Bad things can happen:

I’m just saying.

But I’m saving more links to my delicious feed in the right column, and I’m conversing more than ever on Twitter.

And, of course, I’m blogging at BeatBlogging.Org. If you’re looking for beat reporters pushing the practice using online tools and social networking, that’s the place to be. Want to modernize your beat reporting? Go to BeatBlogging.Org immediately.

I encourage you to check out my delicious links. They are almost entirely journalism focused (often online journalism related), and I always save a blurb (either a quote or my thoughts) about each link. They are updating constantly throughout the day, and now that I looking into the journalism industry as my full-time job, I have a lot more links to share.

If there is sufficient demand, I would consider doing a daily link post like many blogs do. I put the the delicious feed in the right column so that you could get new links all day long, instead of once a day.

Time to go write a real post.

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?

If you haven’t downloaded Firefox 3 (on all your computers), you should do so immediately.

It rocks. It’s faster, more secure and has better features. Plus, it has a new UI that looks better, and matches each OS it is running under.

Firefox 3 is a testament to how powerful open source software can be. It’s substantially better than Internet Explorer 7. Heck, Firefox 2 was substantially better too.

It’s amazing/embarrassing for the human race that people still use Internet Explorer. It’s like admitting you’re a failure. Not only is Firefox a better browser than Internet Explorer, but so are Safari, Opera, etc, etc.

Mozilla and Firefox liberated us from the tyranny of Microsoft. Many forget that Internet Explorer once had market penetration in excess of 90%. Why is that a problem? Internet Explorer used to have poor Web standards support (it still lags behind all other major browsers), and Microsoft saw little need to build a better Web browser than Internet Explorer 6 because little money is made off of Web browsers.

Simply put, IE threatened the evolution of the Web. Firefox ultimately forced Microsoft’s hand into developing a better Web browser. IE 7 is substantially better than IE 6, and IE 8 finally promises to have good Web standards support. But, IE still lags behind Firefox for speed, features and security.

I guarantee you’ll love Firefox 3. What’s the best new feature in Firefox 3? Hands down, the awesome bar, which takes the location bar (where you type URLs in) to a whole new level.

There is no excuse not to upgrade to Firefox 3 today. It is the world’s best browser (Safari 3 on OS X 10.5 is a beast too).

I’m officially boycotting the Associated Press.

Today. Tomorrow. Forever.

Please do not forward me links to AP stories. There are plenty of other news outlets that cover the same exact stories from the same exact angles. But most of those news outlets aren’t bat shit stupid about the 21st century.

Why am I so angry? The AP just said fuck you to Fair Use. They just said fuck you to America. They just said fuck you to each and every one of us.

AP wants to charge people for taking excerpts as small as 5 words from its stories. 5 words?!?! I can understand asking for compensation if people lifted large passages of your work or the work in its entirety but for 5 words?

This is such an incredibly 20th century policy. People linking to AP stories is good for the AP. It sends traffic to their content.

The symbiosis that bloggers and media outlets have enjoyed over the past 10 years has been beneficial to all. In exchange for taking excerpts of content (which is permissible under Fair Use), bloggers link back to the original source. That way if people are interested in the topic, they can read more about it, which makes money for the original media outlet.

Patrick Nielsen’s analysis is spot on:

The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be.

You see what I did there? I took an excerpt of his post, and, in exchange, I linked to the original post (which you should all check out). I’m going to send his post a lot of traffic, which will make him and Making Light more money.

Heck, that’s why it is called the World Wide WEB. It’s a WEB of interconnected information. Can you imagine a world in which merely excerpting small amounts of information will result in you owing at least $12.50? Or $100?

This whole episode also has massive ramifications for free speech as Cory Doctorow points out (which the AP claims to like):

Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

The people pushing for this stuff are not well-meaning, and they are not interested in making life better for artists, writers, or any other kind of individual creators. They are would-be aristocrats who fully intend to return us to a society of orders and classes, and they’re using so-called “intellectual property” law as a tool with which to do it.

Bloggers, citizens and people who believe in the rule of law should band together and pledge to boycott the AP, unless they drop this ridiculous policy.

One of the most insightful quotes I have seen in awhile came from journalism student Jessica DaSilva:

You know, throughout the day, the most advice I received was, “Change your major while you still can. It’s a bad time for journalism.” Personally, I think that comes from people who are more dedicated to their medium than the news.

It’s a great time for journalism. It’s a bad time for newspapers. Newspapers do not equal journalism.

Let’s not forget that newspapers are just a medium. Journalism is such much bigger and more powerful than a collection of printed pages.

People love online journalism. It’s more immediate. It’s more diverse. It’s more portable.

Our mission is to find ways to give people what they want. People want journalism. Never doubt that for a second.

And maybe journalism would better off if it had more wide-eyed and enthusiastic people like DaSilva, instead of people discouraging her from doing what she loves. Heck, why are those people still working in journalism?

Yes, it is true, I’m leaving Stars and Stripes.

Why? The heat. And I don’t like wearing pants.

It’s been a great ride at Stripes. I’ve learned a lot over the past year and a half and progressed as a journalist. I can’t thank my boss Joe Gromelski enough or my fellow Web staffers like Rick Vasquez, Emily Brown and Mel Bender.

I wouldn’t trade that time for everything. Stripes was a great time, and I won’t forget it, but now it is my time to become one of the few, the proud, the pants optional.

Update: Another reason I decided to leave was because of the wildlife and fauna at my new job.

Mount Rushmore was a celebration of the first 150 years of America.

