I cannot claim ownership of the following job details, but since I got it from a coworker and he said it was okay to share with the world, it is too good to withhold from the rest of the world. (more…)

The e-book reader has slowly but surely made its way into the hands of digital bookworms with moderate success, but it’s real coming out party may come later this year. (more…)

With the New York Times’ publishing divisions suffering just as bad as the rest of the industry, the paper finally buckled down and started selling ads on its front page, albeit as a 1 x 5 basement placement.

While it really served as no surprise to many, including All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka, that the paper had to relinquish some prime real estate for some extra advertising dollars, it does raise a question as to how much of the front page papers are willing to give away.

Although the basement banner placement is embraced in papers across the world, advertising wraps have quickly become the norm in Canadian newpapers. The form factor, which basically wraps around half the vertical side of the front, is personally annoying but I understand it is another innovative way of luring advertisers to the medium.

However, the cake must go towards a series of online Apple ads that have taken over websites such as the New York Times and Apple that truly goes beyond a simple Google Adsense banner placement.

Unfortunately, such advances in advertising will be relegated to the online world, where its animated graphics and utilization of nifty HTML programming opens the door for such out-of-the-box thinking. In the print world, things are more static.

So, how much more of the front page is up for sale? Will larger ads creep up? Will they consume the whole page? Depending on how bad the industry gets (and it’s not looking good, people), I’d wager that we could eventually see a half-page ad be purchased on the Times’ front page within the next five years.

While it will certainly only be implemented for special occasions, it’s doubtful that the paper’s publisher will take a principled stand on the issue when a gold-plated carrot is dangled in front of him. However, it may be very be the last hold out of such placement, especially after papers like News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal will likely be offered the ad first since, well, something of that sort seems to fall inline with Rupert Murdoch’s style.

Photo: The New York Times building in Manhatten. Image courtesy of George H. Mow at AMEC Construction Management.

Looking forward, the crystal ball isn’t kind for print journalism. Layoffs and losses hover around the newspaper industry like vultures ready to pounce on the firat company willing to cry uncle. Bloggers are suddenly annointed as the saviors of an industry that while strutured and ethical newsrooms struggle to keep up with the times.

For someone employed within the industry and a lover of getting my fingers dirty with newspaper ink, it’s a very discouraging outlook to have. Especially when no one really knows what the magic bullet is that can make everyone happy.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But doing nothing or waiting for someone to make the first move isn’t the answer. Patrick Smith on PaidContent writes digital advertising revenue has begun to stall (thank you very much, Google, something that can be directly attributed to the fact newspapers have really only done the bare minimum they could possibly do on the Web.

As my colleague Ron Nurwisah notes, newspaper newsrooms have to become more online-friendly as we move into 2009. I’d like to take this much further and suggest that the role of the newspaper staffer should be turned on its head and become their own online content manager.

Reporters and editors should start equipping themselves with as many online tools as they can to supplement their own print-based content to a far greater extent than what we have now. Look at it at sort of a news-content pyramid  of sorts (borrowing a journalism “inverted pyramid” concept).

Own a blog that adds further content that may have gotten cut from print stories for space or just to add secondary comments; converge that coverage into Twitter accounts while maintaining relevent conversations with followers; push content out onto aggregators like Digg or Reddit manually (don’t automate it anymore) while watching comments and adding to them; buy a webcam and post to Seesmic inside the newsroom; embrace social networking and maintain an active Facebook, Friendfeed or Myspace account (if you haven’t already, I’d be shocked if you haven’t yet) to merge all these extra content pieces in one place; talk and reply to as many other netizens as possible – the trick is to keep the conversation going.

Thankfully, all of these efforts are not as labour intensive as you might think, you just have to start the ball rolling and set aside a few minutes each day to tinker around with your new toys. Start slowly and but set firm goals to do as much as you can to make sure eyeballs eventually migrate to your stories.

I remember one former colleague dismissing moving forward into the digital age saying, “I don’t have time for these. I’m happy to be a dinosaur.” And I don’t want to insinuate that my employers, the National Post is resting on its laurels (we’re not; expect big things next year) but reality has forced upon us a harsh truth.  We cannot afford to remain in a prehistoric journalism age any longer – embrace your inner geek pronto.

Photo: Reporters & editors busy working in the newsroom at the Kansas City Star newspaper. (From Google’s Life archive)

I know I’m wading into murky territory here by directly talking about the parent company of my employer, Canwest Global Communications, but after reading an article written by The Georgia Straight, a Vancouver alt-weekly, on its recent stock performance (Why have Canwest shares risen almost 100 percent in two weeks?), I feel obligated to chime in on how incredibly wrong it is. (more…)