuff that we now consider the blocking and tackling of a good news web site. Basic stuff that few newspaper web sites really do well yet, but if they had started sooner, would have mastered by now.

It wasn't hard to predict as far back as 2002-2003 when online recruitment revenue was strong for newspapers, and other classified categories were starting to take off, that the good times wouldn't last. A recession was inevitable (they always are), and we were already in an unpredictable war footing, and broadband penetration was increasing (with observable changes in adoption rates for consumer reliance on the web) -- it was easy to see this day coming.

But like the little pig who built his house of straw, the big newspapers took the easy route. They kept expenses low and bragged about 30 percent year-over-year increases in online revenue.

Now the strong winds are blowing and they're looking at the big brick houses in the Silicon Valley and saying, "Those lucky bastards.

Up until September 2006, I spent my entire journalism career on the West Coast, and mostly with very little travel.

I knew journalists and newspaper people throughout California, and because of online e-mail lists and such, I knew a handful of people based in other parts of the U.S.

Frankly, I was largely ignorant of a lot of the good work going on in the Northeast.

In these parts, my co-worker Shannon Dunnigan is a heavyweight, but I knew nothing about her before joining GateHouse.  I've also gotten to know Dan Kennedy, Sean Polay, Joe Michaud, Lisa Williams, Bob Kempf and Bill Densmore among many others (I know I'm forgetting several people) since arriving in New York.  Hey, I barely even knew my own boss, Bill Blevins, before coming east.

Not long ago, I got to meet and spend time talking with John Wilpers, whom I've discovered in one of the sharper minds in online news.  The other day, I got an e-mail from him indicated he launched a new blog.  As I would expect from Wilpers, the topics are fresh, insightful and on target.

It looks like I've successfully restored my blog ... and within the bounds of "well, this is WordPress," some degree of confidence that the site is currently hack free. (Check this TechCrunch post for more on WP and security).

It turns out that the reason my initial restoration effort failed was the following bit of code had found it's way into my header: <?php wp_end(); ?>.  I found that only after completely wiping out all WP files and databases on my server, then reinstalling ... but I did keep my WP theme, which I've modified a bit ... so after seeing everything working with the default theme, I restored my back up custom theme ... and the site stopped working again.

The main delay in my bringing the site back was a combination of being busy and choosing other priorities (such as my wife, garden and dog -- you can find out a little more about how I've been spending my free time on Back Channel).

For the record: I hate all spammers.  It's not like me to hate.  I hate spammers.  No punishment the devil might devise for spammers is appropriately cruel.

So this bit on Romenesko caught my eye today:

SPJ's Neil Ralston says: "I encourage media executives who are looking for the next wave of high-quality journalists to pay attention to the winners. ...These young men and women represent some of the best that journalism programs have to offer."

Being a media executive, I was curious -- do these students represent the future of the news business?

The best way to find out is to Google them -- what can Google tell us about their online life? Do they have their own web sites? Their own blogs?

Any active online person is going to own his or her own name on Google ... and if you're not active online under your real name, you're not living up to the journalistic ideals of transparency and honesty.

So, I Googled these winners.

Here's what I found:

