Online marketing specialist Mitch Joel knows how to get Google hits. Dubbed the "rock star of digital marketing" by Marketing magazine, he is an expert at helping websites get a bigger hit of Google juice, i.e.: making the website attractive to the search engine and therefore bringing in more traffic. Google itself recognized his talent, inviting Joel to its corporate headquarters, the Googleplex in Mountain View, to explain the ins and outs of online marketing to companies like Wal-mart, Costco, Sears, and Sephora.

In a recent post on his website, Joel took pity on newspapers and offered some advice on how they too could lift their Google hits with 10 Things Every Newspaper and Magazine Website Must Do. I asked Joel, via email, why he cared about newspapers.

He said:

I have a passion for the publishing industry. I see so many indications of how they can succeed online and it saddens me to see most of them sticking with 'the way it has always been.' Also, I write a twice monthly business column called, "New Business -- Six Pixels of Separation" for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun.

ONLINE STORIES SHOULD NOT MIRROR PRINT

Recently, 50 C-level newspaper executives met at a closed door summit held by the American Press Institute to discuss "concrete steps the industry can take to reverse its declines in revenue, profit and shareholder value." Joel said that tackling that issue was like "boiling the ocean."

Joel suggests that, better than boiling the ocean, newspapers can solve those problems by making small, incremental changes to build their community. He lists ten such changes newspapers can make, including:

1) Link Journalism -- Newspapers get lots of links in, but rarely, if ever, link out. Search engines like sites that link out; it also provides a better user experience.
2) Formatting -- Break up large blocks of text with bold and /or italics, and use bullet points.
3) Tagging -- Give the reader an idea of what the story is about before they read it.
4) Blog Directory -- Promote bloggers, make them feel an allegiance to the newspaper or at least an appreciation.
5) Cross Promote Effectively -- Be smart when using a URL in the newspaper. Don't just point to the generic newspaper URL, be specific.
6) Unique Web Address -- See above, but keep the URL simple.
7) Highlight Your Contributors -- Let readers peek behind the curtain of the newspaper wizard. If local bloggers are proficient, link to them.
8) Comments -- Allow story commenting. Demand that reporters respond to readers.
9) Correct Mistakes -- The online newspaper should be an ever-changing record of the news.
10) Collaborative Filtering - "If you liked this... then you might want to read this..."

This is basic stuff to anyone who blogs. But newspapers are still learning these tricks. Why are they lagging behind?

The problem is that most newspapers use their online edition as an electronic version of the traditional newspaper "morgue." In the "old days" of print newspapers, the morgue referred to a newspaper's library of clippings, retained for research purposes. Today, newspapers have done away with morgues, instead simply shoveling all that published text online. They stick to this model because they fail to grasp three key differences between the world of print and the world online.

First, newspapers aren't used to the idea of "community." The only community to which newspaper reporters are commonly exposed consists of friends, family, sources and one another. Except for sources, this "community" rarely includes much diversity of opinion. Bloggers, meanwhile, understand that they are writing for a community that is worldwide in scope, often built from a collection of strangers.

Second, reporters don't think of what they do as a conversation. Newspapers report the news to readers, but they aren't designed to encourage readers to respond. Newspaper publishers organize their websites with similar thoughts in mind. Many don't allow story commenting because it requires staff time to monitor or approve comments and conversation is discouraged. Compare this to the reader engagement commonly found on blogs, where feedback is immediate and very often unfiltered.

Third, bloggers know that reaching out to engage other bloggers in the conversation is essential to growing traffic. In contrast, newspapers won't see a huge spike in circulation from a single story in the same way that a blog might if the writer hits a sweet spot.
Links, tags, bullet points, blogroll, and comment love all play an important part in building a blog following. Not seeing the benefit of an engaging website, most newspapers are content to let their websites exist as nothing more than static mirrors to their print editions.

SHOVELWARE PREVENTS GOOGLE JUICE

These are all doable at most newspaper websites. Why aren't newspapers doing these things?

The overwhelming majority of newspapers depend on "shovelware" to create their websites. Shovelware is slang for software programs that make it easy for the same story that appears in print to appear online. For example, at our newspaper, we use NewsEditPro to create a text file; the text file is approved for publication and placed in a Quark document for the print edition. Shovelware makes it hard for newspapers to use any of Mitch Joel's tips. But hard is not impossible.

