If you ran into yourself 10 years ago, what would you tell yourself about journalism?

If you could go back 10 years and talk to your news organization’s editorial board and publisher, what would you tell them?

Now take that advice and apply it to today.

It’s only too late if we give up.

At ONA 08 and a week later at Poynter Seminar on ethics, I talked about my online ethics seal idea.

The idea is very simple —  to form a series of ethics seals that Web sites, blogs and news organizations could embed on their Web sites. I want these seals to be in the same vein as the Creative Commons.

Right now there are five seal categories: 

1. Sourcing
2. Objectivity/advocacy/opinion journalism or opinion
3. Linking
4. Copy editing/fact checking (does a second person fact check?)
5. Conflicts of Interests

The seals are developed by the community:

• The seals are open source — The community gets to decide which level of the seals means. This also means that people are free to change the language of a seal as long as they open source their new seal.
• That means the seals will evolve — Over time, we can update the ethics seals to reflect the current state of the Web. There will be version 1.0, 2.0, etch of each seal.
• The community is more than just blogs — Any online ethics seal can’t succeed if it hopes to only serve blogs (or “govern” them). Rather a good seal should be applicable to traditional media sources and new media sources. It should be a common ground, because on the Web traditional and new media lines are blurred. 
• The seals are just beginning — Right now I have laid out five seal categories. Maybe we need more categories. Maybe we need less. Together, we’ll figure out the core areas to develop seals around.

Yes, in a recent interview with Katie Couric, Governor Palin was unable to name one newspaper or magazine that she reads.

Some take that to mean that she doesn’t read newspapers. Somehow that it is a bad thing. In reality, that just makes Palin in touch with the average American — who also doesn’t read newspapers.

I have news for people — a LOT of people don’t read dead tree publications anymore. Of course, in Couric’s antiquated 1950s world, people can only get news from paper with ink on it and, of course, from the talking pictures (she needs to interview McCain, now that I think about).

I challenge you to name one cool kid who reads a newspaper. Go ahead. I’ll be waiting.

And while I’m at it, who watches network news anymore? Not the cool kids. Even the losers don’t bother watching Couric, either.

If Couric was hip and with it (and if she thought anyone actually watched her show) she would have asked Palin which Web sites and blogs she frequents. If Couric was really cool, she would have asked Palin to name the five biggest tags in her tag cloud of life.

My guess is that “snowmobiling” and “moose hunting” would be pretty high. So would “punching Charlie Gibson in the face.” Extemporaneous speaking and Jeopardy would probably be some of the smaller tags.

Former and current LA Times staffers have taken it upon themselves to not only blame but also sue Sam Zell for their current predicament.

As if it was Zell’s hubris that led them to think they were a national (international?!?!) paper. As if it was Zell’s ignorance that led the Times to have a horrible Web product for years. As if it was Zell’s leadership that thought endless jumps on meandering stories was a good idea.

Jeff Jarvis suggests that LA Times staffers should sue themselves instead of Sam Zell:

The Times veterans should not be suing Zell. They should be suing themselves. Oh, I, too, am angry at the state of newspapers in America but I’m angry at the right people. The LA Times’ problems — like those of other papers — were caused by by decades of egotistical and willfully ignorant neglect by the owners, managers — and staff — at the paper.

When more than one editorial regime had the hubris to think that they should turn the Times into a national - even international - paper, opening bureaus all over the globe and insisting on writing every commodity news stories under their own bylines while letting local coverage suffer, did you protest, litigators? No, those bylines and bureaus were yours.

Honestly, who is more to blame for the current situation at the Times? Sam Zell who is trying to rescue a sinking ship (even if he is doing a very poor job at it and has some bad ideas) or the former captains and shipmates who drove that ship into an iceberg?

If I was the LA Times, I’d consider firing a bunch of do-nothing employees and hire this guy or gal over at Not the LA Times who ruthlessly satired the ridiculous LA Times lawsuit:

On the heels of a class-action lawsuit accusing L.A. Times owner Sam Zell of wrecking the newspaper, dissident Times writers are now suing 425,000 former subscribers for “failing to appreciate our bodacious journalism.”

“By recklessly canceling their subscriptions, these morons have caused irreparable harm to the newspaper, breached their civic duty to stay fully informed, and missed some totally awesome articles by Pulitzer Prize-winning auto columnist Dan Neil, as well as money-saving Sunday coupons that could easily offset the subscription price,” the lawsuit alleges.

Additional efforts to entice subscribers included frequent use of the word schadenfreude, a front-page redesign that made the paper look like a ransom note, and gutting the Sports section, according to the lawsuit.

Times employees contend they did everything possible to maintain a relationship with the former readers. “In January 2005, to cite just one example, we published a 2,600-word Home section cover story on decorating your house in the Viennese Secession style of Art Nouveau,” the lawsuit said. “You can’t get more in touch with average readers than that!”

