I'm so honored to work at such a prestigious magazine, especially one that lets me put my obsession for politics to good use.

Obviously, this means I'm leaving the newspaper industry in favor of serving niche topical audiences in the magazine world. I'm excited by the possibility to take what I've learned about how to effectively cover a wide range of topics across a wide range of mediums and apply it to a narrower spectrum of topics.

This also means the stockpile of newspaper related ideas I've had safely stored in my head for use during interviews are ready for release on this blog. So, get ready.

For evidence, just read the latest New York Times Op-Ed piece by Timothy Egan, in which he claims there's nothing wrong with newspapers, except their Web sites don't make enough money. After all, newspaper Web sites have huge audiences but can't support the broadsheet's budget, he notes.

That's where Egan fails to understand reality. It's not the job of the Web site to pay the expenses of the printed newspaper. The newspaper must pay its own expenses using its own revenue. The cuts that Egan laments are proof the printed newspaper can no longer afford infinite pages and sections.

The problem is not that the Web is making too little revenue. The problem is the printed version costs too much. In a twist of selective cognition, Egan points to the success of online-only news purveyors such as the Huffington Post and cries foul.

"There’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post — even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists."

He's right about one thing. When newspapers lay off even more reporters, then Drudge and Huffington will begin creating their own reporting staffs to supplement the loss of stories. In fact, that's already happening. Huffington Post recently began hiring reporters, and its founder says she plans to hire more.

Huffington and Drudge entered the journalism business at the low-end without paying millions for printing and distribution. That advantage lowered the barrier of entry to the market, only newspapers never truly considered them worthy competitors. Judging from Egan's opinions, it seems they still don't.

Since newspapers haven't figured this out by now, it seems they never will. So resign yourselves to a future where the likes of the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, and MSN and Yahoo, hire reporting staffs the size of the New York Times or larger.

And you know what that means for newspapers . . . just ask Egan: "What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies."

From every indicator, BostonNOW was heading in all the right directions. Circulation was shooting upward and revenues were following. Since I took over the reigns at the Web site just over a month ago, some plans had made it live . . . just not my favorites.

Then the investors from Iceland quit paying the bill. I don' t know much about that.

But I do know that the people who worked at BostonNOW are among the best anywhere. They tried hard every day. The sales people embodied a mantra that CEO Russel Pergament touted regularly: "We don't sell advertising, we sell ideas."

From news to advertising, everyone had ideas. And they were firing them off as quickly as they could. I suppose I should be proud that our last paper included the launch of one of my ideas. Actually, it was me and a great promotions guy, Chris Nugent, who came up with it.

"Say anything." If you have something to say, and 300 people agree it's worth printing, then we will give you 300 words in print. All you have to do is get those 300 people to sign a copy of BostonNOW as if it were a petition.

The goal was to virally market BostonNOW by convincing regular folks to promote the paper via word of mouth -- that's the holy grail of marketing.

Just took a couple weeks and the idea went from our mouths to a graphic artist and into print. That's the kind of turnaround this industry needs. Obviously, I wish the paper never closed, so then at least we'd know what kind of response the campaign generated. I wish we could have seen the response to a lot of our ideas in the hopper. But what's worth remembering now is that BostonNOW had the type of people who were open to ideas and ran with them.

Now, if only the Icelandic krona were doing better.

I just completed my first week as Interactive Media Director for BostonNOW.com. It's a start-up free newspaper with more than 100,000 circulation and growing. We're taking on some large, entrenched players in a competitive media market.

Anyone reading this blog regularly knows that I've long sought this fight. Through a heavy emphasis on local breaking news and user-generated content, BostonNOW.com will prove its business model is the future. A free daily newspaper could start tomorrow in your backyard and erode the traditional competition. Keep close watch.

If you've been reading this blog regularly, then you also know what to watch for.

THE BEST EXPLAINER ON WHAT EVERYBLOCK DOES

MethodsReporter has the most complete look at the site that I've read. And it makes a good observation about the beginnings of a business plan emerging.