• Meaghan Peters -- Several Meaghan Peters in Google. Not clear if any of them are the journalist Meaghan Peters.
• Camden Swita -- Shows up as a blogger on Washington.edu. Has a MySpace page (warning -- auto play music). Also, several bylines on various sites.
• Claire St. Amant -- May have her own web site, but hard to tell. There's nothing there. Lots of online bylines, but little evidence of blogging. Demerit points should be given for letting the best SEO for your own name go to a Frat Boy News blog (site not work safe in some environments).
• Ryan Kost -- Some bylines in Google, but no personal blog I could find. He did blog -- if you can call it that (the writing being stiff, traditional reportorial writing) while an intern (that's a guess) for the Oregonian. If that's the same Ryan Kost. UPDATE: See note from Ryan at the bottom of the post.
• Jessica Sondgeroth -- Again, some bylines. She has what we would think would be a unique name, but I'm not sure the Jessica Sondgeroth on Facebook, who is from Arizona, is the same Jessica Sondgeroth.
• Katherine Harmon -- Fairly common name. Not much here for this Katherine Harmon.
• Jeremy Herb -- This might be a Jeremy Herb blog. And Jeremy is apparently involved with this news blog.
• Alex Stawinski -- Some bylines in Google.
• Sarah Neff --This looks like her blog, and it's a good one.
• Jared Fields -- Not much in Google to tie any thing this Jared Fields.
• CJ Moore -- Common name. No evidence of this CJ Moore.
• Mark Viera -- Ditto
• Bill Oram -- Ditto
• Aaron Zundel -- Is at least on LinkedIn. Plenty of online bylines, but no evidence of blogging.
• Petra Hendrickson -- Lots of Google hits. Apparently, no blog.
• Phil Hands -- Nothing obvious here. Oops. Big mistake on my part. Here's his site. See his comments below.
• Samuel Ayres -- Hire this guy. He owns his name.
• Philip Cannon -- Ummmm ...
• Jenna Lo Castro -- Folks, we have a blogger. First Google result, too. There are not many entries, but, hey, look at the competition.
• Imani Jackson -- One byline on the first page of results.
• T.J. Tranchell -- This is good, an entirely personal blog. We'll forgive the fascination with crappy '80s metal. Lots of hits on his byline, too.
• Brandon Scheller -- Is this Brandon? We're not sure.
• Mark Dent -- College byline first hit, then not much.
• Dylan Farmer -- This might be Dylan on FB.

I'll let somebody use Google the non-newspaper writers. Frankly, I've grown too discouraged to continue.

So, who do we blame, the students or the journalism programs?

Any students interested in getting it together online, check out Wired Journalists.

UPDATE: Shortly after my blog was hacked and the site went down for several weeks, Ryan Kost sent along this note:

I came across your blog while I was searching for the SPJ press release about the national awards. I haven't been able to read your entry on the SPJ winners other than the google snippet and the headline. For some reason your site isn't loading at the moment. In any case, I definitely wouldn't consider myself super wired, but if you're interested in editing your blog, I do have a small Web presence. My senior thesis was an online discussion of change (it includes video, soundslides, audio and text) that I created with another student journalist. You can see it here: www,definingchange.net. We haven't been able to make it too google-able because we created it using only Flash. Still, we've been trying to get the word out about it, and any little bit helps! Also, for what it's worth, I had a Web site up (ryankost.com), but I really hated the layout, so I took down while I'm designing another.

So, Ryan gets extra points for ego surfing and reaching out to demonstrate further what he's been doing online. I also heard from T.J. Tranchell.  And note the previous correction on Phil Hands.

Remember NewzJunky?  Previously, we noted (here and here) how the start-up, one-man site was beating the WatertownDailyTimes.com in traffic -- an unusual phenomena in the world of local online news.

Well, both Compete and Quantcast show NJ still winning the audience war, but the gap is closing since WDT dropped its pay wall.

Editor and Publisher picked up on the issue last month, but ironically put  the story behind a pay wall -- it's broken free of its chains and is available here.

Jennifer Saba did a good job of covering various angles related to the free vs. paid debate.

Recently, I came across some data -- which I can't find now (wish I'd used del.icio.us like I should have) -- that showed how US papers have failed to raise circulation prices, as compared to many European newspaper companies, which both charge more for papers and have higher household penetration rates.   The data suggests that actually, people will pay for content.  However, it also suggests that newspapers let that genie out of the bottle long before the Web came along.  By not adjusting subscription fees to keep pace with inflation, newspapers have educated that audience that its content is not all that valuable.

If anybody can help me find that data again, that would be lovely.

But even so, we're still only talking about print subscription fees.  There is still no evidence, either in the US or elsewhere, that people will pay for general news content online.

