Online News Squared ™

“People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add on to The Tampa Tribune. The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”

– Tampa Tribune Editor Janet Weaver in a staff meeting to discuss layoffs and a new newsroom structure.

• Adrian and crew add two new cities (Charlotte and Philly) to  microlocal data emporium Everyblock.
• One of the inaugural members of the Adrian Holovaty Cloning Lab at Northwestern ruminates on what might be next, halfway through his incubation period.
• A couple Mama T cheap shots for good measure. Coming next, toilet paper rationing? And what we’re driving when we’re not goshdarned busy doing regression analysis and NPV calculations on the optimal number of pens per FTE. And vote for whether Sam is good or evil.
• Feds sniffing around the Yahoo-Google ad deal. Lawyers split on whether it means much.
• Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN top news sites for May. Here.
• McClatchy launches “McClatchyNext” wiki, “for McClatchy journalists and others to talk about the way ahead for news, news companies and people who care about them.” Here.
• $1 billion (cue Dr. Evil) in ad dollars shifted from TV/newspapers to the web last year, just among the top 100 advertisers. Here.
• Amy? Such a bitch.
• Some really bad ugliness flying off of Alan Mutter’s calculator: “To trim headcount enough to sustain traditional profit margins, publishers would have to eliminate far more jobs in the near future than they did in the last two years. How many more?  That’s hard to say, because it is impossible to predict how much lower industry sales will fall. But the analysis described below suggests that the industry should have eliminated nearly twice as many jobs as the combined 26,564 positions axed in 2006 and 2007. Thus, precedent suggests that the industry in the last two years should have abolished 23,580 more jobs than it actually did.”
• Steve Rubel on why Twitter, to him, is just a summer rental. Here.
• Always love a good lawyer spanking. Here.
• For those who follow the latest flavors in newsroom restructurings, here’s where Tampa is headed, via Mindy McAdams.
• Home broadband growth up 8 points since 2007 for all adult Americans, but for poor, growth has stalled. Here.
• Yahoo? F-Yoo. Just got e-mail notification from Yahoo that it’s raising the rates for the handful of personal domains Squared registers there — a jaw-dropping 3X increase, from $12.95 a year to $34.95 a year. Oh, so outta there. . . .
• LA Times merging online and print news operations amid 150 layoffs. Here.

• Nifty new Facebook application from the gang over at The TakeAway lets you buy and trade stock in potential VP candidates. Here.
• Google Snooze? “[W]hile news organizations continue to worry about what Google is doing to their business, the company is far from achieving the kind of dominant position in news that it has in other areas. Six years after its start, Google News appears to be stuck in neutral and struggling to keep up with rivals.” Here.
• Google News: Hey, we’re not sleeping. Really.
• 
• Snail mail. Literally. Here.
• A handy link if you’re writing about traffic.
• Ken Doctor weighs on on what’s up with the Yahoo newspaper consortium, given Yahoo’s ongoing tumble down the hill of uncertainty. “The Google/Yahoo search ad agreement has drawn lots of comments over the past couple of weeks, but its impact on newspaper consortium members has gotten little attention. The deal itself, if implemented, won’t have much immediate revenue impact for newspapers, but its strategic game-changing impact could well present a new headache for the throbbing industry.” Full post.
• Changes afoot f or Gannett’s ballyhooed “Info Center” newsroom data organizations?
• Howard Owens offers some handy advice for journalists on getting themselves juiced SEO. Here.
• The new “Default-O-Matic” from Newsosaur Alan Mutter gives a snapshot of “the degree of financial peril faced by 10 of the largest publishing companies.” He also coined a new word: “Defaultness.”

• CUNY Graduate Schoo l of Journalism g ets $3 million grant to create a “Center for Journalistic Innovation. ” Explains Jeff Jarvis: “Our idea is to start an incubator to help support new p roducts, businesses, platforms, technologies, and standards from new companies — some that will be started by students out of my entrepreneurial journalism class — and big media as well
• “I’ll take Speaking Of Silly Ideas For $500, please, Alex.”
• How to write for the web.

So there you have it. A portrait of a First Amendment company run by smug frat boys who want to get rich, cash in and bolt to the nearest jack shack. They are contemptuous of their workers, ignorant of journalism and totally lacking in new ideas.

– InkStainedRetch in his “Fat Boys, Perverts and Snake-Oil Men” TellZell post, referring to Mama Tribune’s Sam Zell, Randy Michaels et al (Michaels, Retch purrs, is “the quisling Maxi-Me to Zell’s Dr. Evil, dresses identically to his insane Leprachaun master, only in plus sizes.)”

A plea from the American Society of Newspaper Editors for a little help for our struggling friends in Iowa.

Dear ASNE colleague:

You have undoubtedly seen the devastation left by the raging waters
in Iowa. We write to make you aware of an opportunity for you, your
staff and your news organizations to help our colleagues through a
charitable fund established by the Iowa Press Association.

Newspaper employees in Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Vinton, Iowa City and other
towns in the flood zone face personal losses. Some employees have had
their homes and personal belongings destroyed or severely damaged.

The Iowa Newspaper Foundation has established a fund to help these
employees, some of whom have contributed to outstanding coverage
despite their personal upheaval. You can send tax-deductible checks
to Iowa Media Employees Disaster Relief Fund at Iowa Newspaper
Foundation, 319 E. 5th St., Des Moines, IA 50309. or go to
www.inanews.com to make a credit card donation.

As Cedar Rapids Gazette Editor Steve Buttry explains, flood insurance is
unavailable unless you live in the 100-year flood plain and this flood
went beyond the 500-year flood plain. Thus, this is a disaster of
millennial proportions, with much of the damage uninsured. While victims
will receive FEMA assistance, this will not be enough. The Foundation has
taken steps to ensure that any aid collected is used only for legitimate
flood damage beyond any reimbursement from insurance, FEMA or other public
assistance.

The Iowa Newspaper Foundation also will assemble two databases, one
of the needs of newspapers affected by the flood and one of resources
offered by other newspapers.

Our comrades in Iowa will very much appreciate any help you can
provide. Thanks very much.