I was surprised to see Google Adsense running on EveryBlock. Having scored the monster grant from the Knight Foundation, Holovaty has repeatedly stated that EveryBlock is a non-commercial project, built for good, not for gain (not that running Adsense is incompatible with that direction).

CRAIGSLIST SUDDENLY FEELING CHARITABLE?

Insider Chatter points out that EveryBlock redistributes hundreds of CraigsList user postings. Holovaty said the site took "publicly available" RSS feeds to offer this service. But in the past CraigsList has stopped aggregators from using these feeds for redistribution (especially when those sites make money), claiming of course that it's users don't want ads in other places. Sure, blame the users.

TECHNICAL WONDER BUT CONTEXTUAL BLUNDER, SOME ARGUE

Danny Sanchez at Journalistopia admires the sheer amount of information being automatically aggregated onto EveryBlock, but he says the site is missing an important part of all reporting: Putting information in context.

I notice something that I’ve also encountered in my work on Orlando-area neighborhood pages and data features: It’s tough to put all of that data into context and provide more historical information such as a community’s history, landmarks and evolving story. For instance, having a highly detailed view of crimes in a neighborhood is really cool, but how does my neighborhood compare to another? How is crime in the neighborhood trending? That’s going to be the next big challenge for news organizations who want to do features such as this.

Derek Willis takes exactly the opposite view.

Perhaps the criticism that has most resonance among CAR folks is the one that goes something like, “EveryBlock sure is an impressive technical feat, but it’s just data without context.” It’s rather a back-handed compliment, given our own efforts at providing data on the Web, but there’s some legitimacy there. It just troubles me when newspaper folks look at something built via a programmatic process as somehow not worthy of the title “journalism.”

To me, the main differences between EveryBlock and some of the efforts at presenting data that newspapers have developed are these: First, EB aggregates in a way that others don’t, both in terms of number and variety of sources. Second, unlike most newspaper products, it seems to be designed to let the consumer make the judgment of what’s news.

THE DEFINITION OF NEWS IS RELATIVE . . .

Of all people, TechDirt had the most concise, best explanation of why EveryBlock should be considered journalism.

The buzz today is about the launch of Everyblock, a new "hyperlocal" news provider that recognizes "news" is different to different people -- and things like what building permits are being requested and what restaurants are being inspected may be news if they're on your block or places you go to regularly.

. . . BUT EVERYBLOCK ISN'T NEWS PEOPLE WANT

The creator of BlockRocker says Holovaty's version might soon encounter the same problem that killed his site: Readers just don't care enough about hyper-local news.

Hyperlocal has consistently been a technology without a market. Interests are generally not boxed by locale, and localization does not necessarily convey relevance (or traffic). This applies to news stories, photos, and so on. The second part of this rant is that generally people aren’t that interested in local data - for example, TC talks about the power of Everyblock being able to pull up a list of recently cleaned graffitti in Brooklyn. Huh. How many people are going to want to check up on that regularly?

OUTSIDE.IN SAYS EVERYBLOCK ISN"T A COMPETITOR

The venture capitalist supporting Outside.in, another neighborhood site that is now partnering with The Washington Post, claims EveryBlock isn't a competitor even though it's available in some of the same locations.

Many of you know that our firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Outside.in, co-founded and run by Steven Johnson (the pothole paradox guy). Techcrunch calls outside.in a competitor of EveryBlock. I think collaborator is more like it. It's going to take more than one company to rebuild the local newspaper from the ground up.

In fact, the first thing we all need to understand about "hyperlocal" is that this is going to be a long slog. It's simple enough to put up a search field and ask for a neighborhood name or zip code and return a result. outside.in has been doing that for over a year now. Here's that result for my neighborhood. Here's EveryBlock's result for the same search. You get two very different results, because the services focus on different kinds of local content. But even so, the results are not that compelling. YET.

MY TAKE: NEWS ABOUT MY HOME LACKS EFFECTIVE HOME PAGE

As someone not living in the EveryBlock coverage area, I found it confusing. But I'm guessing so do other folks. And there's one big reason: Where's the home page?

