Just a quick note to let you know that I’m wishing you the most Happiest of New Years in 2010. And Happy New Decade, too.

(Oh, and don’t forget to update the year in the footer on your websites.)

There was a time when my daughter, little pistol that she is, would only let her mom read her bedtime stories. Eventually, because I wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer, I convinced her to let me read her one book. But only one book, she said. So after several months of taking turns with her mom, I was still stuck reading the same book every other night.

That was a few years ago, but last week my daughter (who is now 6) asked me to read that book again. It’s called The Important Book and is so simple, so elegant, it’s genius. (The author is also responsible for Goodnight Moon, another timeless classic.) Here’s a taste:

The important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.
You hold it in your hand,
It’s like a little shovel,
You can put it in your mouth,
It isn’t flat,
It’s hollow,
And it spoons things up.
But the important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.

Since I’ve been thinking about the Online News Association conference in San Francisco this week, the two subjects collided in my brain. I instantly wondered if you could apply one to the other, so after a few tries, here is my attempt to summarize the importance of ONA and all its members while paying tribute to Margaret Wise Brown, one of the greatest children’s authors of all time.

The Important Thing About Online News

The important thing about online news is that it is timely.
It comes from many sources,
It’s massive and it can come at you like a flood.
But the important thing about online news is that it is timely

The important thing about online news is that it is interactive.
You can search it,
Sort it,
Tweet it,
Email it,
and trash it.
But the important thing about online news is that it is interactive.

The important thing about online news is that it is innovative.
It looks like blogging and podcasting,
It gets mashed up on maps and in databases,
And is done by startups and big companies at the same time.
But important thing about online news is that it is innovative.

The important thing about online news is that it is wherever you are.
Some people say “if the news is important, it will find me,”
And it does.
It can be delivered to any digital device or through any social network,
But the Important important thing about online news is that it is wherever you are.

The important thing about online news is that it is a successful business.
It has created more opportunities than it has destroyed,
It’s why billions of dollars are spent on digital advertising every year,
And it is just getting started.
But the important thing about online news is that it is a successful business.

The important thing about online news is that it is evolving.
It isn’t what it was,
And it isn’t what it is going to be.
So the important thing about online news is that it is evolving.

Thanks for indulging me. Writing a children’s book would be a lot harder than it looks. If you think this was a fun read, please share it with others who would enjoy it, too.

And thanks to everyone who pitched in and volunteered their time and energy to make this week’s ONA conference a reality. If you’re not able to attend, follow the Twitterstream or livestreaming keynotes. With more than 1,000 people gathering (third straight sell-out), it’s clear that online news is certainly important.

Heather Armstrong, known to her 1.2 million followers on Twitter as Dooce, has an idea on how to turn hate mail into cash:

“Internet, let me introduce you to Monetizing The Hate. Here I will be posting all the hate mail I get in my inbox and all the hateful anonymous and not-so-anonymous comments left on this website.”

I first spotted this story on Journalism.co.uk, which highlighted the experiment but didn’t ask the obvious question: could this work for news organizations? If there are two things most news organizations have in abundance it’s outspoken people who think the editors are too liberal or conservative (or just plain idiots) and a need to make money online.

Controversial topics in the news like Acorn, the health care debate and the march on Washington have ramped up the amount of hate mail coming to news organizations recently. I talked with one newspaper editor last week who reported receiving death threats (over the paper’s lack of perceived coverage of Acorn) serious enough to warrant a phone call to local police.

Dooce, the popular blog written by Armostrong, seems an unlikely place for such vitriol. But after reading Armstrong’s post about “Monetising The Hate,” it reminded me that if you’re popular enough, you’ll be a target for someone. In true Dooce style, Armstrong is excited about the possibility of her new venture:

And let me tell you, it is a hoot! And the money? OH THE MONEY! I am going to roll around naked in all that money!

We probably won’t to see any ad directors at local newspapers pitching the idea this way. But if Dooce can make it work, news organizations would be wise to try to take all that hate they currently allow to in the comments of their stories and turn it into cash. What have they got to lose?

