Vibe magazine is talking about going online-only. Seth Godin talks about how content will soon all be free. (“The reason that we needed paid contributors before was that there was only economic room for a few magazines, a few TV channels, a few pottery stores, a few of everything. In world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work.”) Newspapers struggle to stay aloft in an increasing Internet-focused world, and so many people predict their imminent demise.

What a lot of silliness.

News isn’t going to be free. Newspapers can stay alive if they want to. Blogs and citizen journalists aren’t going to replace the mainstream media.

Yes, it feels great to imagine a world where You and I are the ones collecting and writing the news. Where all content is free. Where the mainstream media has succumbed to the infinite power of the masses.

It ain’t gonna happen.

We’re in a transition phase right now, and like many transitions it’s messy. Newspaper revenue is falling and circulation is declining, but that doesn’t mean you conclude that the graph ends at zero. (I’ve lost four pounds this month. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to weigh a mere 80 lbs. in a couple of years — yet that’s the same logic going on here.)

There are so many important points being missed I don’t know where to start. First off, where do most blogs and non-mainstream media sources get their news? The mainstream media, of course. List all the blogs in the world that do any sort of news coverage. Now remove the ones that rely on others to do the reporting for them. What’s left? Not much.

Not zero, of course. There are plenty of non-MSM sources out there that pore over SEC filings and other government docs, or who have a particular expertise (or access to it), or who subscribe to various databases where they get the raw info they turn into news. But they are by far the minority. Most of these bloggers who are going to turn the world of journalism upside down are simply regurgitating what the professionals put out.

If professional journalists go away, so does their fodder.

Protests in Iran. Twitter goes wild, and we all get the raw story from the streets of Tehran. The MSM drops the ball! Except that there was a lot more to the story than the protests, although that was certainly the most compelling. Diplomatic issues? British diplomats kicked out or interrogated? American reaction? European reaction? All that came from the MSM. I have no great love for the Associated Press or Reuters, but the fact is that without them we’d be reduced to relying on, essentially, dueling press releases: reports from the Iranian government and reports from the streets. Neither of which is entirely trustworthy.

(Too often these days, all the MSM does is repeat those dueling press releases. It hasn’t been doing its job. Its readership is ripe for the picking; anyone can compete with reprinted talking points. But that doesn’t have to be the case.)

Here’s the thing: Doing quality journalism takes time, experience, and money. “Citizen media” can and should augment the mainstream media, but without that MSM, there wouldn’t be much news.

And people want news. It has value to them. They’ll be willing to pay for it. They are willing to pay for it.

Of course, they don’t have to. Newspapers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give their content away free. It’s valuable, and they give it away. They pay to create it, and then give it away.

Is that the dumbest business model ever, or what?

What would happen if…

Newspapers must have Web sites, of course. Because… well, because everyone does. They have to put their content online because, um, everyone does. They can’t charge for it because, er, then people will go elsewhere.

Wrong.

Newspapers need to dump their Web sites.

If they want to survive, giving content away can’t work. It’s incredibly obvious to anyone who knows basic addition and subtraction. Newspaper Web sites lose money. They make a pittance in advertising dollars — nowhere near enough to pay for the content on them. So why continue to produce such a product only to give it away?

It’s not as if the sites drive up circulation. And if visitors will go elsewhere for their content, so what? That’s like giving away apples because you don’t want people to get their free apples elsewhere.

Correction: Newspapers shouldn’t shut down their sites. They should make them paid.

Now, if when you think of “newspaper” you think solely of the big ones — The New York Times, Washington Post, and so on — think again. There are a lot of newspapers in this country, in every city and town. New York, Chicago, LA — they’re a different animal, as they compete on the national stage with the likes of CNN and Fox News (both, by the way, paid via your cable company).

Here’s what I’d do as publisher of the Bumfrak Times, a more-typical 50,000 to 80,000-circulation newspaper in a small- or medium-sized market.

