The whole concept of paying for newspaper content is making its way around the journalism blogosphere again. Except this time it’s also had endorsements from print journalism celebs like Walter Isaacson, Mort Zuckerman and Steve Brill.  For the most part I’ve tried to ignore it all since I feel like I’ve been there, reputed the arguments and fought that battle and won before.  Of course this all stems from the fact that newspapers as we know it are dying and the old hands are pulling out all the stops to save the old way of doing things so they don’t have to change.

At times I’ve really had to admit that I’m not part of the old newspaper tradition and wonder if I’m even part of the new newspaper tradition because I really agree more with what the webbies/techies have had to say about the newspaper industry rather than the newspaper industry itself. For example, Techdirt responds to the claims that google devalues everything (ridicolous!)

This is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. Google doesn’t devalue things it touches. It increases their value by making them easier to find and access. Google increases your audience as a content creator, which is the most important asset you have. It takes a special kind of cluelessness to claim that something that increases your biggest asset “devalues” your business.

The latest issue of A List Apart examines how building “a website without a content strategy is like a speeding vehicle without a driver.” It looks at what content strategy is, why it’s important and how it effects design.

Chris Bogan has posted a great list of 40 Ways to Deliver Blog Content. Not that I follow it, but if I wanted to have an awesome blog, I would.

Morris Interactive is launching a new drupal powered site for their Jacksonville Newspaper and have developed some great new features. My favorite feature extolled by Morris Interactive VP Steve Yelvington allows editors to design new home page and feature page layouts with no html knowledge– that’s right you heard me no html needed!

If you compare that to the Ellington/Django powered templating system that we ran with Scripps Newspapers it is light years ahead. In the Django system you had to not only be html and css proficient but able to sort out it’s python powered templating tags.

Here’s a hilarious promo for the Austin American Statesman newspaper breaking news as they rip TV for being slow about breaking news.

TIVO has introduced their mobile site for controlling your TIVO. It’s at m.tivo.com.  Let’s hope it works better than the web based service for programming your TIVO or the TIVO season pass system.

Don’t get me wrong, we love our TIVOs, but I think the usability of the menu to record and edit programs stink. We used to have a dish DVR and I thought it had a much better interface for recording programs than the TIVO. I have used the web based my TIVO programming function, but it lacks the functionality that you need to see everything that you’ve programmed and where they conflict– especially when you need it for a two TIVO family.

Do you have cyberchondria? Are you always googling what’s hurting today to figure out what you have and coming up with a new fatal disease every new day? For example, when you searched for headaches did you see all the articles about brain tumors or find the ones about caffeine withdrawal? Although the chance of having a brain tumor is small, you probably found those articles first.

Well, you’re not alone. A recent study of more than 500 Microsoft employees who answered a survey on their medical search habits revealed that more than half said that online medical queries related to a serious illness had interrupted their day-to-day activities at least once. In the study on cyberchondria the researchers examined how medical searches can be made to give more relevant results. Health information professionals should try to create search engines that are able to detect medical queries and offer advice that did not automatically make Web searchers fear the worst.

Seth Godin has a great post on his blog about the NY Times struggle to remain profitable (and if the Times is struggling so is everyone else) and some advice about where they missed the boat. He concludes with this point that is really relevant for any business to ask whether they are all about looking back and maintaining their position or moving forward to find their next business model.

I guess it’s about the difference between:

• senior management playing defense, supporting and protecting the status quo and avoiding offending the elders upstairs vs.
• using existing momentum and clout to build assets for the next business.

I admit that maintaining your current business model is important to maintaining profitability, but many times businesses fail to think of the future. Many newspapers owners lived high from their publications high profit margins and failed to reinvested and find the next business model and are suffering the consequences today.

• Too many people waste their time straining to do things that aren’t right for them.
• Too many managers ask the wrong people to do the wrong job– the job that isn’t a good fit.
• Too many companies focus on doing business outside their core competency.

How do you solve this problem?

• Find a job that let’s you do the work that you’re the best at.
• Don’t grasp at straws when you’ve fallen, rather refocus on your goals.
• Help your employees find their strength and then put them to work using their strength.
• Determine what your company does best and stay sharply focuses while outsourcing and spinning off every thing else.

Richard Prince from the Maynard Journalism institute called me last night to ask about commercialappeal.com’s coverage of Isaac Hayes death. He quoted me extensively on our breaking news coverage in his blog/column. It’s about half-way down the page.

We owned the breaking coverage of the Soul Man’s death, but everyone in the newsroom and online just followed the breaking news process we had set-up– from sending out breaking news emails, text messages and putting up our breaking news bar on every page to putting together a video package and writing the story from every angle.