What's happening Around the Web

TCU student Andrew Young shares what it's like to spend a day at the Hood County News. His photo story probably has some familiar faces in it if you've been to many state press association events, so check it out.

English King Canute once took his throne to the seashore and commanded the tide not to come in. Of course, his feet got wet. Don't judge him; newspapers are still erecting paywalls and expecting people to pay their newspaper for what they can get for free. To be fair, there are some specialized situations -- niche publications and some community papers that hold a near-monopoly on news -- that have experienced some success with paywalls. But if you're still wrestling with this issue, take time to read blogger Alan Mutter's latest posting. His thesis is that a growing number of free local news sites are driving another nail in the coffin of paywalls. An example from his blog: "While newspaper executives have agonized for the better part of two years about whether and how to charge for their costly-to-produce content, every indication is that the portals, local broadcasters and other media companies have no intention of asking anyone to pay for access to the increasingly ambitious local sites they are building. With a fast-proliferating number of respectable local sites giving away news to build traffic for their ad-supported ventures, newspapers simply won’t be able to charge for access – especially when their own stories are likely to become freely available within minutes at any number of competing sites." And as frequently happens with well-thought-out blogs like Mutter's, some of the comments from readers are as interesting as the blog itself. Here's an example from one reader: "The only way newspapers can make the transition to online is to radically cut costs. We're talking 80 to 90 percent cuts in personnel. An online news business needs to be built from the ground up, not have a legacy news module imposed on it. This is why I continue to believe the newspapers original sin wasn't a failure to charge for content, but a failure to create completely separate online companies." So add this posting to your consideration as you consider your paywall options.

Just in case the Ambien you were prescribed is working now and you’re finally getting some sleep instead of worrying about all the new challenges facing our business…let’s look at one more and find out how effective the Ambien really is. Here’s a quote from the beginning of this article: “If local newspaper, yellow pages, radio or local TV companies thought that Google, Yahoo, eBay and craigslist were disruptive, they are now going to face down a competitor that will have an even bigger impact on their businesses than any one of those companies did.” That competitor is the location-based marketing made possible by mobile phones. Articles like this one predict the impact on urban and suburban markets more than rural ones, but we all know that urban phenomena soon spread to smaller cities and towns. This is one we’ll have to keep tabs on.

Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, recently spoke at a meeting I attended and shared a PowerPoint presentation I thought you’d be interested in. Al has graciously shared that with us. Look it over – it has some information that can be helpful with you as you make presentations about the overall health of community newspapers – and some information your ad reps need to have to share with customers who have questions about the effectiveness of a newspaper ad buy.

Copyeditor-types, if you just can’t find someone to engage in a deep discussion of comma splices and arcane points of word usage, check out this weekly column online from The New York Times.  There’s enough there every week to delight you and bore the pants off anyone around you.  And if that still doesn’t satisfy, check out writing coach Roy Peter Clark’s fascinating new book, The Glamour of Grammar:  A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English. Fascinating book – you’ll agree when you read the Times’ interview with Roy at http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/stray-questions-for-roy-pe....

Some newspapers and online news sites trying “news cafes” – sending reporters to coffee shops to interact with patrons. The model is a little different everywhere, but basically reporters go into a coffee shop with the permission of the proprietors and set up shop. They write, phone, do interviews. One even has a sign that says “the journalist is in.” The idea is to make the paper and its reporters accessible, to demystify the news process, and to connect with readers. The Poynter story has lots of hyperlinks to various places that are trying this, if you want to get more information on how it works.

Check out this story in All Cross's rural journalism blog in Kentucky. It reports research from Kansas on rural grocery stores, many of which are closing because of the competition from nearby big-box stores, among other factors. If you have seen a trend like this in your area, click on the link above -- it'll take you to Al's story and his link to the Kansas study about grocery stores in the Midwest. You'll have all the background (and sources, if you want to call the researcher in Kansas) you need to do a story if you're seeing this trend yourself.

Tommy Thomason was given the Dewane Kelly Friend of the Newspaper Award Saturday by the West Texas Press Association.

So you heard someone talking about Ruby on Rails and it sounded like a Merle Haggard ballad -- and then you found out it was a Net platform? And you've always wanted a plain-English explanation of SEO, CSS and cloud computing? You're in luck. Poynter has posted a glossary of Internet terms that every digital journalist should know. And even if you don't "need" to know, imagine how impressed everyone in your office will be when you throw terms like metadata and data visualization into the conversation.

If you have reporters (or maybe even yourself, but I'll never tell) who have trouble knowing when to use a comma and when to use a semicolon, check out this hilarious explanation. It's well-illustrated and it answers questions some folk have had since eighth grade. Of course, in journalism we don't use that many semicolons -- periods and new sentences often work better. But check this out anyway; you'll enjoy it; I promise. (Three in one sentence; are you impressed?)

Part of your summer reading program should be the fluff that you might never get to any other time. Stuff with absolutely no redeeming value except that you love it. But in case you want to keep one book going that will help you professionally, especially as an editor or manager or publisher, here’s a good place to start. The blog Entrepreneur Corner has an article on the seven “must reads” for entrepreneurs. Some are management-oriented, and some, like Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat, just help us to understand the new world in which we all do business, no matter what our corner of Texas.

Mindy McAdams of the University of Florida is the queen bee of multimedia educators in universities. And she’s able to make multimedia accessible for non-geeks, too. So consider this Multimedia 101: In a downloadable pdf you can put on your desktop and visit when you have time, Mindy walks you through basic multimedia use. If you know, or don’t care to know, some competency she discusses, just skip to the next one. And as I said, this is for the non-geek/wonk/nerd/dweeb, etc. In other words, it’s plain English explanations. If you’re serious about expanding your multimedia horizons, this is the place to start.

The very best way, of course, to get an overview of social media and to see how you can use Facebook and Twitter and the like is to come to one of TCCJ's workshops (And you're in luck, because another is scheduled for the University of Texas at Tyler on July 21). But here's a nice summary of how individual journalists and newspapers are using Facebook. It also includes a look at some of the ethical issues we have to deal with when we begin to use social media at our newspapers.

A new interactive map now shows broadband access throughout the state of Texas. You can check out broadband availability for any city, and even any specific address, in the state. The map shows that 96 percent of Texans can access broadband, but that still leaves out about 250,000 homes. Be sure to surf through the entire website -- it contains loads of information on every county in the state, including detailed broadband-availability maps of your county. The maps are a project of the Texas Department of Agriculture. The department's news release quoted commissioner Todd Stapes as saying: "High-speed Internet is directly related to business development and is a critical lifeline to vital services like telemedicine and education. Every Texan should have the opportunity to drive in the fast lane on the information superhighway; however, some Texans are stuck on a dirt road. This new statewide broadband map will help us bridge the digital divide for rural communities and households that remain unserved by broadband service."

Here's a blog you'll definitely want to follow. It's by Broc Sears of the Center's staff; Broc is also a professional in residence in new media at the Schieffer School of Journalism. Broc is leading a team of students who are redesigning the Daily Skiff at TCU, but he has done something that lots of community papers can emulate when they do a redesign -- he is blogging the redesign, asking the campus community for input. A university is much like a small community, and a university newspaper is community journalism -- TCU, for instance, has a campus community of about 10,000 students, faculty and staff. Broc and the redesign team have taken the campus community on the redesign journey, and it's very much worth following. It's amazing how much the campus has followed the blog -- it's a great way to get the community to identify with the newspaper and to buy in to the whole redesign effort. When it's all over, Broc will be writing a blog for the TCCJ website on how, and why, to do a redesign "in public," but for right now, this one is worth following.