My Web site would have two sections, one free, one behind a “green curtain” — a subscription site. The free section would have things like supplements to stories in the paper/paid section (e.g., “Download SmithCo’s complete SEC filing” or “See more pictures from the Raspberry Festival”). It would also have message board for discussing the stories, ways for readers to contribute, and other social media-ish features.

But if you want to read the bulk of the content, you either have to subscribe to the print edition, or buy less expensive online-only access.

Sacrilege! you say. Everyone knows subscription sites don’t work! What’s the logic then? It’s better to lose money by giving my content away than cut my losses and shut down the site? Please.

I need to have worthwhile content. It’d be 99 percent local, for starters. Why should I compete with the national media? It’s a losing game. The local stuff (“hyperlocal” if you feel the need for a buzzword) is what people can’t get from CNN or The New York Times (or cnn.com or nytimes.com). That’s the kind of content they eat up. That’s the kind of thing people will pay for.

In all but the biggest cities, newspapers have a virtual monopoly on the news. Television? Please. Not even close. If you want to find out what happens someplace, the newspaper is the only place to go. And yet they squander that power by giving away their product.

Not me. Here in Bumfrack, if you want the best, most comprehensive local news, you know you need to come to me. I’ll give it to you however you want it — print, online, fax, to your mobile. I’ll make it worth the 50 cents a day I’ll charge. But I’m going to charge for it.

And the reporters? They’ll hate it. They’ll hate the idea of covering town council meetings and ribbon-cuttings at the new big-box store. But them’s the breaks. That’s what happens in smaller cities and towns. And that’s what’s important to people there. (Of course, there will be hard news, and probably plenty. But no longer will the “fluff” be confined to the Life & Leisure section. It will be de-fluffed and treated as news.) You wanna cover the big stories? Put in your time here in Bumfrak, then get a job with CBS or CNN or MSNBC.

And when people complained about our not giving the news away free anymore, I wouldn’t worry. Because what’s gonna happen? Some bloggers will start their own, free, news site? Best of luck to ’em. I’m not going to compete to see who can give away the best stuff for nothin’. If I can’t provide people with something better than what they can get from a bunch of amateurs and part timers, I’m doing something wrong.

Because here’s a fact: Providing news takes a lot of time. And people need to pay the bills — they can’t walk away from their day jobs to attend meetings or interview the police, or sit in the county clerk’s office going through records. So eventually those guys will need to eat, and they’ll begin to ask for donations, or they’ll go out of business. Guaranteed.

News isn’t entertainment. Free Web comics are as good (actually better) the “professional” ones. The stuff on CollegeHumor.com rivals anything you’ll find on Comedy Central. But news is another matter. It’s not part time. The Beast needs to be fed all the time, 365 days a year. And that’s valuable enough that people will pay for it.

Wait and see. If today’s newspapers fail, whatever replaces them will soon enough adopt a fee-based model. Whether it’s a professional competitor, or a group of bloggers who get together, at some point they will realize — correctly — that they provide something valuable enough (and expensive enough) to charge for.

This is kinda cute.

(Via Awful Library Books.)

“Judge: Holocaust museum shooting suspect not fit for court,” reads the CNN headline. The article begins, “The alleged shooter in this month’s deadly attack at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is not yet…”

But James von Brunn is not “alleged” or “suspected.” He’s the shooter. There’s no doubt. Not a bit. There are questions about why he did it, and what punishment he deserves, but there is no question that he committed the act.

Yet CNN (and other news outlets) refer to him as a “suspect” or “alleged shooter.” What crap.

In some cases, hedging like that makes sense. Sometimes the police are pretty sure they’ve arrested the person, but there is still some doubt. In that case, news outlets are afraid of libel or slander suits if they refer to someone as a killer who is then acquitted.

But that caution only needs to apply when there’s doubt. There’s no libel risk in calling von Brunn the killer.

James von Brunn is the Holocaust Museum killer.

James von Brunn is the Holocaust Museum killer.

James von Brunn is the Holocaust Museum killer.