The Newspaper Association of America released a report today on newspaper video.

It provides some interesting stats on how papers are approach video, a fairly comprehensive overview of different strategic approaches (including GateHouse's), and some hints, tips and equipment options for getting into video.

It's no understatement to say I owe my career to Ron James. In 1995, I interviewed Ron -- whom I'd known from my days as co-publisher of a little weekly in Ocean Beach -- for an article I was writing for the San Diego Business Journal about local online publications. At the time, Ron was editor of the San Diego Magazine web site.

After the interview, Ron asked me, "How would you like to be our East County correspondent" -- see Ron had a vision for the Web's expansive possibilities, turning SanDiego-Online.com into a portal for San Diego before the web-meaning of the word was invented.

In response to his question, I said I had a better idea -- what if I got together with a friend of mine who owned a group of six weeklies in East County and put those online. Ron didn't hesitate. "Great," he said. And East County Online, the first group of US weekly papers on the Web, was launched just two weeks later.

When we started, I didn't even know HTML, but my online career was launched.

During my interviews for SDBJ, I also spoke with Jim Drummond, who was single-handedly launching what is now SignOnSanDiego.com. Back then, the San Diego Union-Tribune had no faith in this web thing and the original site was strictly real estate advertising. Drummond toiled with little support and staff for years, until the U-T hired Chris Jennewein.

If you don't know Chris, you should. He's a legend in the industry. He's been doing longer than just about anybody I know and launched the original MercCenter for the San Jose Mercury News back in the 1990s.

Through Ron, I got to know Chris and have long considered him a friend and a mentor.

I've learned a lot about online audience growth from watching Ron and Chris's work in San Diego. They've led the industry and set the example for creating web sites that do a great job at attracting readers. They have few peers in the industry. SignOnSanDiego has also been an industry leader in revenue growth.

So how is it possible that the San Diego Union-Tribune has let these three talented, hard-working, right-on-target men go? It's shocking. (link via Romenesko).

It's all too common for internal politics to overrun good business sense at family-owned newspapers. That's the only explanation in this case that makes any sense.

UPDATE: There's no way the U-T can come out of this looking good, but bless their hearts, they're trying. E&P reports that Gene Bell has confirmed Jennewein's departure.

"Among the changes, is the consolidation of strategy, product development and Internet sites under the leadership of Mark Davis, currently vice president of strategy," the statement continued. "This change results in having to say goodbye to Chris Jennewein, vice president of Internet sites."

Gene Bell, president & CEO, added: “We thank Chris for all he has done and his contributions over the years. His work has built a strong foundation for our Internet business and our evolution into a multimedia company – an evolution that will continue, as we adapt to our readers’ changing media habits and preferences.”

Great formula for ongoing growth -- get rid of the people have provided your newspaper's only true online leadership to begin with. Retreating is always a great go-forward strategy.

UPDATE II:  A post on Voice of San Diego contains this interesting tidbit:

A reporter who attended a 2007 newsroom strategy meeting in which Winner laid out ideas for the company's future said the editor closed the session with this request: Don't tell the workers at SignOnSanDiego.com about what was discussed. ...

Also, Steve Yelvington: San Diego Union turns against its future.

Part of my job is to travel around the country and visit our newsrooms, where I make a presentation about our online strategy.  The Rockford Register Star is an example of a newsroom that has totally embraced the web.  They produced the video below to incorporate into the GateHouse training program.

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In an age when information flows like a million Mississippis, we need to have an ethics about information.

In an age when access to information is as open as a billion galaxies, each individual is responsible for handling information ethically.

In an age when we are all information creators, contributors and consumers, we share a responsibility to each other not to mishandle information.

The information ethic begins with each person who both understands the power of information and the scourge of misinformation.