Once I select my area, it seems like the latest information about my neighborhood appears on one very long page, but I can't be sure. The design is simple most everywhere else but here. For such a successful aggregator of other people's information, it does a poor job of compiling all that's available on its own site into one place that's easily comprehended.

Without a home page, the site requires highly motivated users and it becomes primarily a search tool, albeit with guided links to results. If EveryBlock is in the business of news, it needs a better Page 1A. Or, since this is hyperlocal: 1B.

With that said, let me also throw my support behind this project. Even at its launch, EveryBlock already proves that geocoding information is useful to journalism, and making that point was it's primary mission.

But consider all of that my last bit of free advice. As someone who runs a newspaper Web site, I wouldn't want EveryBlock showing up in my city. That's why I know It's a competitor, despite whatever Holovaty says.

The Telegraph will soon become the first newspaper in the world, and the first British media company, to become an OpenID provider. Readers will be able to begin using the service from the end of February.

OpenID is a decentralised registration system that will offer enormous benefits to our users. Once you have an OpenID login you can use it at any of the supporting services, including AOL, Orange, Digg and Blogger. Having to remember fewer passwords is clearly a very good thing.

More newspapers, if not all of them, should follow the Telegraph's lead for a lot of reasons. Newspaper registration systems do not accomplish all that they were heralded as bringing: personalization, demographic information for advertisers, marketing information, etc.

On our own site, HeraldTribune.com registration is present in most sections but many of our vendors require their own logins and do not authenticate against our database. That means users have to remember several logins and passwords just to use one site. Instead, newspaper sites should use OpenID and require that all of their vendors do the same.

Remember that common registration is not only convenient for users and easier to manage for sites, but it's also the foundation for new ideas to come. Start thinking about how it could benefit your site in yet unimagined ways.

Regular readers know I'm expecting someone (maybe Google) will try housing all of your profile information in one place, and then folks will be able to update across all social networks at once: MySpace, Facebook, your local newspaper.

Yahoo is suddenly supporting OpenID, an open-source solution to housing profiles. An open-source approach would undermine efforts by Google and Microsoft to create their own system. Pay close attention to the second part of this quote on FT.com:

Ash Patel, Yahoo’s head of platforms and infrastructure, said: “Supporting OpenID gives our users the freedom to leverage their Yahoo ID both on and off the Yahoo network, reducing the number of usernames and passwords they need to remember and offering a single, trusted partner for managing their online identity.”

The important part is in bold. Managing identity could easily morph into the type of master profile I've suggested will emerge.

Yahoo isn't making this move out of the kindness of its heart; rather, Yahoo recognizes that it can't afford to let Google emerge as the home of user profiles. Competition for the throne of master profile keeper began with Windows Passport but is now being waged between OpenID, Google's OpenSocial and Microsoft's Windows Live ID. And if that profile is built on OpenID, then monopoly models from Google and Microsoft are scuttled.

Apparently that won't stop Google, which is now half-heartedly supporting OpenID. If OpenID finally fulfills the need for common registration, then the race will be onto the other things on my list or requirements to become the master profile.

What exactly is OpenID?

This line earned cheers from an audience of employees at Newsday: "I don't think that this company has been run particularly well in the past."

Zell went on to explain the crux of Tribune's downfall this way:

"I don't think it's been run very well because, I think, philosophically there is just a basic issue that we are attempting to address and attempting to find out the answer to. This company is run as though it were a media conglomerate. I think the question is: Is it a media conglomerate or is it a conglomerate of media companies? And that really addresses this whole question of whether we need a bottom-up management operation or a top-down management operation."

During another one of these speeches at the Hartford Courant, Zell made it clear that top-down management hasn't worked for the Tribune's Web strategy either.

Tribune must find ways to more aggressively pursue sales and "attack the Internet area much better, in a much more sophisticated fashion than what we've done to date." Referring to Tribune's companywide website platform, he said, "It sucks."

Zell's theory supports what I said about the Tribune's uniform design when it first launched. In "Attack of the clones," I reminded everyone that Knight-Ridder's demise was preceded by a companywide approach to Web design. Zell understands that what works in one market doesn't automatically work everywhere else.

