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Clyde Bentley in another life

“I never thought it would happen in my lifetime.”

Many of us shared that emotion when the networks declared it was all over and Barrack Obama would become America’s first president of color. But strangely, what flashed through my mind was how often I had heard that phrase.

I think the first time was when as a first-grader sat before a wood-cabineted-but-fuzzy B&W TV to watch the inauguration of the Boeing 707. I still remember a man who had traveled by covered wagon telling a reporter how amazed he was at what had happened in his lifetime.

And since then I’ve heard it again and again. Pocket-sized transistor radios. Man on the moon. Color TV. Cure for polio. A global communicator in every pocket or purse.

Technology moves so quickly now that we say “I never thought I would see that in my lifetime” with a grin and a perfunctory shake of the head. We simply expect technology to amaze.

But I’m saddened that people seldom realize that the breakthroughs in the social world spawn those technological wonders. We instead think of technology molding our society.

Would jet travel have become common without a commercial airline system in both executives and factory workers could share traveler’s impatience? Would we have put a man on the moon without universal education that freed the intellect of even the mechanic’s son? And that special drive to be so human – to be in constant contact with others. Gene Roddenberry recognized it; the cell phone pioneers made it so.
In my lifetime, the power of American justice gave Black students the right to study among people who looked like me. And often to show they were both brighter than me and better suited to lead. My soldier father – raised in a family of bigots — expressed his new norm – “All soldiers are just green.”
And that’s the beauty of today. Obama was not elected because or despite his color but because King’s dream that people will be judge by the content of their character is finally a normal expectation of American life.

Our “breakthroughs” will continue – changes in the definition of “private,” a re-evaluation of what constitutes “home” or “family” or “that one,” a new sense of “now.”

We tech watchers will follow with accolades with the resulting inventions. I may never have thought it would happen in my lifetime, but I certainly will not be surprised if it does.

I can’t take it! What is the world coming to?

Clyde Bentley

But when the night sweats ended and the morning’s coffee cleared my head, I started to wonder if the world is just coming to new reality I helped create.

Tuesday I attended an interesting lecture by media watchdog Jennifer Pozner. Pozner is the passionate critic of the press who heads Women in Media and News. Although she could use an editor to keep her from wandering off the point, Pozner did a very good job of demonstrating how the talking heads on television have strayed even farther off track by turning the political debate into a trivial discussion of hair-dos, cleavage and how black is black.

I heartily agree with her observation and am an equally passionate advocate of media literacy education to help citizens sort the seed of news from the chaff of commentary.

And that’s where my nightmare comes in. Pozner’s lecture was entitled “When Anchormen Attack.” But with rare exceptions, the examples she used were not anchormen. They were pundits. Worse, most were from the openly-conservative Fox News Network.

I don’t blame Pozner and others for getting mad at Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews. They never let facts get in the way of their slash-and-burn commentary. Isn’t opinion, however, what they are paid to give? As Pozner later said, the real danger is when the pundit’s constitutionally-protected diatribes move onto the news desk.

Or worse, when people simply think it is news.

Pozner and other media critics say media ownership concentration is making matters worse by limiting the number of voices in the public sphere. In the spirit of the Blog Action Day theme, it’s the root of intellectual poverty.

But cyberworld folks like me see no end to voices (175,000 new ones per day, according to Technorati). Studies show more and more people turn to blogs for their news and opinion. By popular definition, bloggers form a community where bias is expected – even demanded.

Given the size of the blogosphere, is it any wonder that television has followed suit by muddying the objectivity waters?

Ms. Pozner, we’ve both met the enemy. It is us.

