Former and current LA Times staffers have taken it upon themselves to not only blame but also sue Sam Zell for their current predicament.

As if it was Zell’s hubris that led them to think they were a national (international?!?!) paper. As if it was Zell’s ignorance that led the Times to have a horrible Web product for years. As if it was Zell’s leadership that thought endless jumps on meandering stories was a good idea.

Jeff Jarvis suggests that LA Times staffers should sue themselves instead of Sam Zell:

The Times veterans should not be suing Zell. They should be suing themselves. Oh, I, too, am angry at the state of newspapers in America but I’m angry at the right people. The LA Times’ problems — like those of other papers — were caused by by decades of egotistical and willfully ignorant neglect by the owners, managers — and staff — at the paper.

When more than one editorial regime had the hubris to think that they should turn the Times into a national - even international - paper, opening bureaus all over the globe and insisting on writing every commodity news stories under their own bylines while letting local coverage suffer, did you protest, litigators? No, those bylines and bureaus were yours.

Honestly, who is more to blame for the current situation at the Times? Sam Zell who is trying to rescue a sinking ship (even if he is doing a very poor job at it and has some bad ideas) or the former captains and shipmates who drove that ship into an iceberg?

If I was the LA Times, I’d consider firing a bunch of do-nothing employees and hire this guy or gal over at Not the LA Times who ruthlessly satired the ridiculous LA Times lawsuit:

On the heels of a class-action lawsuit accusing L.A. Times owner Sam Zell of wrecking the newspaper, dissident Times writers are now suing 425,000 former subscribers for “failing to appreciate our bodacious journalism.”

“By recklessly canceling their subscriptions, these morons have caused irreparable harm to the newspaper, breached their civic duty to stay fully informed, and missed some totally awesome articles by Pulitzer Prize-winning auto columnist Dan Neil, as well as money-saving Sunday coupons that could easily offset the subscription price,” the lawsuit alleges.

Additional efforts to entice subscribers included frequent use of the word schadenfreude, a front-page redesign that made the paper look like a ransom note, and gutting the Sports section, according to the lawsuit.

Times employees contend they did everything possible to maintain a relationship with the former readers. “In January 2005, to cite just one example, we published a 2,600-word Home section cover story on decorating your house in the Viennese Secession style of Art Nouveau,” the lawsuit said. “You can’t get more in touch with average readers than that!”

At least this person gets what’s going on. Zell may not being doing a great job, but it wasn’t him he drove the Times to the edge of this precipice.

Let’s get a few things straight here, shall we?

1. The LA Times is not The New York Times or The Washington Post. The only time the LA Times should be mentioned in the same sentence as those two is when people are generically talking about large papers. Something like, “Why has the LA Times Web presence sucked so long when other large papers like the NY Times and Post have been much more innovative?” Or something like, “What papers have Times in their names?”
2. The LA Times has willfully neglected the Web for years. I realize that Russ Stanton has breathed life into the Web presence of the Times, but it’s probably a little too late. Still, the Times’ Web presence is behind a lot of other U.S. news operations.
3. The Tribune board accepted Sam Zell’s offer on April 2, 2007. He didn’t take the company private until December 20, 2007. The LA Times was in very bad shape prior to then. It’s not like magically the bottom fell out of the Times in the last year.
4. If things were going so well at the Times, how come prior to Stanton being named executive editor, the Times had three editors in less than three years?

I’ve been thinking about who are the best bloggers? The requirement isn’t who runs the best blog on the Web, but rather which beat reporters are innovating the most on the Web with online tools like social networking and blogging.

Am I missing people? I realize that this list is mostly of beat reporters from larger publications. Do you have some recommendations from smaller publications?

• Kent Fischer - Covers the Dallas Independent School District.
• Eric Berger - Science blogger and reporter for The Houston Chronicle.
• Monica Guzman - Manages The Big Blog for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
• Ed Silverman - Runs Pharmalot and writes for The Newark Star-Ledger.
• Jon Ortiz - Runs The State Worker blog for The Sacramento Bee.
• Khristopher J. Brooks - Education reporter for the Omaha World-Herald.
• Matt Neznanski - Runs multiple beat blogs for The Gazette Times.
• Brian Stelter - Runs TV decoder for The New York Times.
• Mary Louise Schumacher - Art reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I was just at Cleveland.com, and I was looking at all the new features the site has launched recently.