Instead, the Tribune should dole out expectations for revenue and provide the support that its media companies request to meet those goals. Mandates such as the Tribune's companywide design stop each newspaper from creating a product that epitomizes their workers, who actually live in the places they serve.

Facing rough financial times, big executives react instinctively by taking more control over products. But the paradox of leadership here is that the right move is actually empowering the workers to take more ownership in big and small ways. Zell pushed that point during his visit to The Morning Call.

"I don't really look at you guys as employees, I look at you as partners. And I plan to win, and I want you guys to win with me."

The thing I never liked about the now deceased TimesCast was its lack of content. The TimesCast was a LinkFest and not much more. Now here comes MiamiHerald.com with "What the 5?," which links to the day's five most interesting stories, some of which are produced by the show, others of which are links anywhere on the Web.

The presentation is also cool, taking TimesCast's idea of providing links to stories to a new level and then bringing the show's production quality up a notch, too. It's like these folks combined linky-funny TimesCast with swanky-newsy Studio55, and then mixed in an editor who feels the pulse of the audience.

Many have pointed out that the concept is awfully similar to Yahoo's "The 9," which I know nothing about, except that it isn't local.

The best thing you can do is stop reading and instead go watch "What the 5?" Many of the kinks from launch are worked out. So if you've seen it before, then you'll probably be relieved to find they're recording much more B-roll, the set has changed, and the streaming works.

What I learned is some of them feel there are so many hoops to jump through to do multimedia, or that the one person who knows how to post the content is often too busy to work on their projects.

I know exactly how they feel. From both sides.

As a content producer at USATODAY.com, I used to have to pitch stories to the Rich Media team, hoping they’d have the time and resources to do it — and they had a “team.”

In smaller newspapers, oftentimes only one person coordinates all the multimedia content. As multimedia producer at HeraldTribune.com, I was inundated last January with multimedia requests from the newsroom when they were told “Web content” was to be a part of their performance goals (they didn’t realize at the time that “the Web” can be more than “multimedia”). I became the one who had to say no to projects.

As a reporter itching to get involved in online, what do you do? How do you get around this?

I think one way (which is what HeraldTribune.com is doing now), is to put the tools, resources, and the ability to actually post the content via CMS in the hands of the reporters and editors.

Gulp.

Wait a minute. That’s MY job as a multimedia producer.

She goes on to explain why after all her years of experience and training, she decided it's in the best interest of the newspaper to let everyone else take the multimedia reigns.

Here's how E&P reports the proposed changes to the newspaper:

(Deputy Managing Editor Matt) Mansfield said the specific changes would have taken the current four-to-five section design and set a standard three-section paper with all news in the first section, business and technology in the second section, and sports and entertainment in the third. "It would have been a little bit of a cutback in pages, but it was just the sections that they looked at changing," he recalled.

Editor Carole Leigh Hutton is already gone, and she's replaced by MediaNews VP David J. Butler, who is apparently oblivious to the sharp declines in circulation and revenue his newspaper is experiencing. In comments to the newsroom, Butler criticized proposals from the "Rethinking Project" as too bold for the moment.

Too bold? Reports say the Mercury News had more than 400 editorial employees in 2005 but has since cut about 200. Layoffs were announced as recently as last month.

In the face of that obscene amount of failure, don't we want the newsroom and its editors proposing bold changes?

Remember during the New Hampshire debate when John Edwards seemed to team up with Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton, saying, "Every time he speaks out for change, every time I fight for change, the forces of status quo are going to attack."

Edwards easily could have been talking about the newspaper industry.

ROBERT: Tansa's software has not been the direct cause of any job losses in the USA. That's not how it works. The software was originally created by copy editors, for copy editors. We don't think of it as "the copy editor vs. the computer" at all. Quite the opposite.

Copy editors in the USA are generally overworked and underpaid, but at the same time being asked to do even more (24x7 Web publishing, for example). Tansa's software - which is just a far more advanced and efficient version of the spell checker that everybody already has - reduces the amount of repetitive, boring work they do, allowing them to focus on the high value stuff.