Clyde Bentley

Sports fans with cash, the unsuspected impact of broadband and words you can count (if not count on) head the research reports this fortnight. And then there is that rumor of bad news for Twitter…
Clyde
– – –

Clyde Bentley
Print & Digital News
Missouri School of Journalism

Who’s on first: Media Life Research produced a fascinating profile of American sports fans this fall. Fans of any sport tend to have high levels of education – 29 percent have college degrees compared to 16 percent of non-fans. Predictably they are more likely male (53%), but have higher income than non-fans. They are more likely to be political moderates than non-fans, half are married, they are much more interested in international events and like to take risks and fix mechanical things.
The report also ranks various sports by demographics. Golf fans are oldest, hockey has the fewest minority fans. It is a good read for both editors and marketers.

Eyes on video: As with other online news content, the biggest challenge facing newspapers as they expand the use of video is finding a workable business model. Media economist Robert Picard, writing in INMA’s Ideas magazine, said news organization face a rising demand for video tempered by rapidly changing technology and a faltering ad-based budget.

Picard said 90 percent of newspapers now offer video on their sites and approximately two-thirds accept consumer-generated video. But Picard says news video has its best value if it is original rather thansyndicated. The primary value of video is not monetary, but an enhancement of the news business.

High speed to nowhere: What caused the sudden decline of the newspaper business? It very well may have been the development of residential broadband Internet service. Speaking at the 2008 International Newspaper Marketing Association World Congress, Alan Mutter reported that the decline of the U.S. newspaper industry is directly correlated with the adoption of high-speed Internet. When broadband reached 23 percent penetration in 2003, the industry started to dive. It continued to fall in pace with broadband’s popularity. Mutter said the phenomenon appears to be global.
For a PDF of the report, e-mail alan.mutter@broadbandxxi.com

Word meter: Academics took note of an inexpensive new computer program recently, but LIWC may have newsroom use. The $90 ($30 for the light version) analyzes texts by the number of times words and phrases are repeated. That’s great for those of us who do content analysis research, but it could also be used to settle arguments on how often a candidate says “you betcha” or the frequency of male or female pronouns in news copy. Designer James Pennebaker of Texas used it to compare Obama and McCain on their wordiness, long sentences, big words, personal tone, vagueness, categorical thinking and other factors. For a small price, it might generate interesting stories. The mouthful version of the software’s name, by the way, is “Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count.”

The online me: Consumers are increasingly nervous about placing personal identity information online, which makes it harder for newspaper to track Web visitors or to e-mail readers. Consumer Reports National Research Center said that 83 percent of consumers worry about online credit card theft and 72 percent fear their online behavior is tracked by companies. As a result, 35 percent use alternate e-mail addresses to hide their real identity, 26 percent have special software that shields their identity and 25 percent have submitted fake ID to a Website. On the other hand, the majority of those surveyed incorrectly believe the law protects them from corporate data collection.
To that end, AT&T and Verizon asked lawmakers to trust them with a voluntary code of conduct rather than legislation on Web privacy.

Good deeds rewarded: Connecting your message to a worthy cause really garners attention, our advertising colleagues found. A study by Cone Research and Duke University found that cause-related marketing can increase sales by as much as 74 percent. The top causes with which Americans want to associate are education (80 percent), economic development (80 percent), health (79 percent) and access to clean water (79 percent). While the study was confined to advertising, it would be worth testing for civic journalism campaigns, special sections and newspaper promotion.

Be careful of what you wish: The dash to add more content to newspaper Web sites may be part of the industry’s latest bad news. The ad revenues that have climbed dramatically each of the past four years put on the brakes. For the second quarter of 2008, it was down 2.4 percent compared to last year, the NAA said. The New York Times speculated that rapid increase of new editorial features created a glut of Web advertising space. The glut forced papers to cut their ad rates. Reuters reported that some publishers reacted by restricting the Web ad space available. (Reuters also used a design format for the story that is worth checking).