Certainly, the new features are upgrades over what used to be there. The new design is a step forward. The site, however, is a hodgepodge in many ways.

A lot of Cleveland.com doesn’t make sense. Different sections have different designs. The site is hard to navigate.

The search engine is worthless and rarely returns relevant results. The UI still needs a lot of work. It’s hard for me to quickly find the content I want.

And the homepage design suffers from being overly crowded. It’s a prime example of the Wall of News. Plus, the homepage doesn’t have a clear graphical focus or main story.

I couldn’t help but think that if Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer could start from scratch they would do things differently. There is no way that Cleveland.com is the site they ultimately want. But it’s the site they have because of years of legacy code and legacy decisions.

I hate to see the past holding back news organizations on the Web. The Web demands agile development and quick decision making. I assure you that Web-only news organizations will not fall into the same trappings as traditional news organizations.

The pace of innovation on the Web from most news organizations feels very print like. It’s OK to tweak a print design every 5-10 years, but a Web site needs continual R&D. Not only do Web sites require new features, but they also require that those new features fit into existing designs and frameworks (Cleveland.com feels so broken and disjointed at times).

The Las Vegas Sun blew things up and went from being a zero to a hero in a matter of months. You can say all you want about how they have a unique JOA or about how they aren’t making money right now off their Web site. That doesn’t matter.

There is nothing stopping Cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer and their Advance Publications overlords from making Cleveland.com into a very good site.

Nothing, except bureaucratic inertia. Nothing, except being beholden to yesterday’s decisions. Nothing, except old media think.

And, to be honest, I do not have faith that either Cleveland.com or Advance have the right Web talent and minds in place to turn things around. Maybe most news organizations can’t do everything that the Sun is doing, but every organization could adopt their aggressive Web mindset. Every news organization could embrace agile development.

It is the mindset of The Las Vegas Sun that really stands out. It is mindset that is killing this industry. There is too much can’t do attitude and not enough can do.

One can’t help but wonder if all the legacy editors who cut their teeth in print simply do not understand the pace of the Web. Print was a monopoly. It never demanded innovation — agile or not.

Innovation can start from the bottom, but mindset starts from the top. When a high school Web site is better than most “professional” news Web sites, you know the problem is mental, not financial or technical. If it seems like I’m rambling, it’s because this is getting depressing.

How many news organizations can honestly say that the Web products they have right now are the products they would want to make if they could start over? If the answer is no, why not start over?

What do you have to lose?

I have some lessons from ONA 08 over at BeatBlogging.Org (version 2.0 nonetheless), and I wanted to highlight the supply and demand part of the post:

This is an issue facing journalism on the Web and not just beat bloggers. Right now, there is simply more supply of written content than there is of demand for it from advertisers. This means low CPMs for written content. It also means that text-only beat bloggers need to get a lot of page views to make a decent amount of revenue.

On the other hand, there isn’t enough supply of video content on the Web to meet advertisers demands. Advertisers love video ads and pre-roll. They want to stick it on your content, but are having trouble finding enough content.

I’m not suggesting that everyone jump to doing video, but diversifying content can help boost revenue. This could be a once-a-week podcast or vodcast with a few ads in it. It could mean shooting some video for your beat blog. But realize that video content can get a much higher ad rate than printed content can.

News organizations need to diversify their content. This means more audio, more video, more multimedia and — yes — less written content. Now, none of this matters if our multimedia content has terrible SEO and exist within ghettos.

CNN.com understands how to get people to watch lots of video. CNN.com automatically plays a new, related clip after a clip is finished. Users can build custom playlists and watch hours of video — and ads.

Most news organizations, however, allow video and other multimedia content to exist within arbitrary ghettos where that content is not connected to similar content. When a clip ends, the content stops. Related content is not linked together.

And the biggest crime of all: A lot of multimedia content on news Web sites is not properly indexed and searchable. That my friends is one of the worst ideas ever. Search is the key to content distribution.

News organizations need to address this supply and demand issue. Trust me, redundant, non-local news is not in demand. And it’s probably not that in demand by users either.

Yes, it is true, I’ll be at the Kent State/Poynter Workshop on blogging and ethics tomorrow.

