Many journalism bloggers, industry commentators and people who read my blog work for big publications, and they often do not hear or see some of the ridiculous things their smaller brethren are doing.

The average daily newspaper in the U.S. has a weekday circulation around 36,500. Newspapers like that are a world away from The New York Times and its resources.

Frankly, many large newspapers and other large journalism publications are putting out fine online products. And even some enlightened smaller companies like The World Company (home to fantastic Lawrence Journal-World) have great online products. But the average American newspaper is not producing a quality online product, and few have employees willing to embrace the Web as their future.

I hear stories all the time about the frustration of getting entrenched employees to embrace the Web: “It’s a pain because the people who have worked there for 30 years basically don’t give a crap about the Internet and just aren’t updating it.”

I hear tales of woefully understaffed papers, without real online editors. These Web sites are often still under the control of the business and advertising staffs. These are staffs without managing and assistant managing editors for their Web sites, and these papers lack a clear vision for the future.

We’re talking about papers with no direction, and few employees really care about their papers’ future. We have got to figure out a way to get that 36,500 circulation newspaper up to code. It’s the average U.S. newspaper that is most vulnerable right now, because the big dailies still have a lot of resources to play with and are willing to innovate, while weeklies have a niche market that few have begun to challenge.

The kind of employees the average paper has (from the publishers on down to the lowest staffers) aren’t the same caliber as papers like The Washington Post or USA Today. Obviously, smaller papers lack the financial resources of their bigger brethren, and many smaller papers are owned by large media conglomerates that often only care about the companies’ marquee newspapers. How will the average U.S. newspaper turn itself around?

Will it?

Angryjournalist.com started off as a small side project of sorts for Kiyoshi Martinez.

Even that might be a little generous. The site is just a WordPress Blog with a theme installed, and Martinez already had server space. All of this could be set up within in a few hours.

Martinez thought there would be a market for angry journalists who wanted to vent their frustrations. It turns out that market is a little bigger than he originally anticipated. Like any good entrepreneur, Martinez is growing his brand.

He has started selling t-shirts with phrases like “Print is dead,” “Angry journalist,” “Journalists get laid(off)” and others. He is planning on adding coffee mugs and other products soon to his online store. He also wants to add a job board as well.

I don’t think Martinez ever intended for the site to become this big or to have a revenue stream. But that’s just the thing. Instead of panicking when the site got bigger, Martinez harnessed his growing audience to expand his brand.

Of course the irony of the situation is that Martinez is no longer a journalist. And he’s happy about it. Maybe leaving journalism behind freed up his entrepreneurial spirit.

Either way, journalism needs more of this spirit. All we need are good ideas that serve a market need. There was a large, untapped market for angry journalists, and Martinez is tapping into that.

To learn more about AngryJournalist.com and Martinez, listen to our Conversation in Media.