Again, things aren't so bad.  NAA put out a news release today stating the following:  "Advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 19.3 percent to $796 million in the second quarter versus the same period a year ago, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America....  

There's no official Online Publishing Update e-mail newsletter today and Monday because of the holiday weekend, but in going through my Bloglines, I found a bunch of things I would have included in the OPU today if we had one. So, here's your bonus Digital Edge version of the Online Publishing Update....

The past few months have brought a series of debates over whether bloggers are or can ever be considered journalists and how digital media is or is not destroying quality journalism.  Through these individual debates, a more overarching question has emerged: Are these conversations worth the effort they take?

Earlier this month, we opened the Digital Edge Awards, now part of the NAA Media Innovation Awards, for entries. We’re looking for any interesting, fun or just plain good, solid digital media journalism from newspaper companies. Video, audio, blogs, social networking tools, mash-ups – you name it, we want to see it!

WashingtonPost.com launched MyPost yesterday afternoon. MyPost is a kind of social networking feature built around content from The Washington Post. I was playing with it last night – here’s what I found....

In yesterday's Online Publishing Update, we included a quote from former journalist and current Elon University Prof. Michael Skube’s recent Los Angeles Times op-ed . Here’s the quote: "The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined. And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side."   And, predictably (but validly), some journalists and prominent bloggers roared. One of those blogger/journalists is Jay Rosen....

Perhaps if you’re in some industry that has no reason to be on Facebook (though I can imagine some stretched arguments for people in several fields to play with the site), I don’t think spending time on social networking sites is a waste of work time at all.

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...

August certainly hasn’t slowed down here at NAA. Lots of updates, starting with... TOMORROW!  NAA Webinar: Newspapers’ Win-Win Relationship with Retailers. Also, we have a Webinar later this month on print growth strategies, a few interesting PRESSTIME Magazine stories this month, a new Snapshot from the Edge, an update to an earlier Audience Building Initiative case study and some happy birthday wishes. 

The Bivings Group, in a follow-up to its July report, released a list of the Group's favorite newspaper Web sites. The 10 best were chosen from the top 100 newspapers (by print circulation) -- the basis of their report, "American Newspapers and the Internet: Threat or Opportunity."  

 "So USAToday.com traffic is either up, down, or down a lot over the past few months. Take your pick."   -- Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts

News consumers divide their sources among 12 to 16 brands each week on average, including television, the Web, magazines, newspapers and radio. The McKinsey Group refers to it as “brand promiscuity.”

The Media Innovations Awards/Digital Edge Awards entry site is officially open!  (The direct Web address is www.naa.org/mediainnovationawards.) If you have any questions about the site or the awards, feel free to call me (571) 366-1037 or e-mail me at beth.lawton@naa.org.

The Bivings Group, an Internet strategic communications and research firm based in Washington, D.C., conducted studies on the top 100 U.S. newspapers’ Web sites (based on print circulation) to evaluate “how well American newspapers are taking advantage of new Internet technology.” The report follows up and builds on a similar report completed in 2006.

Could newspapers have done what Google is doing with verified comments on stories? Well, yes – to a point....

At the end of today’s Journalism That Matters: D.C. sessions, we did the same headline exercise as yesterday. Only this time, our headlines had to start with “As a result of today’s experience, I…”.   One of the first women to state her headline said something along the lines of, “As a result of today’s experience, my list of things to do is much longer.” We all laughed, then clapped, because she had spoken for all of us.

The first and only panel of Journalism That Matters: D.C. was organized chaos in the most positive sense.   JTM, several of us decided over dinner, is a “conference-unconference” because chunks of the day are built around loosely structured conversations and the interests of those participating largely drive the agenda. Other parts are more formally organized. Similarly, the panel was more of an “unpanel.”

If you could rip up your newsroom and completely start over, what would you do differently?

We gave out some details about the Digital Edge Awards last week -- and mentioned the awards will be handed out at a breakfast reception during the Marketing and CONNECTIONS conferences in Orlando in February.   Here's some quick information about the 2008 Marketing Conference: We're on the hunt for speakers, and be sure to save the dates -- Feb. 24 - 27, 2008.

I'll be at the Media Giraffe Journalism That Matters: D.C. this week -- also known as hanging out with the cool kids. Journalism That Matters is a series of discussions, brainstorming, debate and more centered around the future of journalism and community. I attended JTM in Tennessee in January, and came back energized, hopeful about the future of journalism and very glad I flew out there.

Following is the definition for "justification." Anyone remember the CONNECTIONS conference where we brought in Jaron Lanier? Now that he's sold all his virtual reality patents to Sun (which is building out the infrastructure for the world to move into massive multiplayer universe under Project Darkstar), he's a "scholar in residence" at UC Berkeley. And, he had the opportunity to introduce a panel that included both the CEO of Gaia and Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs, which created Second Life. According to Rosedale, $1.3 million dollars a day changes hands in Second Life for the purchase of virtual goods and services.

AlwaysOn company tips...

Dumpster diving. Before Gaia led the AlwaysOn 100 top companies list this year, one of the company’s lead comic book artists was eating out of dumpsters. (I’m not sure whether that’s more disturbing, or the fact that Guy Kawasaki didn’t know what it meant.) I guess the take away there from last night’s conversation opening the Stanford Summit is much the same as last year’s: find people pursuing their passion. (Read on...)