LUCAS: I don't buy your argument that no copy editor has ever lost their job as a result of Tansa. The Morning Call's editor flat-out states that using Tansa means the newspaper can operate with fewer copy editors on their universal desk. Here's what he said: "Tansa would save editing time for the copy desk, allowing us to more effectively operate a universal desk with fewer editors." Regardless of whether you all built Tansa to replace copy editors, don't you agree that if a large copy desk becomes more efficient, then it could be reduced in size?

ROBERT: This is obviously a sensitive question, and an issue that we understand pretty well. Tansa was created by newspaper copy editors, and most of the employees of Tansa have worked for, or with, newspapers for most of our adult lives.

To date, the statement I made is true.

But it is important to note that Tansa is not causing the downsizing that is going on in newsrooms across the country. The challenges facing the newspaper industry today are well documented, and every newspaper is looking at ways to reduce costs. These cuts would take place whether Tansa existed or not, unfortunately.

Believe it or not, however, most newspaper companies are concerned about the impact of these cuts on the quality of their products. Some publishers see Tansa's tools as a way to mitigate any "damage" caused by a reduced number of eyes and fingers on the copy desk.

We also know that most publishers are trying to create and distribute more content - in more formats - than ever before, and so they often view Tansa as a way to do that - without having to increase copy editing staff.

LUCAS: One of my readers asks: "Exactly what does the computer program do? Does it highlight problem spots? Does it change around the copy to what it thinks is right? Can you override the system?"

ROBERT: It is basically an advanced, more efficient spelling checker than the ones built into standard desktop editing tools.

The text is analyzed on a server and compared to a customized dictionary that is created for each installation. So, the results are intended to be much more focused and relevant than a standard spelling checker.

It can correct errors in:
- Basic punctuation issues
- Spelling (including full names)
- Usage (style)
- and hyphenation (H&J)

The user decides when to run it, and what to do with the software's suggestions. And that's all they are - suggestions. The user is in control of what happens with the suggestions.

LUCAS: This is a softball, but important question: What makes Tansa any better than Microsoft Word's built-in grammar and spell checker?

ROBERT: I love softball.

It's usually easier to show you the advantages, rather than describe them, but . . . there are four things that make Tansa unique:

- Technology: Tansa analyzes text in context, and compares the results to a dictionary that includes multiword phrases.

- A complete solution: Our client application plug-ins enable the use of Tansa within the most commonly used desktop writing, editing and layout applications (even across different operating systems). The system also includes a complete suite of administration and management utilities.

- A centralized solution: A centralized server hosts a single customized dictionary that is shared by all the users in an organization.

- Customized dictionaries: Every company is unique, therefore Tansa Systems creates customized dictionaries tailored to the specific requirements of each installation. We also have licensing agreements that allow us to build dictionaries based on Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th edition) and the AP Stylebook for our daily newspaper customers - compare that to the "generic" dictionaries found in most other editing applications.

LUCAS: What was the epiphany moment that made you all decide to create the Tansa software?

ROBERT: I wasn't an employee at the time, and therefore can't take credit,
but - as with so many other software products - Tansa was created out of frustration.

In 1995, one of the head copy editors at the largest daily newspaper in Norway was frustrated with the spelling tools (and dictionary) that his copy desk was using. He had some ideas, and he happened to know some computer scientists. They created a prototype for that newspaper, and eventually it became a product available for sale to other newspapers - first in Norway, then the rest of Scandinavia, and now in several languages around the world.

LUCAS: Where is Tansa currently in use? And how many newspaper companies have shown interest in starting to use the system?

ROBERT: It is being used by a wide variety of publications, including (to name a few of the English-language sites):

- Aiken Standard (Aiken, S.C.)
- Kitsap Sun (Kitsap, Wash.)
- Newsday
- New York Magazine
- The Economist
- The Orange County Register
- The Rockford Register-Star (Rockford, Ill.)
- The Seattle Times
- The St. Cloud Times (St. Cloud, Minn.)
- The Toronto Star

Interest has come from every major newspaper group, all over the country (the world, really).

