Some short-takes of interesting stuff from around the blogosphere:

Then & Now: Scooping the News has started a useful series. Each week the site is evaluating five newspapers with circulations of more than 100,000 on how much their Web sites have innovated since five years ago. I think it’s an important exercise because as the site says “innovative newspapers attract online readers.” And in some cases, it’s heartening to see how far the Web sites have come.

Here is today’s evaluation, including the Baltimore Sun, which received a 16 out of 20 composite innovation score. Last week, the review included the Miami Herald, which earned a 17.

Not a new problem: I’ve known since I started in the journalism business 20 years ago that readership was declining. I lived to see the demise of many afternoon dailies, including the Herald Journal in my own Syracuse, NY. What I didn’t know is that these problems went back farther than I realized.

Former newspaper publisher and Neiman Journalism Lab blogger Martin Langeveld explains on the Retired Pastor Ruminates blog that newspaper circulation has been declining since just after World War II. In 1947, 132 newspapers were sold for every 100 households. By 2008, that had dropped to 42 newspapers for every 100 household. Wow!

Langeveld says TV, Cable and later the Internet contribute to this decline. But the main culprit, he says, is our nation’s “increasing prosperity and discretionary income (which) turned us into a nation of niche interests” that doesn’t need the  “common ground of a newspaper everyone in a community reads.” There is a lesson in this for all of us in journalism: Don’t hate the Internet for ruining newspapers; alter your product to meet your readers’ changing needs.

Must-reads: Danny Sanchez,  multimedia content manager at OrlandoSentinel.com, recommends five online media books, including “SEO for Dummies” on his blog, Journalistopia. He gives a brief blurb on each that made me want to get every book out of my local library this summer.

A bit of fun: Last week, I tweeted a link to SUNY Brockport journalism professor Marsha Ducey’s fun post about Paperboy, a video game from the 1980s. In case you missed the tweet, here’s a recap:  She offers a tongue-firmly-in-cheek recommendation that newspapers follow the example of the young paper deliverer in the game.

Her advice:  Get the news in your customers’ hands, celebrate your successes, above all — stay alive. It’s a fun read. Who can’t use that these days?

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Time for some more short-takes, capturing interesting stuff I’ve found around the blogosphere:

Who will will? Deborah Potter at Advancing the Story says “specialized media will win.” I agree with her, and I like how she puts it.  It’s just another way of saying, guess what, we’re not a mass medium anymore. But I like Potter’s turn of phrase because it’s positive rather than negative. We can give the reader the value of specialization, rather than see this change as a loss for news organizations. She continues: “News as the product of mass production no longer seems sustainable now that it is feasible to create content for an audience of one.” Well said.

Get unemployed journalists to teach: Marsha Ducey at JournaJunkie  has an interesting post about an idea the State University of New York at Stony Brook is floating: Hiring 50 unemployed journalists and training them to teach as guest lecturers about news literacy at colleges. This literacy grows more important as the definition of news becomes more fluid. Young people need to know how to “differentiate between quality journalism and propaganda, public relations and/or shoddy journalism,” Ducey notes. Very true.

Dabbling won’t work: Advertising Age has a piece that notes that marketing companies are not integrating social media into their overall strategy, but instead “experimenting with isolated tactics and hoping that they will take the place of long-term strategy.” Isn’t that just what many news organizations are doing? A handful or fewer of early innovator type employees are dabbling in social media with little support from management and no way to assess whether their efforts are making a difference? We’re in a crisis here; we need a strategy; we need commitment.

Blogging mistakes to avoid: Sometimes kids make the wisest teachers. Consider the 11-year-old blogger on Thou Shall Blog this week. He lists 5 blogging mistakes that are so on point — but he explains them in way that’s simple enough, well, for a fifth grader.  Best takeaway:  “Which do you prefer to read? A large block of text or text with occasional spacing like how I am writing now? Most people would prefer spacing, instead of a large block of text.” Adult blogger ought to take heed.

Overheard on Twitter: I’m starting a new feature on short-takes … Overheard on Twitter. It will give you the best bits from the Twittersphere that week, complete with a link to the tweeter, so you can follow along. Here goes the first installment:

@Romenesko Advance papers institute furloughs, pension freeze: Editor & Publisher Employees at the New.. http://tinyurl.com/ccemuc

@LauraTRyan RT @oupblog @gregory: Whoa the Chicago Trib switched their masthead to include editors’ Twitter names! http://bit.ly/RPQzW

@Mashable The “Trouble with Twitters” video is so good I’m tweeting it again: http://bit.ly/UXYcn

@timwindsor This ought to kill some precious time: Dead people on Twitter http://is.gd/lmUQ

– Gina

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