At least this person gets what’s going on. Zell may not being doing a great job, but it wasn’t him he drove the Times to the edge of this precipice.

Let’s get a few things straight here, shall we?

1. The LA Times is not The New York Times or The Washington Post. The only time the LA Times should be mentioned in the same sentence as those two is when people are generically talking about large papers. Something like, “Why has the LA Times Web presence sucked so long when other large papers like the NY Times and Post have been much more innovative?” Or something like, “What papers have Times in their names?”
2. The LA Times has willfully neglected the Web for years. I realize that Russ Stanton has breathed life into the Web presence of the Times, but it’s probably a little too late. Still, the Times’ Web presence is behind a lot of other U.S. news operations.
3. The Tribune board accepted Sam Zell’s offer on April 2, 2007. He didn’t take the company private until December 20, 2007. The LA Times was in very bad shape prior to then. It’s not like magically the bottom fell out of the Times in the last year.
4. If things were going so well at the Times, how come prior to Stanton being named executive editor, the Times had three editors in less than three years?

I’ve been thinking about who are the best bloggers? The requirement isn’t who runs the best blog on the Web, but rather which beat reporters are innovating the most on the Web with online tools like social networking and blogging.

Am I missing people? I realize that this list is mostly of beat reporters from larger publications. Do you have some recommendations from smaller publications?

• Kent Fischer - Covers the Dallas Independent School District.
• Eric Berger - Science blogger and reporter for The Houston Chronicle.
• Monica Guzman - Manages The Big Blog for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
• Ed Silverman - Runs Pharmalot and writes for The Newark Star-Ledger.
• Jon Ortiz - Runs The State Worker blog for The Sacramento Bee.
• Khristopher J. Brooks - Education reporter for the Omaha World-Herald.
• Matt Neznanski - Runs multiple beat blogs for The Gazette Times.
• Brian Stelter - Runs TV decoder for The New York Times.
• Mary Louise Schumacher - Art reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I was just at Cleveland.com, and I was looking at all the new features the site has launched recently.

Certainly, the new features are upgrades over what used to be there. The new design is a step forward. The site, however, is a hodgepodge in many ways.

A lot of Cleveland.com doesn’t make sense. Different sections have different designs. The site is hard to navigate.

The search engine is worthless and rarely returns relevant results. The UI still needs a lot of work. It’s hard for me to quickly find the content I want.

And the homepage design suffers from being overly crowded. It’s a prime example of the Wall of News. Plus, the homepage doesn’t have a clear graphical focus or main story.

I couldn’t help but think that if Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer could start from scratch they would do things differently. There is no way that Cleveland.com is the site they ultimately want. But it’s the site they have because of years of legacy code and legacy decisions.

I hate to see the past holding back news organizations on the Web. The Web demands agile development and quick decision making. I assure you that Web-only news organizations will not fall into the same trappings as traditional news organizations.

The pace of innovation on the Web from most news organizations feels very print like. It’s OK to tweak a print design every 5-10 years, but a Web site needs continual R&D. Not only do Web sites require new features, but they also require that those new features fit into existing designs and frameworks (Cleveland.com feels so broken and disjointed at times).

The Las Vegas Sun blew things up and went from being a zero to a hero in a matter of months. You can say all you want about how they have a unique JOA or about how they aren’t making money right now off their Web site. That doesn’t matter.

There is nothing stopping Cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer and their Advance Publications overlords from making Cleveland.com into a very good site.

Nothing, except bureaucratic inertia. Nothing, except being beholden to yesterday’s decisions. Nothing, except old media think.

And, to be honest, I do not have faith that either Cleveland.com or Advance have the right Web talent and minds in place to turn things around. Maybe most news organizations can’t do everything that the Sun is doing, but every organization could adopt their aggressive Web mindset. Every news organization could embrace agile development.

It is the mindset of The Las Vegas Sun that really stands out. It is mindset that is killing this industry. There is too much can’t do attitude and not enough can do.

One can’t help but wonder if all the legacy editors who cut their teeth in print simply do not understand the pace of the Web. Print was a monopoly. It never demanded innovation — agile or not.

Innovation can start from the bottom, but mindset starts from the top. When a high school Web site is better than most “professional” news Web sites, you know the problem is mental, not financial or technical. If it seems like I’m rambling, it’s because this is getting depressing.

How many news organizations can honestly say that the Web products they have right now are the products they would want to make if they could start over? If the answer is no, why not start over?

What do you have to lose?

I have some lessons from ONA 08 over at BeatBlogging.Org (version 2.0 nonetheless), and I wanted to highlight the supply and demand part of the post:

This is an issue facing journalism on the Web and not just beat bloggers. Right now, there is simply more supply of written content than there is of demand for it from advertisers. This means low CPMs for written content. It also means that text-only beat bloggers need to get a lot of page views to make a decent amount of revenue.