There. Sue me — if you can prove I’m lying.

No, von Brunn hasn’t been convicted, and in the eyes of the court he’s innocent until proven guilty. But that’s the court. Not the press. The press has taken a specific caution (”If there’s doubt, toss an ‘alleged’ in there) and made it all-encompassing. But guess what, guys: You can call him a killer. He’s not going to sue, because there is no doubt whatsoever. Really. You don’t have to worry about it.

* * *

In contrast, note how the Times of London doesn’t hedge:

James W von Brunn, who was convicted in 1983 for running towards the boardroom of Washington’s Federal Reserve building with a shotgun, entered the Holocaust Museum just before 1pm wearing a Confederate hat, and opened fire “indiscriminately” with a long rifle. Witnesses said that he had parked his red car directly outside, displaying a disabled badge….

I have to wonder how much damage the adoption of Firefox and some of its addons is doing to the Internet. I’m thinking specifically of one of my favorites, Ad Block Plus. Simply put, it prevents just about every ad from appearing on any page I visit.

As Firefox’s market penetration increases (it’s at about 23% now), or if add-ons like Ad Block Plus become available for Internet Explorer, that has to worry advertisers and those who depend on their money.

The same problem exists, of course, with TiVo and other digital video recorders, where you can easily fast-forward through commercials. (My Verizon Fios DVR, like some others, even has a skip-30-seconds button.) But with that you have to take action to skip the ads, you can’t skip if you’re watching in real time, and sometimes you forget or just don’t bother.

With the Internet, Firefox, and Ad Block Plus, you don’t have to take any action beyond installing the add-on. You simply never see an ad again. It doesn’t substitute a blank box; it removes the ad and its space altogether and the remaining page content just fills the gaps. It’s invisible.

Imagine a free DVR that could automatically detect and remove commercials with 100% accuracy. Imagine 23% of people had it. What would that do to television advertising?

With television, one (partial) answer has been the shift to paid content — basic cable, premium subscriptions, pay-per-view, etc. And radio of course has Sirius/XM. Pay-for-content works there because you don’t have millions of options. You have 20 or 50 or 500 channels, not uncountable Web sites. Anyone can publish on the Internet, but not anyone can broadcast to your living room. (Yet. But the Internet-TV convergence is another story.)

Also, because TV and radio are one-way media, the revenue model is solely dependent on involuntary exposure to the ads. But the Web is two-way, and the model there depends on A) that involuntarily exposure, followed by B) voluntary clicks. And the weight is more and more on B — the click-through counts, not the view.

Toyota doesn’t know whether or not I fast-forward past its television ads; I still count as a “viewer” if I watch the show it sponsors. But online, Firefox and ABP prevent me from seeing the ads and thus prevent me from clicking. If a site gets paid by the click (not the view), I become a freeloader — I don’t even give myself the option to click.

Right now 23% of Web users are freeloaders like me (or are a click or two away from becoming such).

There was talk at one point that digital video recorders would prevent viewers from skipping the commercials. Maybe it will happen someday. But it can’t happen on the Internet. I think I can safely predict that there will always be a simple and free way to keep it ad free.

So how can ad-supported Web sites survive? Answer: They can’t. Something else has to take its place.

What else? Paid subscriptions. Maybe ad-watching requirements (i.e., forcing users to view ads before delivering the content). Or something else.

But the bottom line is this: We’ve always had professionally created free content (or in the case of print media, very inexpensive content) because of the unspoken and un-ignorable agreement: We would have to deal with the ads in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and television. Those ads paid for the content. Without revenue, you don’t get content.

You can argue, as many have, that professional content-creators will simply disappear — newspapers and other news organizations won’t be able to sustain themselves. So what’s going to take their place? Bloggers?

Who’s going to create and produce television shows? The Lonelygirl15 guys?

It takes money to consistently create great content. Anyone can occasionally do a great thing; browse through YouTube and you’ll see some wonderful shows that rival anything on network TV. But those people can’t make a living at it; they do it for love or for fun.