I just wanted to clear this up really quick. I do have ethics.

Jay Rosen contends that if blogging didn’t have ethics, it would have failed. But it hasn’t failed.

So what does that tell you?

I’ll be tweeting from the workshop. Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask of the panelists.

Perhaps the biggest revelation from ONA 08 is that Tina Brown is forming a new Web startup dedicated to celebrating the life and times of the world’s great beasts.

I think the site is a great idea. First, everyone loves beasts, especially daily ones. How Brown went from being editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker to becoming the beast master is anyone’s guess.

But please don’t pull a Jeff Jarvis and ask about Brown’s business plan. Here is a little secret: there isn’t one.

On a side note, Brown is a terrible keynote speaker. She told us nothing new, except about her new Web site that doesn’t sound particularly original. And then she refused to answer any questions about her Web site because it hasn’t launched yet (but it will in a few weeks).

Maybe the world needs another news aggregation site (this time done by costly humans), but I’m not convinced. Brown wasn’t a convincing saleswoman. But she still is one hell of a Beast Master.

ONA 08 ended two days ago, and I spent all of yesterday recovering.

It was a great time, and I met a lot of talented and interesting people. Maybe if I met less people, I would have gotten more work done yesterday.

The Good:

• The sessions — The key to any good conference are the sessions. Most of the sessions I attended delivered. My definition of delivering is whether or not a day after I can remember at least learning one really big or new thing. From the law panel, I learned that newspapers can moderate comments without being held liable for the content of comments as long as newspapers don’t make editorial decisions that edit in libel. That session was worth it alone for what I learned about moderating comments.
• The people — A conference is only as good as its people. I wasn’t pick pocketed or booed out of my panel. Nobody tried to fight me over my blog either. But some of best learning and conversations happened in the hallways and not in the sessions themselves. That wouldn’t have been possible without good people.
• The receptions and cocktail hours — They were nice. I like.
• Question time — Every keynote and panel I attended left plenty of time for questions. The law panel I mentioned early was almost entirely questions. Good questions often spur the best conversations.

The bad:

• Keynote speakers – There were three speakers. One was good, one was bad and the other I didn’t even bother paying attention to. I’ll have more on this later, but some people feel that keynote speakers are an anachronism. You rarely learn anything new from the speakers, and some speakers like Tina Brown and the Reuters Guy (he was so bad, I’m not going to bother looking up his name) use their keynotes more as extended promotions for their products than for anything else. Robert Scoble delivered and he got me excited for the future of journalism. Excitement is the No. 1 thing a keynote can deliver.
• The cost — This is not an ONA-specific issue, but it wasn’t the cheapest conference, and the Capital Hilton isn’t the cheapest hotel. Many of the most innovative people in journalism right now are lower on the totem poll. Their employers may not be willing to spend $1,000 or so on a conference. The ONLINE News Association had a lot of older attendees, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I can’t help but feel that the cost kept out a lot of younger journalists and students. And honestly there are only so many editors a conference really needs.
• The people — Yes, there are good people and bad people. No, there weren’t attendees mugging other people, but there were some that I just don’t get. Why at the ONLINE News Association are we hearing in the hallways, “So, what is Twitter?” And why are we hearing it after Scoble spent a large chunk of his keynote talking about Twitter?!? Oh, I know, because some people choose not to attend Scoble’s talk, while many, many more decided that Brown’s talk about nothing important was a better idea. News flash, if you want to know what Twitter is, go sign up. It’s free. Be inquisitive for a change.

I will see all of you at ONA 09 in San Francisco. What I could really go for in the meantime is a conference on mobile content development and distribution. Maybe we could get an unconference going?

I hope to see all of you at ONA starting the 11th.

I’ll be there, and I’ll also be appearing on an ethics panel. It should be a great time and a good way to find out what others in the industry are up to.

If you’re interested in learning more about beat blogging or if you want to get yourself or some of your staff memembers beat blogging, come talk to me. I’ll be available during ONA, the week before and the week after. If you can come a day early or stay a day late, that would be great.

The real question is why he stuck around so long.

If fact, I don’t understand why any star print columnist or beat reporter doesn’t just start his or her own Web site. The Dallas Cowboys Blog for The Dallas Morning news can get hundreds of thousands of page views in one day. And that’s without a really good beat blog that really harnesses the power of the Web and social networking.

