newspapers

I'll leave it to others to comment on the potential impact on the newspaper industry of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo takeover.

I'm interested in how Microsoft may be faced with a choice: Change who you are in a very fundamental way, or destroy both Yahoo and yourself in the process.

That is the very choice facing newspapers today, and we might learn something by considering how this takeover might play out.

The Miami Herald has killed a project to outsource editorial production of a zoned section to workers in India. Good move. It was a bad idea in the first place. Next they should kill the idea of outsourcing website comment monitoring, which is a rich source of leads and perspective that can help journalists reconnect with the real world.

But outsourcing can be a good idea. The criteria for outsourcing are simple:

The Chicago Tribune is trimming its page width again: another inch gone, some more dollars saved in newsprint costs, another disguised ad rate hike.

The progressive narrowing of the web width seems symbolic of the trap that snares large newspapers. Unable to make the bold and sweeping changes that might reverse their sagging fortunes, they tinker with the format, making small and insufficient alterations.

Registration has begun for Ifra's PublishAsia 2008, to be held April 2-3 in Macau, China. Macau is the former Portuguese colony on the Chinese coast.

The Web seems to be the major focus. Ifra's announcement cites these topics:

Mallary Jean Tenore has a piece at Poynter.org titled Journalists Develop, Dismiss Digital Identities that includes the predictable "other side" in which a luddite just doesn't have the time.

In this case the luddite happens to be the "editor/opinion pages" of the Houston Chronicle. That's sad, because it's another example of failure to perceive opportunity.

"Digital identity" is just plain identity. Either people know who you are and what you stand for, or they don't.

We're coming up on the time to post New Year's resolutions. Here's a proposal: Newspapers should resolve to be more like Apple and less like Microsoft.

Just a few years ago, Apple was beaten. Its goose was cooked. It was on life support in the shape of a temporary investment by Microsoft, which feared antitrust action if Apple disappeared.

There's a movement among some of my blogbuddies to line up in the outrage column in the wake of this week's FCC decision on broadcast licensing, which drops a longtime general ban on assignment of new licenses to owners of daily newspapers in the same market.

I just can't get excited about it. It may feel good to carry a lance against big corporate media ownerships, but it seems to me a case of fighting the last war.