No, not my Twitter!: Several communications companies near and dear to journalists are on the CNET list of companies that could close in the current economic downturn. Topping the list is mini-blog service Twitter, which has yet to come up with a revenue model despite becoming an addiction ala Facebook. Speaking of which, Facebook’s old relative MySpace is on the skids, along with virtual reality pioneer Second Life. The killer news for expatriates around the world is that Skype is threatened because it did not live up the expectations of eBay, which purchased it. And me? I’ll have to cry alone in a silent office if music genome site Pandora doesn’t make it.

Push my buttonS: Note the quiet change in Apple’s Macintosh. The newly announced MacBook and MacPro have strange-looking touchpad – but it is rigged for right-click. And the new Apple desktop Mighty Mouse has both two buttons and a scroll ball.

It’s not all bad: The INMA report on what likes ahead for newspapers in 2009 is not academic research, but it certainly quotes enough statistics and surveys to earn a footnote. The good news is that INMA exec Earl Wilkinson thinks we can recover once the general economic troubles end. The bad news is, well we all know most of that. The report includes a wonderful video clip in which Wilkinson extols “cultural bandwidth,” warns of “diabetic” news consumers and lives up to his reputation as a man of mighty quotations:
”We think right now as an industry that we are creating the digital age. But we are like teenagers, we don’t have an idea really where it is going to go, where we’ll be in the middle of the next decade.”

Digital heresy: Nation columnist William Powers today asked participants of World Digital Publishing Conference to pull out a “secret weapon” – paper. Powers, author of “Hamlet’s Blackberry,” said paper is an “emerging strength” for newspapers because it “frees up the brain to think.” He rattled off a litany of paper benefits that would make great research fodder for media scholars.

Check back Oct. 30 for the next edition of Research for the Newsroom

The reason I’m most excited, however, is I learned about a new site that’s doing a lot of what I’m trying to preach in my research and in my classes. I probably should have known about NowPublic before. Time magazine named NowPublic one of its top 50 Web sites in 2007. It’s a world-wide citizen journalism venture based in Vancouver, B.C. and like NewsVine or Digg, it allows users to flag stories from the traditional media, blogs, or even Flickr accounts, they think are important.

What I think makes NowPublic different and what I appreciate about the site based on my brief experience, is the site seems to have a commitment to big J journalism. First off, NowPublic didn’t have to ask for permission to use my photo. It’s on Flickr, and I’m smart enough to know that everything on Flickr is fair game. Just ask the poor girl whose pictures became part of a Virgin Mobile ad campaign. The Creative Commons License only requires sites to give the author credit.

Second, and more importantly, NowPublic seems like it has found a way to convey the importance of factual reporting and dedication to hard work and fact-finding to the average person without the conceipt normally espoused by the professional journalist. I really like this page, that features the site’s editors top tips. I love how they start with “Reporting is an adventure,” and end with tips on interviewing. I think I’m going to have my students in online journalism click on the “If You Are Totally Stuck for a Story, Take a Walk” link because it’s such good advice for anyone.

In addition to the conversational nature of the site’s journalism “training”, its stated mission makes me want to contribute:

At NowPublic, we have a very simple definition of news: “News is new information on current events.” In our experience that’s what people look for when they’re looking for news – whether they’re buying a paper or searching the web. Your news will likely fit into one of three kinds of story:

1. Your eyewitness account: Original, relevant information about a current event that you have actually witnessed, documented, or researched;
2. New information: bits of information you have collected, arranged, tied together and put into a context in relation to a current event;
3. Commentary: your advice or analysis directly related to a current event.

Students struggle so much with defining news. They seem to watch to attach value judgments, such as what’s important or what promotes democracy, to it, when really I think news is a lot closer to what NowPublic has described. I’m going to keep my eye on NowPublic, not just because the site asked to use my picture. I’m watching it because I’m hopeful the site can fulfill its mission of making the news more accessible to us all.

This is a good example of why you need editor gatekeepers in the process. They need to have a light touch, but on news this big you need verification. And it should have been easily verifiable. We preach that here at Missouri, and others in the industry do this as well.