This is a role not solely for journalists, but journalists as the paid purveyors of information must not slip in adherence to high ethical standard (the ethical burden on journalists has never been greater); this is not a role not solely for bloggers, but bloggers as the vanguard of a new information river, must take on the burden of protecting and cherishing information; mostly, this is a role for all participants in the conversation, both the creators and the followers.

Not all participants will rise to the occasion, increasing the burden on those of use who recognize the responsibility.

The information ethic requires that we strive always for honesty, transparency, accuracy and fairness.

We must teach ethics as well as we practice ethics.

This is the ideal. Not all participants will recognize nor care for even a shadow of the ideal, but those of us who do must hold ourselves to the highest standards of information ethics.

This is no code of conduct we sign, no pledge we take, no oath we swear, no authority we obey. It is just something we do within ourselves.

And if we do, society will be better for it.

Jack Lail finally convinced me to give The Flip Ultra a try. He told me the Ultra didn't have the sound qualty problems of the older version of The Flip. Below are two clips demonstrating the camera's capabilities a bit.

I like it. It's super easy to use. The sound is good -- for a sound source in close proximity to the on-board mic. Anything voice more than three feet away is lost. The Casios we've been using do better in that regard.

The biggest draw back to making this the new camera we distribute to reporters is that it doesn't take stills, and at our smallest papers, reporters want a camera that can do both still and video. However, at a cost savings of about $100 per unit, it's a pretty compelling option.

First video is from my day at Syracuse University, where I spoke to some journalism classes on Tuesday. The second video is a bit of our tourism along the eastern edge of Lake Ontario on Monday.

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I want to make sure all my friends in Southern California know about this ... wish I could go. If you don't know Buddy's music, you can find several great free MP3s on his web site. RIP, my friend.

Yesterday, I thought about doing a piece on the NYT's link-bait story on the stresses of blogging, but I thought ... "I'm busy today. Why bother?" I knew bloggers would be all over it, and of course they are.

But just now, I read the following quote on Romenesko and it gets me fired up anew. My take on the story is that it demonstrates clearly where big-time Journalism has gone astray, and the quote from Larry Dignan confirms it:

I had doubts about the premise. Yes, blogging is stressful. Yes, it can be insane. But is it any worse than being a corporate lawyer? How many of those folks dropped in the last six months? How about mortgage brokers? Hedge fund traders?

Here's the thing -- the Times could have had a very interesting story about big-name bloggers, and aspiring big-time bloggers, and what some of them go through to achieve and maintain success. The Times could have done that with no sensationalism, no heart attacks, no news peg. The story could have just been interesting and informative. That's news, too.

Instead, the Times tries desperately to pin two deaths to blogging, but then knowing it has over-reached, still tries to weasel out of it.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

That's not serious journalism. That's weasel-word journalism. When you have to write a paragraph apologizing for the angle you're taking on the story, there is something ethically wrong with your approach to the story.

The poorly chosen angle reminds me of NYT's botched McCain coverage a few weeks back.

It's shoddy journalism like this that drives people away from newspapers and reminds them of why they distrust us, why they hate us.

Here and now, I'm nominating Matt Richtel and his editors for a Dart.

Here's a "must add" for your RSS reader and blog roll ... the wild bunch (you know, people like Bob Benz and Wes Jackson) over at Maroon Ventures has launched a group blog.

This is a gang of smart people, so we should have high expectations for wise and insightful posts (just raising the bar, Bob!), especially now that they're cut loose from their corporate newspaper jobs. You know what stiffs those corporate suits are like.

Congratulations to my friend, Scott Karp, whose fledging business took a big step forward this week.

Today we’re announcing that Publish2 has raised $2.75 million in Series A funding from Velocity Interactive Group — Jonathan Miller and Ross Levinsohn will be joining our board (along with Jeff Jarvis and Luke Beatty, who have been close advisors).

Note that along with Howard Weaver, Jack Lail I'm an advisor to Publish2.

Publish2 has a lot of potential to both help bring to the top of the link pile the best of online journalism, but also give newspaper sites a deeper source of content.