There's an important word in that last paragraph: "text." Text makes it to the online edition. Graphics are usually left out, but, when they are included, they aren't searchable. This is another problem with simply putting a printed story online untouched.

Let's say our newspaper prints a story with the headline "Final Tuneups" about the Western Kentucky University basketball team, the Hilltoppers. In the print edition, a nice accompanying graphic illustrates that this story is about the Hilltoppers. When the story goes online, the headline remains a vague "Final Tuneups," but the graphic is left out. Google juice = zero. If a basketball fan wanted to search our website for stories about the team or their opponents, they likely wouldn't use the search term "Final Tuneups."

A better online edition headline would read "WKU Hilltopper Basketball Final Tuneups." Google juice = much better. Better yet? "WKU Hilltopper Basketball Meets Bellermine." Four out of five words are keywords: WKU, Hilltopper, Basketball, Bellermine.
But since newspapers use the online edition as their archives, this usually isn't done. It should be. Instead, newspapers continue to use the same headlines online that appeared in print, despite the headaches that this could cause search engines.

It's not necessary to boil the ocean to make effective changes in the online edition of a newspaper. But it does require a change in the way publishers view the online edition. Stop seeing it as the official archival record of the newspaper. Leave that for the digitized library or microfilm, or hopefully Google. Instead, think of the online edition as something living, that readers will want to use. The online edition should be as search engine-friendly as possible.

As Mitch Joel says, "It takes nothing to do this stuff -- except resources and time." I would add: It takes an attitude change.

Mark Van Patten isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He has compensated by surrounding himself with smart people. As a result, he in his 38th year of working at small newspapers, starting on the street as an ad sales rep and working his way up to publisher. Currently, Van Patten is general manager of the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He blogs, Twitters, Flickrs, Diggs, Stumbles, Tumblrs, and Woopras his way through the web and is Linked-in. He blogs at MarkVanPatten.com for business and GoingLikeSixty.com for fun.

Photo of man floating on Dead Sea with newspaper by Kevin Lim via Flickr.

I don't consider our print and online newspaper areas here at the Bowling Green Daily News to be Byzantine. But to an outsider it might appear that way.

On paper, the hierarchy is pretty simple. Our newspaper's website is under the control of the online director. The online director reports to two different people: the managing editor and the general manager (which is me). The managing editor is responsible for online content that was first published in the newspaper's print edition, while the general manager is responsible for all other online content and the website's business functions. Each of these people, in turn, reports to the publisher.

It's definitely no tangled bureaucracy, but even within this simple system you find conflicts holding the website back. The problem is that the different people in that system just have different priorities. As general manager, I want to see both a strong online presence and continued healthy print circulation. In contrast, the managing editor doesn't want to "hurt" the print edition by making the online edition too strong, fearing that it could tempt subscribers to abandon print.

Ultimately, this conflict is what's holding our online edition back. Without a full commitment from the managing editor, the website will never reach its full potential.

Complicating the situation, the managing editor and general manager can't simply each work in their own private spheres. Just as it is with the print edition, there are online newspaper projects that require cooperation between both the news and the business silos.

It's not a great way to structure things. And sometimes it's a downright crappy way to structure things.

When Is It Great?

This system works great when things are trucking along nicely and nothing out of the ordinary is required of the staff, the print or the online editions -- that's pretty much every day. Advertising sells an ad in a designated space, the news content is routine, and the back end handles the data without a glitch.

On a normal day, we put all our local news online -- no disagreement there. It's a typical move for a newspaper our size. We simply shovel all the local news online and add AP and a few widgets for the state, national and weather sections. The system is good enough to keep going as is but it makes innovation difficult.

BGDailyNews.com is a one person department. One person who works 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday. On the weekends, the online edition is published by a copy editor.

When Is It Crappy?

It's crappy when: 1) I want some new feature implemented on the site, or 2) I want to get more news content on the site. If I want a new feature, we have to hope that the feature is already available through our content management system, Townnews.com. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't, and sometimes they say it's there but we find out it doesn't really work.

We don't spend much money on our website outside of Townnews.com because it doesn't make economic sense. However, if there is a feature that I consider to be vital to our growth, I could go outside of Townnews.com.

The second problem is a bit trickier. If I want more news content on the website, then I find I am on the outside of the silo looking up. For example, the managing editor and I agreed a long time ago (18 months) that we wanted to put local video on our site. The newsroom contributes video to the site three to four times per month.

