The lack of competitive online and mobile products from newspapers has left a huge opening for startups.

And that’s good news for a lot of us.

If you’re an entrepreneurial journalist, maybe you should be happy there is very little competition in the online landscape. Yes, I know that there are some companies like the Las Vegas Sun, Lawrence Journal-World, Washington Post, New York Times and some others doing innovative things online, but the vast majority of newspapers have craptastic Web sites.

Small community papers should be most afraid. These are often the papers with the worst Web sites (some don’t have any and many have barely functional ones). They rarely have good archives, almost never allow comments and discussion and many don’t update in-between print editions.

Plus, the barriers to entry for doing small-town journalism (be it offline or online) are much lower. A basic WordPress installation would be much better than most small-town newspapers’ Web sites.

Someone is going to benefit from the poor effort that most newspapers are putting online. This is a perfect opportunity for entrepreneurs to move in and defeat a weak enemy and give people a better product at the same time.

Asking if blogging is journalism is like asking if desktop publishing is journalism.

The answer is sometimes. Both are just publishing platforms.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

At BeatBlogging.Org you’ll find many examples of journalists using blogging and other online tools to take their beat reporting to the next level. But most blogs are much truer to the original “Web log” concept than actual platforms for journalism.

Most bloggers just want to share their thoughts, feelings and lives with the world. Some, however, use blogging to take their beat reporting to the next level.

Are institutional memory and inertia killing the newspaper industry?

After reading the comments on a myriad of posts from journalists stuck in the past, I can’t help but think that there is no future for newspapers as long as the majority of their staffs (editorial and business) — and their collective institutional memories — are still around. Every change that is proposed, every new idea that is thought of, every staff cut that is made, is always compared to the old way of doing things.

The problem is that the old way of doing things for newspapers shares nothing in common with what 21st-century journalism is shaping up to be. What we are seeing is not a major change for the newspaper industry. It is a monumental rethinking of everything that newspapers have ever done.

This isn’t going from gas-powered cars to fuel cells. This is more akin to colonizing space.

And if you’re not prepared to colonize space, get the hell out of the way.

Can you imagine tailoring your reporting to fit a space dictated by a medium and not by the actual story?

Unreal. Imagine a world in which you write as much or as little as needed. Have one photo to go with a story? Have 500? Want to link to other sites, documents, databases and content?

That’s the power of the Web. That’s the power of blogging your beat.

The beat blog killed the news hole.

It was another crushing week of buyouts and layoffs at daily newspapers all over the country.

The Palm Beach Post will be seeing almost half of its editorial positions slashed by the end of summer. The San Jose Mercury News will be down to 155 editorial employees by the end of the week from a high of around 420. The Merc will have lost about 63% of its editorial staff.

Metro newspapers don’t really excel at anything, and in the era of niche publications, does that model still make sense? The Star-Ledger has found success with a niche publication, Pharmalot. Is that the model for metros to move forward?

John Hassell, the online editor at The Star-Ledger, said that he can envision a future where newspapers are a network of niche blogs like Pharmalot. That future makes more sense to me than the current metro newspaper model.

This all brings us to Today’s Thought: Are the days of the metro newspaper officially numbered?

Being a digital native is not about where you start off, but rather it’s about where you end up.

So, when I say “Web natives need to lead Web operations,” I don’t just mean people who were born with laptops in their cribs. Anyone can become a digital native if they really want to.

But it requires hard work. It requires an inquisitive mind. It’s about loving the Web, not about career advancement.

Being a digital native is not about a bunch of marketing buzzwords like Web 2.0. It’s about truly loving technology and always being willing to learn something new. It’s about the joy of it all.

I can spot an impostor from a mile away — the kind of person who believes that the Web is a great way to advance his career. Digital natives don’t need incentive. Digital natives understand that “the Web is the greatest thing to ever happen to journalism“.

Being a digital native is about mindset and culture. Digital natives never, ever long for the good, old days for journalism. Digital natives look forward to the bright future of journalism.

I know the best days are ahead for journalism.

Rob Curley has had an unofficial mission statement at the newspapers he has worked at: Build cool shit.

That’s the only way we are going to turn around the journalism industry. With that in mind, here is some cool Web journalism shit to check out:

1. Lawrence Journal-World - Anything this paper and its parent company spits out is worth checking out.
2. Las Vegas Sun: Flight Delay Calculator - It’s a great idea and implementation. I’d like to see print do this. Oh wait, print can’t.
3. onBeing - Spend 10 minutes on this WashingtonPost.com feature and you’ll be convinced just how cool this feature is.
4. EveryBlock - Get information (news, crime statistics, real estate listings, etc, etc, etc) about your city and neighborhood down to the block level. It’s a great concept that only works on the Web. Too bad it is only in three cities so far.
5. The New York Times: The Met’s New Greek and Roman Galleries - This feature allows us to actually experience the Met’s galleries. We have 3D steerable photos, audio narration and more. It’s the next best thing to actually getting to see the galleries in person. It would also make a fine companion piece for someone who attends the galleries and wants to learn more.

Any blogger will tell you that for all the posts that make it an awful lot don’t.

Many posts just get deleted, while others morph into something radically different than originally intended. I still have some partially-written posts waiting to be published. I’m not sure if any of them will ever see the light of day.

Here are some posts that could have been (and might one day be):

1. Journalism internships reflect a dying industry - This post was supposed to be a sister post to “Did your internships pay?” The point was that journalism cannot be a thriving industry if many companies treat their interns so poorly. Many journalism interns produce a lot of copy, edit a lot of copy and in general work hard. And many of them aren’t paid. This is in stark contrast to in-demand fields like engineering, where interns often do little work for a lot of pay. Companies in those industries often use internships as a form of talent scouting.
2. Blogs are the minimum - This post was supposed to be about how the minimum thing all j-students should be doing is starting a blog. It’s a great, free way to learn a CMS. It’s also a great way to learn about the social aspects of the Web. This blog has been an incredible lesson in the Web for me.
3. Newspapers have a serious credibility problem - This would-be post was inspired by The New York Times’ embarrassing non-story about John McCain. Some days I just think I should stop reading the Times. Jayson Blair still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth (and yes, I remember reading many of his supposed stories).
4. Students, you are the future - “Whether you like it or not journalism students, you are the future of this profession. Its legacy and ability to survive will depend on you.” There are some great j-students out there today, and they seem to be getting better each year. It is them who will right this industry.

Are most journalists intellectually curious enough?

If they were they wouldn’t be asking for someone to give them training in new skills. Rather they would have already discovered new — in demand — skills, and they wouldn’t be afraid to seek out help to learn new skills on their own.

And isn’t an intellectually curious person willing to learn new things just for the sake of learning or out of sheer curiosity, instead of just want to learn new skills to save his job?

“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.”

We’re not going to change journalism by accepting the status quo or by making incremental change. We need to radically re-envision what journalism is, what it means to people and how it can change the world.

The world needs journalism. People need to be informed. It’s time for us to rise to the challenges of 21st century, and produce content that people want — need — in the formats that work for them.

It’s time for journalists to think different.