What this should not be is “evidence” that citizen journalism doesn’t work. HIstory tells us that the early days of professional journalism encountered similar problems with inaccuracy or outright fraud. Any new enterprise requires some trial and error here, and it would be inaccurate to say that participatory media has no future because of the exploits of one fool.

Clyde Bentley Missouri School of Journalism

State of the Blogosphere: Technorati released its eagerly awaited benchmark of the blogging world in a massive and highly detailed format for 2008. Posted in chapters over five days, it offers a compendium of Web research from the demographics of bloggers to the content they provide to the rise of commerce in the blogosphere. Some highlights:
• Technorati has indexed 133 million blogs since 2002. The 2008 count was in 81 languages from 66 countries.
• While not all blogs stay active, Technorati’s engines noted 7.4 million blogs that posted in the 120 before the study, 1.5 million that posted in the 7 days before and 900,000 that posted in the previous 24 hours.
• 48% of the bloggers are from North America, 27% from Europe and 13% from Asia.
• By surveying a sample of U.S., European and Asian bloggers, Technorati found 66% globally are male and half are 18-34. But in the U.S., 57% are male and only 42% are 18-34.
• 74% of surveyed U.S. bloggers have college degrees and half have incomes of more than $75,000. Professional blogs beat out corporate and personal blogs in both visitors and revenue.
• A stunning 52% of U.S. bloggers sampled reported they carry advertising on their blogs with median annual revenue of $200 and more than $75,000 for blogs with 100,000 or more visitors per month.
• While three quarters of bloggers globally cover three or more topics, personal/lifestyle content is most popular (54%). Technology takes second with 46%.
• For better or worse, news is the third most popular identifiable topic – 42% of blogs. Politics are discussed on 35% of blogs. Sincere and conversational writing styles are most popular, with confrontational/snarky at a minimum.
The report goes into detail on the time and monetary investment in blogging, the issue of anonymity and how revenue is generated, among other items. It’s a must-read for anyone who “lives” on the Web.

“Reporting” on Palin? – Hackers used a simple process known as social engineering to gain access to vice presidential candidate Sara Palin’s Yahoo Mail account. Social engineering is similar to some investigative reporting. Yahoo, like most e-mail services, allows you to recover a forgotten password by answering pre-determined questions about yourself. Social engineer hackers use Web sources to guess the answers.
It took 15 seconds to get Palin’s birthday on Wikipedia and there are only two ZIP codes in Wasilla, AK. The security question about where she met her spouse took a bit of searching and guessing by CNET testers, but “Wasilla High” worked.

Attack of the Droid – T-Mobile’s G-1 phone powered by Google and backed up by Amazon is hot news in the tech world. But the real significance for the media world is the software that powers the phone: Android.
The new Google operating system gives the G-1 most of the common smartphone capabilities, but its power is aimed more at the Web experience than e-mail or voice phone. Observers say the browser on the G-1 gives the iPhone a run for the money.
Android may also change the way all cell phones are marketed. Unlike Microsoft or Palm operating system, Android is compatible with all the major phones systems and chips. Android phones for other cell carriers are expected soon – while the iPhone is tied to a five-year exclusive with AT&T. The opportunity is there for the European marketing system that sells unlocked phones that let the user pick the carrier.

But here is the kicker – the ‘Droid is not for phones alone. Android is based on the open-source Linux platform. That means it is open to third-party developers who can make applications at will. Developers are already talking about Android-enabled televisions and set-top boxes. That could give viewers the ability to watch You-Tube and similar sites from the comfort of their La-Z-Boy. And some developers want to put the system in automobiles – bad news for radio stations.

More phone fun: Researchers at Siemens came up with a cell phone with a built-in projector. Not for movies, but to beam a keyboard onto a tabletop or other hard surface. Users hunt-and-peck with a special pen.
A similar idea for a PDA made the rounds a few years ago. That one worked sans the pen – but I don’t think a working model ever surfaced. Both, however, illustrate the inexorable move from laptop computers to pocket computers. Making the processors small enough is a minor hurdle. The big challenge is an input device that works for people with fat fingers and little coordination — like me. But the pocket newsroom is not far away.