We also agreed that we wanted to put engagement, wedding, anniversary photos and stories on the site. But because the wedding section is published in our Sunday print edition, the weekend copy editor often forgets to upload it to the website.

Blogs from our newsroom have been an utter failure. We have one staffer blogging on a regular basis about sports, mainly Western Kentucky football. I want more photo galleries, but because the photographers don't report to me, this doesn't get done. However, we still get web traffic at our reader gallery where readers regularly submit photos.

We need more maps and more database-generated content. But because that would require reporters to gather or parse information in a different way, it just doesn't get done.
The staff is reluctant to make changes to support the online edition without the full commitment of the managing editor. These are problems that could be solved if the managing editor could communicate the need to work together to improve the website.

Is Our Structure Byzantine?

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how complicated the structure is.

What matters is that our website traffic has plateaued. What matters is that our print circulation increased by 2.25% daily and was flat for Sunday editions in our last ABC audit. What matters is that the managing editor is trying to build paid print circulation, while the general manager wants to increase both paid circulation and web traffic.

Like other newspapers, disagreement exists on whether those two desires are mutually exclusive. This is the difference that we must solve before our website can move forward.

Mark Van Patten isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He has compensated by surrounding himself with smart people. As a result, he in his 38th year of working at small newspapers, starting on the street as an ad sales rep and working his way up to publisher. Currently, Van Patten is general manager of the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He blogs, Twitters, Flickrs, Diggs, Stumbles, Tumblrs, and Woopras his way through the web and is Linked-in. He blogs at MarkVanPatten.com for business and GoingLikeSixty.com for fun.

The Bowling Green Daily News doesn't have a "web first" strategy in the way we run our newspaper. That means that we don't post articles to our website before they appear in print. Apart from some breaking local news, most major stories don't appear on the Internet until after the press is running.

Right now, our readers aren't particularly Internet savvy. Many still use dial-up for Internet access. They generally only check their email a couple times a week. They don't know much about what's available online. They still depend heavily on the printed paper for their news.

But that's not going to stay the case for long. When our readers discover the Internet, and the myriad websites that have local information, they will start migrating from print to online. If readers are going to trust a newspaper, it has to be first with news more often than any competitor. So if we are going to keep readers in an online world, they have to know that when an important story breaks, they can quickly find coverage on our website.

Our Situation

The Daily News is a small afternoon paper -- we serve a county readership of about 100,000. Our biggest competitor is the local television station, which reports news at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00 pm.

In a community our size, most local news occurs in the evening. Government agencies meet late afternoon or early morning, but apart from the odd cantankerous session or controversial issue, rarely produce anything unexpected. Press conferences are usually held in mid-morning; most agencies notify us ahead of time so that we can have a story prepared to publish the same day that any public announcement is made.

The big hard news items for us are fatal traffic accidents, fires, particularly heinous assaults, high-interest trials and severe weather conditions. The TV station often mentions these events on their newscasts, but they rarely have video footage -- unless it happens early enough in the day they can get a person to the scene and back before 8 p.m. They hardly ever do live shots for a breaking news story.

The competing television station will play the footage at 5:00, 6:00 or 10:00 p.m., or sometimes, if it's a big story, on all three broadcasts. But our newspaper won't have the story in readers' hands until 5 p.m. (at the latest) the next day.

If we adopted a "web first" plan, we could beat the television station by hours and beat the print newspaper by many, many hours. We would "own the Internet" in Bowling Green.

Should We Do Web First?

Our Managing Editor Mike Alexieff, has repeatedly said that he has only one concern about adopting a "web first" strategy: killing the print edition.

"I don't want to give our readers any more reasons to drop their subscription," he said. "Our print edition pays the bills...our website only brings in 5% of our revenue and that is flat...what would happen to the newsroom if our print product goes away?"

Alexieff points out that there is no threat online that can compete with the Daily News. He sees no threat on the horizon because of the capital investment required to launch a site and get a staff in place. He cites the cost and lack of potential revenue as a reason to stick with print instead of adopting a "web first" strategy.

Troy Warren, the paper's circulation director, sees it in a different light.