Flickr phot credit: Kevin Sass

Summer is here, my manuscript is submitted and I’m heading to Alaska for a few days of fishing with the guys. So I’m hitting the pause button on the blog and will resume later this month with more excerpts from my upcoming book and more observations on the evolution of local publishing and entrepreneurial journalism in the digital age.

Until then, keep innovating!

With so many digital news, information and community sites popping up all over the place, using blogs, Twitter, CoverItLive, podcasts, video, social media, mapping mash-ups, searchable databases and other shiny new objects, it seems prime time to introduce a new name for all this hubbub.

The news industry calls it “new media” or “interactive media,” but that’s just differentiating it from legacy forms of publishing. Pretty much everything online is “interactive” and it’s not really “new” anymore.

“Online media?” Digital publishing?” Yawn.

Honestly, this has been bugging me for weeks. (I know, therapy is an option.) I’ve invited people in the Tacoma area where I live to gather at a local watering hole next week. I struggled with how to classify the meet-up. I resorted to “Tacoma bloggers and online media meet-up” but hope that independent bloggers, professional journalists and other walks of life are represented.

It’s media, but not necessarily journalism. As Clay Shirky deftly dissected in his book Here Comes Everybody, journalism is a profession, and to label something a profession means to “define the way in which it is more than just a job.” But often this new activity is only indirectly related to one’s job.

It will take a mix of all these tools, plus some that are just now being invented, to build successful new business models for the sustainable publishing of news/information/community in the future. What will we call that business, that industry, that specialty?

Check out Frank McGuire’s course at ASU (which looks fascinating, by the way). It’s called “The Business and Future of Journalism.” We know that future will be built digitally, but not entirely by journalists (since collaboration and social tools are so critical). So we can’t exactly call it “journalism.”

But what do we call it?

If you have any other ideas for a killer new name for all this, post a comment. Or steer me another direction of you think I’ve strayed off course.

All this talk about Alex Rodriguez these days reminded me of one of the more quirky and fun online projects I once helped develop. (OK, it was my wife who reminded me about this.)

The Pay-Rod Meter, which we built on The Herald’s web site in Everett in 2003, shortly after Rodriguez signed his historic contract with the Texas Rangers and ditched our hometown Seattle Mariners.

I received a lot of credit for coming up with the idea, but the site was designed and developed by Doug Parry, who still works at The Herald leading their design efforts in print and online. We got call calls and emails from all over the country after we launched it.

The site is no longer live, of course, and even if were, it would have to be updated with Rogriguez’s Yankees contract figures. And maybe there is a way to calculate dollars-earned-per-banned-substance-consumed?

The Pay-Roid Meter?

Journalism education needs more public relations and business emphasis, not less. That’s what immeditately occurs to me after reading 10 reasons Why Journalism Schools Should Get Rid of PR. Bob Conrad argues that moving PR programs out of J-schools and into business schools will improve the education for PR students. 

He’s probably right. But such a move would seriously damage the journalism education at the school. 

PR and journalism education need more integration, not separation. Both must now incorporate social media practices and new technology adoption. And both would be well-served by partnerships with business schools, since a journalism needs more entrepreneurs and PR “is inherently a business function in most organizations,” as Conrad writes.

To me, Conrad’s problems with journalism education represent a list of things to fix, not escape from. 

How do you know you’re a hopeless case of online geekery? When you get your wife a domain name and set up a Wordpress blog for her and call it a Christmas present.

But wait, there’s more. I also gave my son and daughter domain names so they can have cool email addresses. And I installed Drupal on their domains so they can begin publishing online with their new OLPC.

They may never use them, and that’s OK. It’s opening the door that’s important.

The spambots finally found this blog so I apologize if you saw any content vandalism here the past few days. I’ve turned off trackbacks and activated the Akismet plug-in in an attempt to keep it clean around here.

Just wondering: how do you spend your day programming a spambot to spread the garbage I had to clean off the blog and still maintain your self-respect? Is it the modern-day equivalent to TPing someone’s house?

Blogging a conference is so passe. And besides, Twitter is so much easier. If I’m quiet for a while, assume nothing interesting is happening. Or the newtowrking reception has started.

Follow along: twitter.com/markbriggs