Imagine the possibilities. More on that in a minute.

Mariotti threw a few bombs on his way out, including about how he believes that newspapers are dying and how the future is on the Web. He is absolutely correct, however.

First, let’s look at Mariotti’s claim that newspapers are dying. Vin Crosbie believes more than half of today’s 1,439 daily newspapers in the U.S. won’t exist by the end of the next decade. In fact, the Sun-Times is a prime candidate to not be around much longer.

The Sun-Times Media Group was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. That doesn’t happen for being too good. It happens when a stock falls below the minimum trading value.

Despite what many curmudgeons would like to believe and like to have you believe, newspapers are not in a cyclical down period. Many are about to be down for the count.

For a sports columnist like Mariotti, there is little incentive to stay in print. He can make more money in other mediums that have less turmoil.

Many of the best sports writers like Rick Reilly are being bought up by ESPN (for $3 million a year), Yahoo!, CBS Sportsline and other Web sites. Before the Web, print — especially newspapers– was just about the only place for a star columnist to work.

Because of the monopolies that newspapers had, columnists were at the mercy of newspapers. That has flipped with the Web. Now anyone can be their own publisher and become successful like Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

I’m sure Mariotti was well paid by newspaper standards, but those standards aren’t very high (and just a fraction of Reilly’s new salary). Frankly, the standards of most newspaper Web sites aren’t very high either, which is one major reason why Mariotti left the Sun-Times:

To showcase your work … you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn’t have that, you can’t be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.

If I were Mariotti, I’d start my own Web site and post my work there. Yes, he could go work for ESPN full time like many of his former print colleagues have, but then you are at the mercy of ESPN, which is notorious for being overbearing and controlling. Or he could join an online-only sports site.

But why bother? If I were Mariotti, I’d focus on building my own brand with my own Web site and social networking presence. With the right technical help, he could have a kick-ass WordPress installation, where he can publish his latest thoughts about whatever, whenever. He could also embed video clips, build interactive features, have a weekly podcast, interact with users and do all sorts of things that he couldn’t do at the Sun-Times.

Plus, his Web presence would be very 21st century, unlike the Sun-Times. If you’re a columnist, imagine a site that has all of your posts tagged, so that users can quickly and easily discover content. One of the most frustrating aspects of newspaper Web sites is the disarray that is their archives.

And most newspaper Web sites are unsearchable. So many page views are lost because of these technical deficiencies that a basic, free WordPress install doesn’t have.

I’d also start a Twitter account and begin building a fan base with strong user interaction. I would, of course, interact with users on my beat blog as well. Then I’d look into other social networking opportunities.

This is what Mariotti and any sports writer needs to get started: a laptop with a Web cam for video columns, a smart phone, a beat blog (WordPress is a great option), Google Apps for mail and word processing, a Twitter account and Viddler/YouTube and Seesmic accounts to put that Web cam to use.

He probably already has a laptop and smart phone. The Web technology I listed is all free. The only things that will cost money are the domain name (about $10 a year), hosting (might only be hundreds a year) and probably some technical and consulting help to set this all up.

Mariotti, if you’re reading this, start a beat blog. Don’t wait.

We have already seen a lot of top sports writing talent leave for ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sportsline and others in the past year. I think the exodus of sports writing talent from traditional print publications is just beginning, because not only can big-name sports writers leave for online publications, but they can also now easily and cheaply start their own Web sites.

What is the future of journalism education?

Many people have taken issue with journalism education, especially in the U.S. One major concern is that journalism education appears to be behind the industry and rarely out in front, innovating. Many people even advise against majoring in journalism.

But let’s step back from the criticisms of journalism education and ask, what should journalism education be like? Forget the tenured has-beens and the slow moving deans, what would an ideal journalism program look like in 2008?

Would it even be four years? Would it be a certificate program? Would it be a major that required another major?

Would it be a minor? Would it be heavily cross discipline, relying on other majors and departments for core courses?

Before I get to far into this post, I want to caution that these are just ideas that I’m throwing around. I don’t agree with all of them, but I am hoping to get a conversation started. Honestly, I’m making this post because I don’t really know what the future of journalism education should be.

