If you need a feel-good news industry read, read the Newsroom Barometer. Despite some of the news about print circulation declines and a flat advertising market, the Newsroom Barometer survey revealed senior-level executives are quite optimistic about the future of newspaper companies.

By reading this blog, you are joining the huge percentage of office-based workers who read blogs during the workday. Zoomerang conducted a survey on behalf of Clearswift that found the vast majority of office workers access personal e-mail, social media and/or Web 2.0 sites when they should be working.

Poynter this morning unveiled its 2007 EyeTrack study this morning at the ASNE conference in D.C.  Some surprising findings have come out of it so far, including some about online news sites....

The World Association of Newspapers Young Reader Conference in D.C. continued Tuesday with more information on teens, technology and media consumption. The Digital Edge covered a session Monday called “Making New Connections,” which focused on international research on teen media habits. For additional coverage of the entire WAN Young Reader Conference, including video, photos and blogs, see the WAN Web site.   Tuesday morning’s session on adolescents featured two very different success stories from Europe.

The World Association of Newspapers Young Reader Conference is here in D.C. this year -- just a short commute from NAA's Virginia offices. Though much of the conference is focused on the Newspapers In Education program, a good bit of the conference is focused on teens' media consumption and technology. NAA is a sponsor of the conference. The “Making New Connections” session Monday focused on some of the most recent research on youth’s media consumption habits worldwide.

Earlier this week, I (finally) read the Center for Citizen Media report, “Frontiers of Innovation in Community Engagement: News Organizations Forge New Relationships with Communities,” by Lisa Williams of H2OTown.com and Placeblogger, Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media and Jane MacKay, a Northeastern University graduate student.

It's happened to most reporters at least once: Some government official drops a bombshell of an announcement at a really inconvenient time -- like an hour before deadline or late at night, knowing the newspaper will not be able to give the issue much coverage before going to press.

The Bivings Group, an Internet strategy and implementation firm, released a list of 16 ways media outlets can use blogs. (Appropriately, the list appeared on The Bivings Group blog, The Bivings Report.) The list gives examples from newspapers and other media outlets that have used blogs in creative and/or effective, audience-building ways.

One of the things I do at work is collect essays on 'how to save newspapers' and 'why print isn't dying'. I posted the first list here in early February. Since a few essays/op-eds/blog entries have arisen in the past few days (the top few will be in tomorrow's Online Publishing Update), I thought perhaps I should update the list. Some (many) are worth reading.  If you stumble across any that I haven't included here, please let me know or comment below. Thanks!

A few interesting articles didn't make it into today's Online Publishing Update (it was already getting kind of long). But these articles are still worth a peek this week. (If you would like to join the Digital Media Federation and start receiving the OPU, go here to sign up!)  All of these are somehow related to social networking and/or the changing (multi-)media landscape.

I don’t mention my personal life on the Digital Edge blog because it’s supposed to be about digital media publishing. But a very interesting conversation last night with The Bakersfield Californian’s Dan Pacheco about the publication’s online Inside Guide was perfectly timed – and perfectly frustrating, when my husband, Joe, found a serious plumbing problem in our house.

So Viacom (owner of MTV, CBS and other major media players) sued Google-owned YouTube for $1 billion, alleging “massive” and “intentional” copyright infringement in a federal court in New York yesterday. But the real issue for publishers and broadcasters is that it calls into question the Digital Millenium Copyright Act....

Link to community groups, frequent updates, a local search engine, searchable local classified databases and local photos and videos from community members are the five top things suburban adults want from a local community Web site.

In true Pennsylvania spirit, Local Onliner blogger Peter Krasilovsky recalled a state native who was one of the forefathers of newspapers – Ben Franklin, who started the Saturday Evening Post. “Would Ben Franklin think adherence to ‘old ways’ secures ‘liberty?” he asked. Probably not.

Tony Lee, chief alliance officer and executive vice president of Adicio Inc. in Princeton, N.J., outlined the top trends in online classifieds during “Online Classifieds Best Practices.”

The York (Pa.) Daily Record and Sunday News turned a 12-page, family-oriented publication into a 36-page publication and accompanying Web site aimed at two audiences—families with young children and that coveted demographic, 18-to-34-year-olds.  

Tracking revenue is important for understanding your online newspaper’s revenue potential, setting realistic goals and more, Robert Granfield, vice president of consulting services for Morris DigitalWorks, said. It’s much more effective to calculate the total online potential (selling every online ad space possible by category) when your accountants can track where the money is coming from. And understanding the potential of our online newspaper allows managers to set positive goals.

The Salt Lake Tribune has been through seven site redesigns in the past 11 years. “We’ve been doing this quite a while,” said SLTrib.com Online Editor Manny Mellor. The Salt Lake Tribune went online in a very "rudimentary form" in late 1995.   “It has been sort of an evolution over the years,” Mellor said. The changes have included everything: screen width, navigation, color scheme (including some purple), text size (and layout) and everything on the “back end,” too.

Greetings from Hershey, Penn. A handful of NAA staffers (Michael Snyder and Lisa Rabasca of Presstime Magazine, Beth Lawton of New Business & Audience Development) are here covering the America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference. Today and tomorrow, we’ll post a bunch of highlights from digital media sessions of the conference. If you’re here, let us know by e-mailing me (Beth) at beth.lawton@naa.org.

MediaShift blogger Mark Glaser late yesterday posted a "Digging Deeper" column on newspapers hiring programmers and the benefits and challenges that come with it. The benefits include some pretty dynamic, innovative, engaging products coming from newspaper Web sites. A few examples showed up in the Digital Edge Awards entries earlier this year.

New services, such as ReputationDefender.com, are springing up online with the mission to find and eliminate false (or sometimes true) character-damaging information online for people. This type of information can appear on message boards and forums and sometimes is posted by people who wish to harm others’ reputation. The article strikes a chord with some newspapers that have had challenges in moderating their forums and story commenting features.  

NAA has released the first two of 10 case studies on online audience building successes.  The case studies, conducted by Rich Gordon (of the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University) will showcase strategies, products and operational excellence that have resulted in significant traffic to newspaper Web sites.  Additional case studies will be available periodically through the year.

The New York Times today has an article about mobile services that allow mall shoppers to look up sales and compare prices through text messaging. It saves shoppers the hassel of hiking from one store to the next looking for deals.   If these companies can do this for malls, newspapers could do this with their local shopping sites and some powerful databasing for local stores. (If anyone is doing this, please let me know!) It does fall into the category of helping readers with their "jobs to be done."

Jay Small wrote a thought-provoking "tome" (his word, not mine) about what newspapers should do to make innovation work. In true journalistic fashion, he sets out to explain innovation in terms of cub reporters' favorite "Five W's and an H" format -- who, what, where, when, why and how.