LUCAS: Do you envision a day when a small, upstart Web site that has no copy editors might use Tansa in lieu of paying a copy desk? Then as the site grows maybe it never hires a human copy desk and instead relies on regular editors?

ROBERT: That is not a scenario that any of us have specifically discussed.


Many thanks to Robert for taking the time to explain Tansa and what it does. I'm sure he'll be reading this post and will be interested in your comments.

As someone who supports new technology, I can't argue against the logic of this move. By letting the computers check spelling, grammar, AP style and more, it reduces the demand on copy editors. Logically, that means newspapers need fewer copy editors than before.

Here's how editor Ardith Hilliard describes the plan in a long memo posted on Romenesko:

We hope to eventually launch a capital project to install a Tansa editing system in conjunction with our Hermes pagination system and other production systems. Tansa is a text proofing system that checks spelling, word usage and style, punctuation, hyphenation and some grammar. Dictionaries can be added to this system - word dictionary (AP approved dictionary), AP Stylebook and Morning Call stylebook, except for entries that involve news judgment. Tansa would save editing time for the copy desk, allowing us to more effectively operate a universal desk with fewer editors. The system would help reporters and data assistants file cleaner copy to the desk, thus saving copyediting time. The copy desk also would use it during the final edit to more quickly catch errors and to edit calendars and other lists that could move faster through the process than having a copy editor read every word. This system has been successfully implemented at other newspapers and is currently being tested on the Hermes system at Newsday.

The computer can't replace all the copy editors because it can't comprehend the story and it can't question the facts. And that's the hard stuff.

Still, this could be only the first chapter of this story. Picture a world rife with budget cuts that obliterate the copy desk by replacing people with computers, and leaving the "hard stuff" for desk editors.

Penelope Trunk delivered career advice on Yahoo Finance until two weeks ago, when Yahoo dropped her Brazen Careerist column. Trunk says Yahoo decided the column didn't draw enough traffic to warrant the premium rates advertisers pay to be in its financial news package. So out she went.

I've not read a single account of Trunk's reaction that backs this claim. What actually happened is much worse, and totally different.

Trunk was fired because the advertising department couldn't sell the page views generated by her very popular column. At least, that's what she said in a statement that anyone can go read for themselves right now.

. . . I asked why I was being fired. Maybe you are thinking it’s because every week, 400 people leave comments on Yahoo saying how stupid I am. (And surely today’s final column at Yahoo Finance will break records for she-is-so-stupid comments.) But that’s not the reason my column was cancelled; Yahoo is about traffic, and according to Wikipedia, my column has some of the highest traffic on all of Yahoo.

It turns out that financial content gets a higher CPM (advertising rate) than career content. So while my column has a lot of traffic, Yahoo sells my career column to advertisers as part of the Yahoo Finance package, and I bring down the CPM of the whole package.

Remember what journalism professors say about getting the names wrong? If you can't spell a name right, then why should readers believe anything in the story. I wonder what they'd say about getting the entire lead wrong.

I think you can safely disregard anything after the first graph of the column. Instead read the truth about a page-view bonus system.

Yoni wants an editor who models the change we'd like to see in the world. A good example is the News & Record's John Robinson, who is one of the few top editors I know of with a blog on their own newspaper Web site.

It's astonishing to me that senior editors expect reporters to learn how to record audio, shoot video, post breaking news items, manage discussions or host a blog, and yet they have no idea how to do it themselves. This epitome of hypocrisy is standard fare for newsroom culture.

"All too often, blame for the state of affairs and the lack of progress is placed on line employees such as reporters and desk editors. This needs to end. Change must occur and, I believe, it must occur at the top of our organizations."

Yoni expresses the dirty little secret kept in many newsrooms, which is that our senior editors are failing newspapers. It's their job to increase audiences, and all of the numbers show they're failing. It's their job to foster productive newsroom cultures, and all over the country they continue to fail.

The next time sweeping layoffs are announced, ask yourself why the man or woman in charge isn't sent packing, too.