First, we must admit that a journalism major or certificate will never be required to be a journalist. In fact, a four-year degree used to not be a requirement at most news organizations. Now it is, but you’ll still find a lot of journalists without journalism degrees, even in top posts.

Then we must admit that journalism education at the undergraduate level is much more akin to technical training than higher education. I majored in political science and journalism. Poly sci was very academic and theory based. Journalism was very hands on and job oriented — like technical school.

If most journalism programs are essentially job training programs, then why are they four-year programs? Why do many employers want someone with a BA, when a journalism certificate would probably suffice? Most journalism is learned on the job. Wouldn’t it make more sense for perspective journalists to take a one to two year certificate program, while getting more professional experience, instead of spending four years studying journalism?

There are several ways to handle a certificate program. It could be something that people do instead of a four-year degree or it could be something that people do in addition to a four-year degree (nursing is similar to this, but it pays a lot better). Imagine a perspective science reporter majoring in biology and receiving a journalism certificate.

Wouldn’t that better prepare someone to be a science reporter than a four-year degree in journalism? Double majoring isn’t the easiest thing to do in the world, especially across departments and colleges. And frankly, does a science reporter really need four years of journalism education?

Some schools only offer a journalism minor, which requires a student to have a major in another subject. A minor could offer the same training as a journalism certificate program. Maybe it makes sense for colleges and universities to require that journalism minors and majors have another major (and I’m thinking more along the lines of economics, poly sci, a science than something like English).

Then there is a cross discipline approach. For instance, let’s say a school offered an entrepreneurial journalism program. Wouldn’t it make sense for students to be required to take courses such as economics, marketing and business management?

And I can’t imagine having an entrepreneurial journalism program that doesn’t require some Web development and computer science courses. These computer and business classes would be core requirements for the major.

By cross discipline, I don’t mean just taking a bunch of random Arts and Sciences classes, like many journalism majors are required to take. I mean requiring specific courses, particularly in areas that could help make someone a better journalist. Most journalists are lacking when it comes to computer and business.

Frankly, I don’t think courses on how to blog or use Twitter are appropriate for four-year colleges and universities. Those sound like something straight out of adult education. Today’s 18-21 year olds don’t need help learning to blog or how to use social networking.

Usually, its their professors who do. And the students who don’t use or understand social networking are probably not the kinds of people news organizations are looking to hire. What young, inquisitive college student needs to be shown how to use social networking and blogging?

It would be a very poor sign for journalism and journalism education if the kinds of students that j-schools attract are technologically deficient in comparison to their peers. Journalism has become a field that requires people to have a strong grasp of technology. J-schools needs to be attracting students who embrace technology, not trying to teach basic Web technology to uninquisitive students.

Nobody taught me how to blog, and, fittingly enough, the best resources about how to blog are found on blogs. Twitter is one of those things that the only way to understand how to use it and its usefulness is to dive right in. Nobody can teach you the value of Twitter; you have to experience it.

And what college student hasn’t at least played around with Facebook and MySpace? Those are not the kinds of students j-schools and certificate programs need.

What do you think journalism education? Should be a four-year program? Certificate? What would it teach?

What are the course courses of a journalism program (college and certificate)?

Here are some thoughts from people on Twitter:

kev097 Definitely. I think the journalism major is, prima facie, an antiquated concept.

AllieHull , Mizzou strongly recommends picking up another major, or a minor.

johnrobinson Uh, I didn’t take a single journalism course in college. Learned all on job. Turned out OK.

gmarkham we offer a two-year diploma and a four-year degree. most of the newspaper-ready students leave after two.

cnewvine I hypothesize that requiring a 4-year degree is one of the ways newsrooms get out of touch with their communities.

eyeseast My journalism program was a minor, which I liked.

ehelm I liked the way Medill’s journalism major required so many non-journalism classes, including 2 concentrations outside J-school.

coolgates learning how to leverage technology should be a big part of the puzzle, too.

AllieG By far the most interesting and useful class I’ve taken so far was Ethics of Journalism.

mthilmony Didn’t have 2nd mjr. but I knew time in school was wasted - finished in 3 yrs. in journ. so i could get it done and get a job.

howardowens The best bloggers not only have degrees, they have experience, so maybe to cover courts, law degree and two years practice exp. Journalism degree, optional.