After the metro: While more speculation than research, an article in BusinessWeek speculated on what will replace big-city newspapers if (or when) they fail. Web editions? Not likely, said Joe Fine. He gives the edge to local TV and cable, which already have viable franchises in the cities. There will be lots of indie sites out there, but there is no indication the ad revenue will follow them.
Of course, Fine’s notion begs the question of what happens if those metros continue to tweak their products to include more online and video. That gives even greater import to the Android-driven dream of living room TVs that pick up Web video.

Beyond Facebook: While journalists are trying to figure out how to use Facebook and MySpace, another aspect of social networking is slowly creeping up on them. Ning co-founder Gina Bianchnini said people are creating a new social network with the software every 30 seconds – nearly 500,000 so far and growing at 86,000 per month.
Ning allows users to create a private cousin to Facebook and then invite friends, acquaintances and others to join the party. In that sense, it competes with blogging, discussion boards – and newspapers. While the Ning system is still under the radar screen for most of the media, its exponential growth is reminiscent of the Blogosphere that surprised most of us.

Who is our audience? An Ipsos Mendelsohn study shows that 20% of American households have more than 50% of the income. While the study also shows that these $100,000-plus families are big-time users of the Web and other media, it should be a heads-up for newsrooms and front-office execs. It seems logical to aim our strategy at those heavy users of the media and enthusiastic buyers of the goodies we advertise. But that strategy leaves behind 80% of American households and leaves little room for growth.
I regularly poll my journalism students about the American class divide. I rarely get students whose families were supported by an hourly wage earner and seldom find they even know someone who brings home the bacon after stamping a time clock. As journalists tend to write for themselves, this has serious implications for our ability to connect with the broader market.

Eat your veggies: Americans are a lot more concerned about turning green than living green. A Yankelovich survey found that less than a quarter of American consumers think they can make a difference when it comes to the environment and only 34% are more concerned about environmental issues today than a year ago. Fewer than 20% checked out Al Gore’s movie or book, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
But comScore’s research showed that the popularity of health information Web sites in booming. As a Web category, health information sites grew 21 percent over the past year. That’s more than four times the growth rate of U.S. Internet users. “Most sites have become vibrant online communities rooted in sharing experiences and advice, rather than simply being one-way information resources for the consumer,” said John Mangano, senior director, comScore Pharmaceutical Marketing Solutions.

Funny thing happened on the way to the newsroom: Chris O’Brien reported on a trial project by USA Today to use comics to deliver the news. Writing in NextNewsRoom, he explains (and gives examples) of how a mashup between bloggers, comic book artists, Twitter and USA Today produced and intriguing narratives with real news value. His key finding:
“These projects are good reminders that innovation doesn’t just have to be about embracing the new digital tools (though they played a big role in this case). It can also involve working with new people or groups that you don’t usually collaborate with. And it can include finding new ways to tell stories that embrace older forms, such as comics.”

All you have to do is take off your shoes: United Airlines now allows you to redeem frequent flier miles for subscriptions to local newspapers. That has interesting implications for the value of a newspaper. It puts the paper in the occasional splurge category of a trip to Hawaii. But it also means it is worth going through TSA Hell for. There is a dissertation waiting out there for someone who looks at the non-cash value of newspapers.

Read this first: Those annoying ads that come up in front of content are not so annoying after all. Dynamic Logic found that the number of Web users who think the ads are inappropriate is down to 21% from 32% in 2003. The study calculated that two over-content ads per hour is OK to support free content.

