For the September issue of PRESSTIME Magazine, which should hit your snail-mailboxes this week or early next week, I wrote about my garden.

Well... I used our half-failed first backyard garden as a jumping point to talk about things that are actually digital media related for the Digital Edge column in the magazine.

The Cliffs Notes version of the column is this: Our backyard garden didn't do so well this year because we didn't really think things through in April, and we failed to strategically align our resources and plans with our ultimate vision.

Example: Our vision was to have two thriving, producing blueberry bushes, but we failed to get blueberry netting until late June and the birds had a feast. So, no blueberries for us. Also, no tomatoes, no peaches, etc. for other (but similar) reasons. 

The strategic alignment theory -- which holds that newspaper publishers and editors need to actually line up their resources, budgets and personnel with their goals to achieve those goals -- is laid out in a paper called "Achieving Strategic Alignment" by Wendy Zomparelli. She wrote this for the Newspaper Association of America Horizon Watching Initiative.

Here's your homework: Put it on your 'worthy reads' list, along with Zomparelli's last installment in this year's Horizon Watching series, "Adopting a Multimedia Mindset."

"Adopting a Multimedia Mindset" has a few really good case studies in it about newspapers that have changed their culture and encouraged "print reporters" to think digitally. The particularly successful newspapers the papers highlight are The Roanoke Times (you're not surprised, are you?), The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.