"The news has always been free," he said. "Advertising has paid for the news. Circulation rates cover the cost of delivering the newspaper, so people have been paying us for delivery, not for the news. I'm not freaked by a 'web first' strategy; I think it's inevitable. Someday my job may change and I would become an electronic delivery person instead of a print delivery person."

He says he isn't threatened by the changes that the newspaper is going through. He believes that eventually there will come a tipping point when newspapers will have to choose between investing resources in print or online; he isn't sure how the Daily News will adapt when that time comes, but he is sure that time is fast approaching.

The Amplifier Already Does Web First

The site's online director Chris Houchens reminded me that we already have a publication that takes a "web first" strategy: The Amplifier, a monthly arts and entertainment tabloid that the newspaper brought under its wing about a year ago. That experiment has not been especially successful.

"We put stuff on the web first all the time with The Amplifier but if it's not in the printed edition, we hear about it -- even though the story may have been online for a month," Houchens said. "We constantly push content to the tabloid's MySpace page and tease in the print edition to find stories upcoming on the web. You would think this market of readers would be prime for web first."

Traffic to The Amplifier website has stagnated, while advertising in the print edition continues to grow every month.

Houchens says that newspapers have to realize that the online newspaper does not serve the same function as a printed edition. A printed newspaper has to appeal to a wide general audience, while on the Internet, where users can go anywhere and read anything, websites that appeal to niche audiences are more successful. (Houchens wrote more about this idea on his blog recently.)

Online, we face another potential challenge from a nearby college newspaper.

"Our bigger threat (than the local television station) is the College Heights Herald," Houchens said, mentioning the twice weekly newspaper for Western Kentucky University. "These students don't have the newspaper mindset. They distribute the news like they consume it."

The College Heights Herald has been quick to adapt to an Internet world, even sending out email alerts of story updates. Every time that Houchens has gone to post a breaking story for bgdailynews.com, he says he finds an email in his in-box from the College Heights Herald already addressing the same story. He says this is especially true with stories involving Western Kentucky University.

h2: What's the Harm In Not Doing Web First?

The big harm in not having a web-first strategy is that we may fall deeper into complacency -- and not be prepared for the day when our readers find that they don't need us anymore. Once our readers discover RSS or even email alerts, there is a risk that they will find replacements for the printed newspaper. They will become their own editors, compiling a list of websites where they can search to get their own news.

If a certain reader is only interested in national and state news, sports, and obituaries, for example, it would be easy for him to find all that information online without ever visiting bgdailynews.com. In a future online world, we will have to find ways to keep our readers.

If an entrepreneur sees a crack in our dominance of covering the news, a wedge could be driven in and cause readers to abandon our print edition and our online edition. Currently, we are using the print content and revenue to subsidize our online edition. It's our R&D for the future, when the day comes that our newspaper has to make that choice between print and web.

Mark Van Patten isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He has compensated by surrounding himself with smart people. As a result, he in his 38th year of working at small newspapers, starting on the street as an ad sales rep and working his way up to publisher. Currently, Van Patten is general manager of the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He blogs, Twitters, Flickrs, Diggs, Stumbles, Tumblrs, and Woopras his way through the web and is Linked-in. He blogs at MarkVanPatten.com for business and GoingLikeSixty.com for fun.

Recently, MediaShift started running reports from "embeds" at various media outlets and educational institutions. This report comes from Mark Van Patten, general manager for the online efforts at the Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News.

I was as excited as anybody to be able to post video on our website. Our newspaper readers were turning more and more to their computer screen to read our news and it seemed logical that they would appreciate and enjoy seeing video enhancements for the print edition.

My excitement soon turned to frustration as I started to run into hurdles. While I saw an opportunity to expand our "share of mind," our photojournalists saw it as an expansion of their work load. There also was immediate disagreement over hardware and software needs.

Now, the hardware and software issues have been resolved, but we still haven't come to a mutual understanding or agreement on who should do what and when. Consequently, local video on our website is not fresh. As general manager, I have no oversight of the newsroom, only the online newspaper.

Getting the Right Equipment

I think photographers are often too involved with looking the part rather than getting results. It is especially true when it comes to photographers shooting video. When we made the commitment to video, our chief photographer purchased a prosumer videocamera, i.e. a camera that was between top-of-the-line professional and an amateur -- or consumer -- camera. It was an unnecessary expense, but it looked good.

