Monday squibs

Media-related items of note:

• Time to Change Blades in Occam’s Razor. Vin Crosbie, writing at the ClickZ network, on why there’s nothing simple about online business models for advertisers. He encapsulates nicely what happens to ad rates when what you’re selling in no longer scarce.
• Florida newspapers trim their staffs in the state capital. Hyperlocal (and reduced operating budgets) mean fewer reporters covering Florida’s state capital.
• Halifax Daily News shut down. Sign of the times? It will be replaced by a jointly-owned Halifax Metro and most of the newspapers’ 95 people will lose their jobs.
• Star Tribune lays off 3% of its workforce, freezes salaries. Telllingly, perhaps, most of the layoffs are in the circulation department.
• CNN Readies All Citizen Journalism News Site iReport. Paid Content reports that CNN received more than 10,000 viewer-submitted pieces last month. The report also says users of the site will act as their own editors, with some CNN oversight.
• Well, we’ve wanted the online journalism lab … Doug Fisher looks at the Madison Capital News’ decision to cut back to two days a week (in print) and focus on the web and wonders if this might turn out to be an experiment that will help figure out newspapers’ future. Note: Doug also announces the impending publication of Principles of Convergent Journalism, which is one more for the bookshelves.
• The Pace of Innovation in Journalism. Scott Karp hits on something that the too-cautious newspaper industry needs to learn: the time between a good idea scratched on a napkin and “product launch” has been reduced to as little as 48 hours. A thought: if there was a lesser fear of failure — a willingness to try and, if necessary, abandon — would we see more innovation?
• BBC offers advice on ethical use of social media. Part of the advice is pointing out that “public” and “private” are terms that need to be reconsidered.
• Markmedia: Reuters play with Twitter. Martin Stabe: “Reuters Labs appears to be experimenting with a tool that lets users send Reuters stories via Twitter.”
• Help wanted. Desperately. Alan Mutter takes a look at how newspapers have been hammered by the loss of job recruiting ads, which “provides an instructive look at how the tradition-bound newspaper industry copes (or doesn’t) with change.” While the overall situation is better here in Canada — newspaper companies own two big online job sites — I think Alan identifies the real long-term threat in the “niche” job recruiting marketplaces.