Some great posts I’ve been reading from other blogs have been piling up in my delicious bookmarks, so it is time for more short takes.

Sobering news on switch to digital? So if so many people are getting their news on the Web, why don’t newspapers just stop the presses. As we all know, it’s because ad revenue on the Web is nothing compared to what even today’s struggling newspapers can bring in. Alan D. Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur tells us just how little it is.  He quotes analyst Tom Corbett, of Morningstar, who calculated that for every $1 of print ads publishers lost in the first nine months of 2008, they recaptured just 1.7 cents in online ad revenue. Wow! So what do we do? See the next item.

Reinvent ourselves: Newspapers are in dire circumstances, and even with best efforts many will close, I think. Many more journalists will lose jobs. As an industry, we should have started transitioning to the Web and changing our business plans years ago. OK, we didn’t. What do we do now? Reinvent. A great post by Joshua Benton at the Nieman Journalism Lab blog explains newspapers need to think like Twitter, not GM. Best takeaway:  We must “Reinvent ourselves.” Not: “Cut back on our staff a bit more every few months and hope the current business model can survive.” Not: “Maintain a belief that we had a good product, damn it, a valuable product, and there will always be someone who wants it.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Why journalists must get on Twitter: Beat Blogging warns: Avoid Twitter at your own peril. The post also offers insight into Twitter’s value for journalists:  Twitter can help journalists find sources, get news tips, connect with people, crowd source. And if you missed them, my own tips for journalists on Twitter, my absolute favorite social-networking tool.

OK, lots of doom and gloom. Next item is for fun …

Stat crazy: If you’re like me and love finding out odd stats about your blog, this post at SEO by the Sea is for you. It offers links to a range of sites where you can check such things as whether your blog is visible in China or being plaigarized. Is all this necessary? No. But it’s fun. And, no, my blog isn’t censored in China (at least if the link proves accurate.)

– Gina

Time for another Short Takes:  Five articles worth reading that relate to journalism as it transforms.

Are staff cuts good news? That’s the provocative question Mathew Ingram asks at the Nieman Journalism Lab. This is the kind of post that can’t help but raise emotions. Pretty much anyone in journalism today knows someone who has lost a job recently, and it stinks. But I get that Ingram isn’t saying layoffs themselves are good. His point: Is the crisis in journalism forcing newspapers to change more than rapidly than they might otherwise. On that, I think he may be onto something. Would newspapers change without the crisis? Well, many didn’t.

Don’t stop the presses: Alan D. Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur says newspapers need to keep printing rather than go totally online if they want to stay in business: “The only ink-on-paper newspapers that can afford to attempt digital-only publishing are the ones that are irreversibly losing money.” He is responding in part to a December post by Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine that asserts the Los Angeles Times could go totally digital and still support its staff, with what he calls “cutbacks aplenty.” Both are smart reads.

Multimedia newsroom: So what would a truly digital newsroom look like? Jackie Hai’s Convergence Commons gives a glimpse by describing a college version of a Web-only news operation. She offers a great list of what the journalists of today (and tomorrow) will need to know how to do, including social networking, blogging and digital photojournalism.

Guest posting: Josh Klein, of Web Strategy, has a guest post on ProBlogger that aptly points out the value of guest posting on other people’s blogs. I’m a huge proponent of guest posting. And this posts tells you step by step how to do it. It’s worth a read for any journalist blogger who is trying to move into the new era.

Journalists as curators: I’ve heard that term a lot, but Mindy McAdams at Teaching Online Journalism really crystallizes what it means in a post from December. She compares the job to a museum curator and notes it involves, organizing, expertise, providing context, and updating. My favorite line: “It’s not important that each visitor stops at each display and reads each placard. Visitors can choose their own pace and their own level of intake.” True.

– Gina