Our online director Chris Houchens offers this great example when he speaks to newspaper groups on how to do video:

What photographers say they need

This is what your photographers say they want. A prosumer camcorder that looks so different from the regular consumer camcorder that the shooter will obviously be doing "serious" work.

What photographers really need

This is what photographers need. Since the end result is going to be web video -- not broadcast -- the difference in quality isn't discernible by the average viewer.

Excellent video and sound can be captured without spending more than $700 total on equipment including camera, tripod and microphone. However, the photographer won't look like the photographer from the TV station. Despite the size of your community, people know what TV photographers should look like.

Overcoming the look of being a photographer shooting video is not a small hurdle and should be addressed early on.

Gary Moyers, webmaster for Shurz Communications newspapers in Kentucky, told the Kentucky Press Association recently:

When we started, we got the big $8,000 Sony camera...it came with all the bells and whistles, but the equipment doesn't have to be that costly...at (Jessamine Journal in Nicholasville, Ky. (6,200 circulation weekly), they have a $300 JVC camera that works fine and they post their videos through YouTube.

Getting the Right Software

Probably the most often overlooked aspect of newspapers putting video online is the software needed to make better video. Video is better when it is edited. If a newspaper is shooting and uploading raw unedited video it often will have the YouTube look, i.e. amateur. But with simple software, often free, video can easily be edited and you can even add a voiceover after the fact to give it a more professional look.

At the Daily News, we started with Visual Communicator Pro. We paid about $200 for the software a couple years ago. Since we purchased it, the company has been acquired by Adobe and the software now sells for $400 with numerous additional features. The version we have is useful for web productions. Houchens used it for a couple years to produce our daily online tease for the print edition.

This is a Daily News Now webcast that was produced by Chris Houchens using Visual Communicator Pro. The webcast is no longer produced because of a decline in viewer interest.

What photographers say they need

Newspaper photographers think they need a full blown professional editing bay (like the one pictured here), when in fact a smaller, less costly alternative is available and perfectly acceptable for web video. (Photo by DF Shapinsky for PINGNews.com/Shapinsky MultiMedia via Flickr.)

What photographers really need

The Daily News uses Visual Communicator Pro with no special lighting, as you can see in this photo. The green backdrop is a vinyl sheet that is included with the software package. However, we have replaced the coat rack with a more permanent string suspension arrangement from the ceiling.

For editing raw video, Houchens uses the software that came with the video card, Pinnacle. He classifies it as a mid-grade editing program. Daily News photographers prefer to use Final Cut Pro Express from Apple.

This is a video story produced using Pinnacle software included with the computer video card.

This is a video story produced by Chris Houchens using Final Cut Express.

Who Shoots Video

At the Daily News we have two video sections on our main page. One area is reserved for photojournalists' work, called Multimedia and includes slide-shows and video; the other is for all the other video and is labeled Web Video.

If we get one video story a week from the newsroom, it's been a good week. Our web video is shot by myself and Houchens. We also run hot and cold on getting new video online. Since we both have other duties, we just don't force ourselves to get out and shoot. In our newsroom, there is very little discussion of the online newspaper and how it can be used to enhance the print edition. Houchens does not sit in on newsroom planning meetings.

This indicates to me that the online newspaper is still viewed as something less than journalistically worthy of consideration. It is still an afterthought in the newsroom.

Mark Van Patten isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He has compensated by surrounding himself with smart people. As a result, he in his 38th year of working at small newspapers, starting on the street as an ad sales rep and working his way up to publisher. Currently, Van Patten is general manager of the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He blogs, Twitters, Flickrs, Diggs, Stumbles, Tumblrs, and Woopras his way through the web and is Linked-in. He blogs at MarkVanPatten.com for business and GoingLikeSixty.com for fun.

Recently, MediaShift started running reports from "embeds" at various media outlets and educational institutions. This report comes from Mark Van Patten, general manager for the online efforts at the Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News.

I decided early on that the best strategy for our newspaper to grow its web presence was to not to hire people, but to find other firms to partner with.

This took us from working with a guy with a server is his apartment to working with a phone company and finally a newspaper-specific host/content management system. We gave up control over many aspects of our website in order to remain flexible.

Today, we partner with the largest newspaper Internet hosting publishing firm you've never heard of, TownNews.com. I've been the catalyst for the Daily News online activity since it began in 1995. The Daily News is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, home of Western Kentucky University and the only place in the world where Corvettes are built. Bowling Green is located in southern Kentucky, 90 miles south of Louisville, 70 miles north of Nashville. The Daily News employs about 100 people in a growing county of 100,000.