It features four of our most iconic and important presidents ever: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

It hasn’t been another 150 years yet, but I have a fun proposal to ask: If you could make a second Mount Rushmore to celebrate the last 150 years, who would you put on it?

Since it hasn’t been 150 years yet, you can put other Americans besides presidents on this monument.

I’ll go first. The only two presidents I think would be worthy of this honor are Ronald Regan and FDR. I would add Martin Luther King Jr. as my third person. I’m not sure on the 4th. Perhaps someone like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates for helping to forever change the world with personal computers.

Go ahead! Make your picks.

May was the best month yet for The Journalism Iconoclast.

Overall my site (my blog and personal site are tracked together) received 8,668 page views and 6,264 visitors. Twitter is now the No. 3 traffic source to my blog with 15.1% of my visitors coming from there. California was again the top state coming to my blog.

Interestingly, Nevada — specifically Las Vegas — turned in a very strong, unexpected month of traffic with some abnormal time spent on my blog and a high amount of page views per visit. Yes, I do realize the month isn’t over yet, and that the numbers will be higher tomorrow after I check Google Analytics, but it’s already been a record as of a day or two ago.

Now it’s time for the fun stuff.

The most popular posts of the last month are as follows:

1) Hyperlocal will make money: This post from July 2007 proves the power of SEO, deep linking and social networking. For whatever reason there has been a big uptake in interest in the subject of hyperlocal journalism in 2008. Whatever the cause, it has brought my blog a lot of traffic.

2) Web natives need to lead Web operations:

I mean honestly would you stick a bunch of Web people with little print experience in charge of a print publication? I guess if you wanted to fail you might consider that a viable option.

Let’s be real here: Web operations can only thrive when they are staffed by people who get the Web and enjoy using the Web. These are people who categorically prefer the Web over print publications. If this doesn’t describe your journalism organization, then you are doing something wrong.

3) News organizations need to rethink staff resources in order to promote innovation:

It’s a simple question: What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?

And it’s a simple answer: News organizations should stop pretending like it’s the pre-Internet days. Most news organizations are still legacy-first. Newspapers still care more about the print edition than the Web edition. Beats are still centered around making content for print edition.

4) Can newspapers keep their smart young people?

I’ve said before that many of the top journalism students never go into journalism. Instead, they choose more lucrative fields that have more stable futures. I can’t blame them — that’s probably the smart decision.

Still, many very smart people go into journalism. Are newspapers capable of keeping them, especially the talented Web people? I’m not so sure.

5) Journalism is killing itself with shallow coverage:

The average daily newspaper, however, could have a monopoly on great local coverage. Local coverage has become so bad lately that we have had to come up with a new term to describe actually covering local events: hyperlocal journalism.

Hyperlocal journalism is real local journalism. The fact that we had to come up with a new term shows how far many journalists and journalism companies have strayed from the beaten path. People care about local journalism, which is why national outlets like ESPN are getting into high school sports.

I hope you enjoyed the month as much as I did. I plan on starting off June with a big post that details why journalists should blog (maybe not what you think, however). I don’t think June will top May, because of some new projects that hopefully will be fleshed out soon. I can’t say much, but the JI might take a back seat for a month or so.

That will be the perfect time, however, for me to plot the launch of the next generation of this blog. This blog was thrown together in a night. It’s about time I bought a real blog up in its place. Please leave any suggestions you have for making this site better.

Thank you for your continued support.

~Pat

Rob Curley said at the E&P Interactive Media Conference that he tries to only work on projects that “move the needle.”

If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards, because your competitors are always trying to outdo you. With the Web, everyone is a competitor.

Pushing the needle forward means not asking “what have we done in the past,” but instead asking, “what can we do in the future?” How can we innovate?

How can we make something better? Pushing the needle forward means realizing that your last project will never be your best project, because you’ll always be trying to make things better.

That’s why I think everyone should constantly be working to improve themselves (it’s individuals who allow companies to rest on their laurels). With that in mind, I’ve been using Lynda.com for the past month, and I have to say it’s been a complete pleasure.

I’m using the premium version, which is $375 a year (non-premium versions cost less but don’t come with exercise files). That may seem like a lot in the abstract, but it’s actually quite a bargain if you use it every week. One class at a community college could easily be that much.

So far I’ve been watching the PHP/MySQL videos (and doing the exercises along with them) and watching videos on SEO. Both have been great resources so far. The SEO videos are particularly great because I can just veg out and watch a few when I get home from work.

Unlike the PHP/MySQL videos, they don’t really require a lot of work while watching the videos. I occasionally make tweaks to my personal site and write down notes while I watch the videos. I have already seen some real SEO gains from the tips I have learned. I now am the No. 1 result for both Pat Thornton and Patrick Thornton under Google.

There are so many other subjects I plan on exploring in the next year with Lynda.com. If I’m not learning something new, or honing an existing skill, I’m moving backwards.

Journalism needs people who are constantly pushing the needle forward. I’m convinced that The Washington Post will suffer much more from Curley leaving for the Las Vegas Sun than vice versa. He is the kind of person who is always looking to push the needle forward and keep innovating.

And every employee was dedicated to pushing the needle forward, we wouldn’t have to worry about disruptive technologies and new competitors. We would be one step ahead already.

Journalism needs people who are never satisfied. The kinds of people who never, ever say, “but that’s how we’ve always done things.”

It doesn’t matter how you used to do something. It matters how you’re going to do something.

P.S. The JI set a new record in May for traffic. It’ll be a letdown if June isn’t a new record as well.