Until those new initiatives achieve critical mass, however, print will continue to be the lifeblood of the newspaper business.

When publishers sell advertising on a CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) basis rather than on a flat-fee basis, the value of content depends solely on the amount of traffic it can draw to websites and newsletters where ads are displayed. This dynamic has reduced too much web content to the equivalent of internet-forum trolling -- provocative pieces designed to "go viral" by sparking controversy and outrage. Publishing top 10 lists that few people agree with, politically charged short video clips and other pieces of "link bait" that aim to get people to express a contrary opinion has become a viable online publishing business model. Just ask Cracked.com.

Pageviews vs Engagement – Most niche sites like the idea and prestige of being published a more established player, but the partnership often does little to help keep the small site sustainable. In Technically Philly’s case, we like seeing traffic numbers grow but we know that a small but dedicated fan base is what keeps us afloat. The drive-by reader may make our Google Analytics spike, but it doesn’t help fill seats when we host a paid event. Conversely, larger sites need traffic to sell more CPM-based advertising.

This is just one point made by Sean Blanda in a post about TBD and how content partnerships "do not work."

Technically Philly values their dedicated audience because the members of that audience pay for events that the company throws. Since most large media sites make their money from CPM-based advertising, their goal is to serve more pageviews instead of servicing a small niche audience.

Very interesting. What could change that would make that part of the partnership work? Would it be more profitable for the niche site to sell ads or for the large media company to host events? Does the answer lie somewhere in the middle?

There is no such thing as a “killer feature” anymore because of extensions and plug-ins

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg says that software has changed because killer features - those features that that used to transform a technology from an interesting novelty into a useful tool - are now added as extensions and plug-ins usually built via open APIs.

News reporting, publishing and distribution have all experienced fundamental changes. Is there a connection here?

In the first 74 days of sales, the Droid and Nexus One - two phones that use Google's mobile operating system - sold a total of 1.185 million units. That's almost 20% more than the iPhone, which runs on Apple's mobile operating system. Those numbers were released yesterday by Flurry.

To be fair, we really should add in the number of G1, CLIQ, myTouch and umpteen other Android devices sold in the first 74 days that they were in the market. That would boost that 18.5% up considerably, I'm sure.

Google made big news more than two years ago when it announced a mobile operating system that would work with a variety of mobile service providers on phones made by a variety of device manufacturers.

Remember, the news was that a search and advertising company was creating an open mobile OS. The fact that that company ended up making its own device is really much less important.

I use YouTube's "favorite" feature to save/bookmark videos I might want to look at again in the future. In this case, though, this really is one of my favorite videos ever. I especially like the whiteboard in the back and the "ninja" reference near the end.

New York Times Technology reporter Nick Bilton writes "today I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t filter, collect and share. More important, I couldn’t conceive of a world of news and information without the aid of others helping me find the relevant links."

It is clear that news organizations and professional journalists should use social media to listen and gather news and links from social channels.

It seems logical that journalists should reciprocate and help the public find useful links.

Is that where today's news organizations fit most naturally within the social media ecosystem? Sifting through information from the public and other news sources and then putting it into context that helps the community that it serves?

This sounds suspiciously similar to a core function of "traditional" journalism.

What do you think?

Nope. That's Comic Sans.

There it is.

Murdock is moving ahead with his plans to block search engines from spidering his content, at least at the TimesOnline site. Here's the robots.txt file, which clearly states 'spidering is not allowed'.

##ACAP version=1.0

#Robots.txt File#Version: 0.8#Last updated: 04/01/2010#Site contents Copyright Times Newspapers Ltd#Please note our terms and conditions http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,497,00.html #Spidering is not allowed by our terms and conditions #Authorised spidering is subject to permission #For authorisation please contact us - see http://www.nisyndication.com/about_us.html

# Globally Disallowed Sections: All Robots
User-agent: *
Disallow: /_gatools/
Disallow: /_nipd/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /img/
Disallow: /tol/Print.do
Disallow: /tol/sitesearch.do
Disallow: /tol/incomingFeeds
Disallow: /tol/arts_and_entertainment/commercial/vip_lounge
Disallow: /tol/viewArticle.arc
Disallow: /tol/tools_and_services/rss/times_mobile_content/
Disallow: /tol/tools_and_services/mobile_times/mobile_2/
Disallow: /tol/tools_and_services/mobile_times/mobile_3/
Disallow: /tol/tlskeywordsearch.tls

#Agent Specific Disallowed Sections
User-agent: NewsNow
Disallow: /

User-agent: Omgili
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebVac
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebZip
Disallow: /

User-agent: psbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

ACAP-crawler: *
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /_gatools/
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /_nipd/
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /images/
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /img/
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /tol/Print.do
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /tol/arts_and_entertainment/commercial/vip_lounge
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /tol/viewArticle.arc
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /tol/tools_and_services/rss/times_mobile_content/
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /tol/tools_and_services/mobile_times/mobile_2/
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /tol/tools_and_services/mobile_times/mobile_3/

ACAP-crawler: NewsNow
ACAP-crawler: Omgili
ACAP-crawler: WebVac
ACAP-crawler: WebZip
ACAP-crawler: psbot
ACAP-crawler: ia_archiver
ACAP-disallow-crawl: /

via www.timesonline.co.uk

[pointer by The NextWeb]

Excerpt: "Haarlem Oost is a branch library in the Netherlands that wanted to encourage visitors to add tags (descriptive keywords) to the books they read. These tags would be added to the books in the catalog to build a kind of recommendation system. To do this, the library didn't create a complicated computer system or send people online. Instead, they installed more book drops and return shelves, labeled with different descriptors like "boring," "great for kids," "funny," etc. This brilliant design allowed patrons to create new knowledge about the books in the library while only slightly adjusting their book-returning behavior."

Says Silicon Alley Insider "Newspaper employment has utterly collapsed in the last 15 years, with employment numbers now around where they were in the mid-1950s."

This is one email list I don't plan on unsubscribing from anytime soon. I'm not one for fancy-shmancy rich-or-HTML emails, but Thrillist simply does it right. Part of that includes a strong lead visual like this one.

From OnlineEducation, the stuff they don't teach you in college. Unfortunately, sources are not listed, so I'm unsure if the numbers are accurate. Still, I like large-format you-gotta-scroll graphics like this.

Wow! Remember the overhyped search flop that was Cuil? Mashable includes its iPhone app as one of five big real-time web trends of this year.