(Note: ‘Tis the season for a deluge of research reports. I may have to produce this wrap-up weekly for a time to keep up. Let me know if that in itself is overwhelming. E-mail me at CB)

Hans K. Meyer

I was ever asked to do as a reporter was to cover a funeral. I covered plenty of them in my career, and I always worried that I was intruding on a private family moment. I even photographed the service of the former Mayor of Barstow who died young from cancer, and I felt so conspicuous standing at the back of the chapel, wielding a bulky digital camera with a large telephoto lens.

Despite my fears, however, I was always surprised at how well received and appreciated our coverage was. Families told me the newspaper helped the grieving process with their published tributes. Friends remarked how nice it was to know what happened even if they couldn’t be here. I came to realize that funeral coverage, especially of those people who had already been prominently featured, was a vital public service the newspaper should offer as long as it was done with respect.

I’m not sure what to think about the controversy surrounding the Rocky Mountain News’ decision to cover the funeral of a young boy who died when a truck smashed into an ice cream store. Too much of the criticism I think has been focused on the technology the reporter used to cover the service – Twitter – and not enough has been focused on its intent. Twitter should not be summarily dismissed as a viable tool for journalists, even for those covering funerals, but both journalists and audiences need to understand its advantages and limitations to use it most effectively.

Understandably, the Rocky Mountain News extensively covered the story of Marten Kudlis, a three-year-old who died while waiting for ice cream at Baskin Robbins. Just yesterday, the paper reported the illegal immigrant who drove the truck that killed him and two others was going 77 mph. In all 66 stories I found with the keyword “Marten Kudlis” none of them mention any ire from the family about the coverage.

In this case, as in most of the funerals I covered, the criticism comes from outsiders. em dash on DailyKos.com, reprinting a story from Carla DeGette of the Colorado Independent, calls the coverage “reprehensible.” Eric Krangel, on Silicon Alley Insider, calls the Twitter stream “cringe inducing.” He also writes:

Memo to newspapers: We know your business is dying, and you’re desperate to seem hip to the latest Internet trends. But this is not the way to do it.

If the newspaper were covering the funeral and using Twitter only to drive readership and make national news for itself, then I’d tend to agree with him. But what makes Krangel and other critics thinks this was the paper’s intention. I think John Temple, the paper’s editor, describes it best.

Most of us couldn’t attend the service. But that doesn’t mean we don’t empathize with the family and don’t want to join in their mourning in some way … One way for a news organization to help a community connect is to send information live from the service, just as we do from events ranging from political conventions to road closings to concerts and parties. We don’t have to wait to publish in the next day’s paper anymore. TV and radio don’t wait, and people seem to value that.

Like Temple, I have to wonder if people would be making the same denunciations if an Aurora-area TV station got the family’s permission to broadcast the services live.

I also don’t think you can claim Twitter is the culprit here. An objective look at the transcript of the reporter’s tweets does not reveal anything “cringe-inducing” if you ask me. It’s a basic run down of what happened. It’s probably no different than what a reporter with a camera might have captured. Temple acknowledges the posts may seem crass, but he takes responsibility for that failing as the editor. On the other hand, he argues ..

But to claim there is something inherently wrong with the idea is to make too sweeping a judgment …

We must learn to use the new tools at our disposal. Yes, there are going to be times we make mistakes, just as we do in our newspaper.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try something. It means we need to learn to do it well. That is our mission.

To this, I whole-heartedly agree. I worried when I first read about this controversy that it would lead journalists to completely write off Twitter, which has already been used effectively to cover trials. The Las  Vegas Sun is using it right now to cover O.J. SImpson’s latest legal troubles. Wired Journalists has four pages of comments on how professional journalists have used Twitter.

The point is while funeral coverage is always sensitive, it is often necessary. As long as they respect the family and do not detract from the proceedings, journalists need to use all tools at their disposal, whether they include a camera or an iPhone.

Clyde Bentley

Them vs. them vs. us dominated the media research discussion lists in the past fortnight. Here’s a digest of research

and related information of use to the folks in the news trenches.