I don’t want to have to rely on getting my news and my entertainment from people who do it for fun. You can’t count on them, and they certainly can’t produce the kind of quality that a well-funded organization can. You’ll have Lonelygirl15, but you won’t have CSI. Or Battlestar Galactica. Or Scrubs.

So what’s going to happen? Easy, I think. An Internet without advertising can only have two kinds of content: free and paid. The free stuff will be what we have today, and a lot of it is great. But the professional stuff is more and more going to end up behind the green curtain — subscription only.

Heck, that’s not new. That’s the way movies work. If you want to see a first-run flick in the best possible venue, you have to pay for it. So why not “If you want to get the news when it happens instead of waiting, you’ll have to pay for it”?

What will survive? Big newspapers? CNN? Small-town papers? Dunno. Depends what people are willing to pay for. That’s what the market is for. But I can foresee a day when the free ride is over and you’ll have to pay if you want the latest news.

Which means you end up with the haves and have-nots — people who pay for the latest and people who have to wait for it to trickle down… but that’s another story.

“Cell phone makers have agreed to introduce a one-size-fits-all charger in the European Union within the next six months.”

Still slowly but surely linking my various social networks. Blog to Twitter? Check. Twitter to blog? Check.

Facebook to blog? Um… no. Blog to Facebook? Only to a section of FB that no one sees. Work still needs to be done there.

New blogging tool? Check — trying out Deepest Sender for quick updates.

All while editing, uploading, and trying to keep up with too many people.

“Not a day goes by when I don’t ache,” says Ruth Madoff.

Funny, I bet that’s the same thing her husband’s going to be saying, although for entirely different reasons. [ba-dum-BUM]

Didn’t take long.

[sigh]

You probably have heard that Iranians have found ways to bypass the censorship imposed by the government in the wake of the elections and protests. But I know at least some people only have a vague idea about it.

So… if you’re interested in seeing the messages people in Tehran are getting out, it’s easy: Here’s the Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23IranElection). Basically, anyone who wants to can send a 140-character message to Twitter, and can have that message included in the “IranElection” feed. So you have lots of people — most in Iran — giving minute-by-minute updates.

For those of you who don’t know Twitter, here’s a quick guide to what you’ll see:

In some cases there will also be links to Web pages, such as “http://bit.ly/pDXIC.”

Latest message: “they were waiting 4 us – they all have guns & riot uniforms – it was like a mouse trap – ppl being shot like animals”

I love Craigslist… most of the time. You can find some great stuff — jobs, toys, gizmos, homes. Still, sometimes job searches turn up, shall we say, some sub-optimal offers. Take, for example, this one my wife found:

Modle wanted
Reply to: job-tqewr-1233977690@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-06-22, 1:29PM

I am looking for a white wome 28-33 yrs old that would smoke toppless for some privette modling

    * Location: west end
    * Compensation: 200HR
    * This is a part-time job.
    * Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
    * Please, no phone calls about this job!
    * Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Original URL:http://richmond.craigslist.org/etc/1233977690.html

What country is the world’s largest manufacturer by a huge margin? If you have a kid, you would think it must be China — I don’t know the last time I saw I toy (or anything else, really) that wasn’t made there.

Wrong.

Accounting for more than 20% of the world’s total manufacturing output is the United States.

Japan is a distant second at just over 13%. Then China (12%), and Germany (8.2%). Then, well, everyone else. (Data come from the Dept. of Labor and the United Nations.)

(Click to enlarge, as usual.)

So what do we make? Aircraft (Lockheed Martin, Boeing), missiles, space-related equipment, autos and auto parts, farming equipment (can you say “John Deere”?), gas turbines for power plants (GE), computer chips (Intel), and a heck of a lot more. We don’t make as much consumer goods, but we sure as heck make the things that make those goods possible.

So when you hear someone whining about us not making things anymore, keep reality in mind.

Here’s the problem I had to solve with Excel. (I’m sharing this in case anyone Googles a similar problem.)