On the other hand, there isn’t enough supply of video content on the Web to meet advertisers demands. Advertisers love video ads and pre-roll. They want to stick it on your content, but are having trouble finding enough content.

I’m not suggesting that everyone jump to doing video, but diversifying content can help boost revenue. This could be a once-a-week podcast or vodcast with a few ads in it. It could mean shooting some video for your beat blog. But realize that video content can get a much higher ad rate than printed content can.

News organizations need to diversify their content. This means more audio, more video, more multimedia and — yes — less written content. Now, none of this matters if our multimedia content has terrible SEO and exist within ghettos.

CNN.com understands how to get people to watch lots of video. CNN.com automatically plays a new, related clip after a clip is finished. Users can build custom playlists and watch hours of video — and ads.

Most news organizations, however, allow video and other multimedia content to exist within arbitrary ghettos where that content is not connected to similar content. When a clip ends, the content stops. Related content is not linked together.

And the biggest crime of all: A lot of multimedia content on news Web sites is not properly indexed and searchable. That my friends is one of the worst ideas ever. Search is the key to content distribution.

News organizations need to address this supply and demand issue. Trust me, redundant, non-local news is not in demand. And it’s probably not that in demand by users either.

Yes, it is true, I’ll be at the Kent State/Poynter Workshop on blogging and ethics tomorrow.

I just wanted to clear this up really quick. I do have ethics.

Jay Rosen contends that if blogging didn’t have ethics, it would have failed. But it hasn’t failed.

So what does that tell you?

I’ll be tweeting from the workshop. Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask of the panelists.

Perhaps the biggest revelation from ONA 08 is that Tina Brown is forming a new Web startup dedicated to celebrating the life and times of the world’s great beasts.

I think the site is a great idea. First, everyone loves beasts, especially daily ones. How Brown went from being editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker to becoming the beast master is anyone’s guess.

But please don’t pull a Jeff Jarvis and ask about Brown’s business plan. Here is a little secret: there isn’t one.

On a side note, Brown is a terrible keynote speaker. She told us nothing new, except about her new Web site that doesn’t sound particularly original. And then she refused to answer any questions about her Web site because it hasn’t launched yet (but it will in a few weeks).

Maybe the world needs another news aggregation site (this time done by costly humans), but I’m not convinced. Brown wasn’t a convincing saleswoman. But she still is one hell of a Beast Master.

ONA 08 ended two days ago, and I spent all of yesterday recovering.

It was a great time, and I met a lot of talented and interesting people. Maybe if I met less people, I would have gotten more work done yesterday.

The Good:

• The sessions — The key to any good conference are the sessions. Most of the sessions I attended delivered. My definition of delivering is whether or not a day after I can remember at least learning one really big or new thing. From the law panel, I learned that newspapers can moderate comments without being held liable for the content of comments as long as newspapers don’t make editorial decisions that edit in libel. That session was worth it alone for what I learned about moderating comments.
• The people — A conference is only as good as its people. I wasn’t pick pocketed or booed out of my panel. Nobody tried to fight me over my blog either. But some of best learning and conversations happened in the hallways and not in the sessions themselves. That wouldn’t have been possible without good people.
• The receptions and cocktail hours — They were nice. I like.
• Question time — Every keynote and panel I attended left plenty of time for questions. The law panel I mentioned early was almost entirely questions. Good questions often spur the best conversations.

The bad:

• Keynote speakers – There were three speakers. One was good, one was bad and the other I didn’t even bother paying attention to. I’ll have more on this later, but some people feel that keynote speakers are an anachronism. You rarely learn anything new from the speakers, and some speakers like Tina Brown and the Reuters Guy (he was so bad, I’m not going to bother looking up his name) use their keynotes more as extended promotions for their products than for anything else. Robert Scoble delivered and he got me excited for the future of journalism. Excitement is the No. 1 thing a keynote can deliver.
• The cost — This is not an ONA-specific issue, but it wasn’t the cheapest conference, and the Capital Hilton isn’t the cheapest hotel. Many of the most innovative people in journalism right now are lower on the totem poll. Their employers may not be willing to spend $1,000 or so on a conference. The ONLINE News Association had a lot of older attendees, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I can’t help but feel that the cost kept out a lot of younger journalists and students. And honestly there are only so many editors a conference really needs.
• The people — Yes, there are good people and bad people. No, there weren’t attendees mugging other people, but there were some that I just don’t get. Why at the ONLINE News Association are we hearing in the hallways, “So, what is Twitter?” And why are we hearing it after Scoble spent a large chunk of his keynote talking about Twitter?!? Oh, I know, because some people choose not to attend Scoble’s talk, while many, many more decided that Brown’s talk about nothing important was a better idea. News flash, if you want to know what Twitter is, go sign up. It’s free. Be inquisitive for a change.

I will see all of you at ONA 09 in San Francisco. What I could really go for in the meantime is a conference on mobile content development and distribution. Maybe we could get an unconference going?