I'm still the catalyst today for our online activities. Am I saying that with pride or braggadocio? A little of both, but more out of frustration. The problem? Only a handful of employees in the building are wishing we could do more online. But we're as deep with features as most newspapers, despite our smaller size.

I've used the same strategy for our online newspaper as with any other venture in the newspaper business: try to hire or partner with people smarter than me.

Chris Houchens is a smart guy that I hired to bring a different perspective to our online newspaper. He had a marketing perspective with plenty of non-newspaper media experience. Be careful when you hire a smart guy, they have a blog and aren't afraid to use it.

Reacting to a comment that Mitch Joel wrote in his marketing blog about print publications needing to become multimedia productions, Chris said:

But even at this very moment, the offices of newspapers, magazines, radio/TV stations, and other traditional media are full of people who: 1) don't understand this; 2) don't want to understand this; 3) are afraid of this; 4) feel that they are already on the cutting edge just by replicating their content online; 5) are so caught up in a traditional stylebook of the 'way things ought to be' that they are actively fighting online ventures.

We have all of those people in our building at the Daily News.

Enter TownNews.com

TownNews.com provides hosting and a publishing system for over 1,500 newspapers and shopping circulars. A newspaper entrepreneur (yes there are a few left) Marcus Wilson was working for the Bigfork Eagle and saw the potential in the hundreds of newspapers like the Daily News. We wanted more, but just didn't know where to turn. His International Newspaper Network (INN) was the forerunner to TownNews.com, of which Lee Enterprises is now a majority partner.

Like the partners before TownNews.com, we have been the squeaky wheel that, hopefully, has kept them on their toes. We have pushed and they have pushed back sometimes, but we always have been pushing in the same forward direction.

Here's some of what TownNews.com brings to the table to help newspapers "own the Internet" in their communities (CEO Marcus Wilson's mantra):

> The Job Network: to compete with employment sites
> YP (Yellow Pages) Engine: a directory to compete with telephone directories online
> The Port: a social networking component
> Ad Owl: placing and paying for classified ads online
> Wheels Lite: automotive inventory management system
> Real Estate Lite: real estate inventory management system
> SWAT: a person that comes into the market to build revenue

Here is their current menu for newspapers. We have integrated all these modules into our site, except for The Port. We appreciate their efforts, but often ask them: "what will you do for us today?" We don't want to be bleeding edge, because we can't afford it, but we want to be leading edge.

With TownNews.com, we are backed with a staff of designers and developers that would be totally unaffordable to us. Our readers expect teeny-weeny newspapers like ours to have the same features as the big news sites. TownNews.com gives us a shot.

Underserving Newspapers

Yet, it is very frustrating that the very features that should be routine for a newspaper website cause me the most grief:

> Video player embed code doesn't work after 24 hours because of their
link-naming convention.
> RSS feeds have no formatting. RSS readers are fed an unreadable block of text.
> The photo gallery is so poorly designed that it is embarrassing.
> Not enough capacity for a huge traffic spike /opportunity-missed.html

These sweet spots, as Houchens refers to them, for newspapers are woefully underserved by TownNews.com. Yet Marcus Wilson, TownNews.com CEO, touts their importance on a regular basis.

As with most partnerships, communication is important. TownNews.com is as good as the newspaper business at communicating with customers, i.e. very poor. TownNews.com knows we want to be among the first to implement new tokens, widgets, features, modules. Yet, more than once, our online director Houchens has learned of something totally new by serendipity.

I'm glad we hooked up with some smart guys at TownNews.com, but I wouldn't be true to myself if I wasn't constantly looking for other smart guys to partner with. Giving up some control has served us well and it's a strategy most other newspapers would do well to follow: no matter their size.

Mark Van Patten isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He has compensated by surrounding himself with smart people. As a result, he in his 38th year of working at small newspapers, starting on the street as an ad sales rep and working his way up to publisher. Currently, Van Patten is general manager of the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He blogs, Twitters, Flickrs, Diggs, Stumbles, Tumblrs, and Woopras his way through the web and is Linked-in. He blogs at MarkVanPatten.com for business and GoingLikeSixty.com for fun.