I am entering a long list of data in three columns– to keep it simple, let’s call them “Client,” “Salesperson,” and a 10-digit “Salesperson ID.”

Every time I enter a salesperson’s name, I then have to also enter his ID. This gets tedious.

So I wanted Excel to think like this: “If the Salesperson name entered matches one that’s already been entered, automatically fill in the Salesperson ID based on that previous entry. If it doesn’t match, just put ‘No match’ in the box.”

Check it out, yo. Here’s the formula from 10 rows down in the table:

=VLOOKUP(B11,$B$1:$C10,2,FALSE))

This says, “Look at what’s in cell B11 (the 11th entry in the Salesperson column). If it matches a name anywhere in the existing columns B or C (from B1 to C10), then fill the cell with whatever’s in the 2nd column of that selection — that is, whatever’s in column C.”

So if I enter “Smith” in B11, it looks at the existing B and C columns for the word “Smith” (only up to row 10). If it finds it — say, in B6 — it then gives us the number that’s in C6. (It’s an Excel quirk that you have to search both columns B and C, even though only column B might have the data.)

When I put the formula in row 12, it updates so it’s searching rows 1-11. And so on, always searching above the existing entry.

But if it doesn’t find the text, it returns an error or a messy “N/A.” So I added some code to make it pretty.

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(B11,$B$1:$C10,2,FALSE)) = TRUE,”No match”, VLOOKUP(B11,$B$1:$C10,2,FALSE))

This says, “If the VLOOKUP returns nothing (i.e., FALSE), then display ‘No match.’ But if it does come up with something, then display whatever value it calculates — i.e., whatever’s in column C.”

Make sense? I know. But if you’re trying to solve this problem, it does. Honest.

I am shocked that someone, somewhere, has not created a Word or Excel macro that searches and replaces based on a list of common nicknames — changing all “Mikes” to “Michael” and so on. It would seem to be a darned useful tool.

Having just spent about 45 minutes crafting a neat little Excel formula, I found that it could be made immeasurably better if it had the ability to clean up nicknames. Oh, well. (I did find some lists of nicknames, so maybe I can figure out how to do it myself….)

Update: I found a good and comprehensive list of nicknames — too comprehensive, perhaps (Hetty = Mehitabel?). But with a bit of cleanup to remove the old-fashioned ones (this was from a genealogy site), it might be a good starting point for a macro. “If [nickname] is on nickname list, replace it with the [fullname] from that list and shade the cell so I can verify it.”

Hmm.

(At my office I get 512Kbps to maybe 1Mbps.)

I assume George Bush, on hearing about what’s going on in Iran, immediately headed for a vacation in Crawford… until someone reminded him that he’s not President anymore.

Anyone and his mother can discover a new species or a new asteroid. But not many people can claim to have discovered a new kind of cloud.

Meteorologists are debating whether to seek formal recognition for the first new cloud variety since 1951, prompted in part by strange clouds photographed in 2006 by Jane Wiggins, a paralegal in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

She later posted the image she labeled “Armageddon” on the website of the Cloud Appreciation Society, an England-based group of more than 16,000 cloud enthusiasts created in 2005.

(Cloud Appreciation Society?)

So my wife decided it was time to get rid of the seven-year-old wedding dress (it’s not like she’s going to be using it again), and thus posted an ad on Freecycle offering it to anyone who would actually use it. (A lot of Freecycle folks, we learned, will ask for just about anything that’s posted.)

Here’s one reply she got:

If you are not able to find a taker for your intended use, I would love to have this for my female playmate to use during our role play sessions. She is a petite size 6 or so, but anything close will do as the size is not all that important…. I can promise you it will get more than one use! Thanks for offering to the group!

You know, he could have said, “I’d like it for a theater group I’m in” or made up another story. A definite case of TMI.

At least not yet. Gosh, we need an easy way to share all this stuff. RSS is great, but Facebook’s support is crappy.

Update: Now it is! One small step…