Mobile society: A seminar at the NAA Marketing Conference focused on the impact of cell phones on surveys, but there is news there for us also. Among the statistics:
• One-in-eight U.S. adults is cell-only
• The cell-only population is demographically different from landliners. While 12.6% of the general population is mobile-only, 29.1% of 18-29-year-olds are.
• 40% of landliners surveyed said they read a newspaper yesterday, but only 27% of cell phone folks did. On the flip side, 8% of landliners read a local Web newspaper, but 12% of the mobile did.
• You actually can call cell phones for a survey and even telemarket to them — but the law requires that you manually dial the number. That aces out most automated researchers and marketers – for now.

Check out the presentation and the report.
Also, Nielsen this week pegged the wireless household rate at 17% and predicted it would hit 20% by year-end. A curious link found by Nielsen: Cutting the cord and moving your household.
So much for multi-tasking: A Mediamark study challenges the common notion that newspaper are distracted by TV, radio, etc. The study indicated 55% of adults who read at home do so without the involvement of other media. It is 54% for magazines, 54% for Internet, 49% for TV and 28% for radio.
On the cover: The September Presstime from NAA cover feature is on journalism schools, focusing on Mizzou. The headline is “Mind the Gap” and the issue is the synchronization of what we teach and what the industry needs.
On the air: A number of papers are experimenting with CoverItLive, software that allows one to post live text, video and audio from the newsroom via computer or from the field via iPhone or Blackberry.

The Rochester Post-Bulletin archives show what the software can do.

Traditional vs. Online audiences: The Readership Audience reviewed the Pew study on audiences, noting that 46% of U.S. adults rely almost exclusively on traditional media, 23% use traditional as the main source but supplement it with online, 13 percent use the Web as the main source and 14% appear to live in caves. ‘Even after almost 15 years of online news, Traditionalists make up half the adult population. Those of us who fall into the Integrator or Net-Newser segments sometimes forget how many people still use news media the way they always have,” notes Rich Gordon of Northwestern. But, he said, those folks are unlikely to change their habits, so we can logically focus our new initiatives at the one-eighth of adults who are Web-centric. It’s a good read.

“Cutting” edge: Attempting to do to e-readers what the Razr did to cell phones, Plastic Logic introduced a black/white device about the thickness (and size) of a magazine.

Different Moms, different Web: Gen Y and Gen X mothers use the Web in significantly different child rearing ways, NewMediaMetrics found. The older Gen X (dob 1965-1981) uses the Web for task-oriented activities like uploading photos or shopping. The Millennial Gen Y (1982-1994) moms uses the Web to connect to other mothers (blogs, video-sharing, online communities). They also like to use their mobile phones to text message and send photos to friends.

On the smaller side: The Suburban Newspapers of America announced its 2008 Newspapers of the Year winners. This list is a good place to see what relatively well-funded smaller newspapers do. At a centennial workshop, the suburban and community papers said circulation was generally up and this year’s losses were only about 3%. They are looking at a profitable 2009.
• Non-Dailies, Up to 10,000 Circulation — The Riverdale Press, Richner Communications
• Non-Dailies, 10,001-22,500 Circulation — Coast Reporter, Madison Publishing, Ltd./Glacier Media Group
• Non-Dailies, 22,501-37,500 Circulation –The Chilliwack Progress, Black Press, Ltd.
• Non-Dailies, Over 37,500 Circulation –The Era Banner, Metroland Media Group, Ltd.
• Dailies, Under 30,000 Circulation — The Beacon News, Sun-Times News Group
• Dailies, Over 30,000 Circulation –Arizona Daily Star, Lee Enterprises, Inc.

The St. Louis American was second in non-dailies over 37,500. In the Missourian’s size, the Beacon News of the Chicago Sun-Times group ( http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/index.html ) has an interesting way of displaying blogs. One of the common traits of all the winners’ Web pages: Pictures of kids.