Here's something offered by too few local websites: a solid primer on "the basics" of local life from the Pocono Record in Pennsylvania.

Writing for the Jan. 9 issue of Business Week, media columnist Jon Fine has a five-point plan for "the daily paper of tomorrow." Four of his initiatives already are in operation at a number of daily newspapers, but then, as William Gibson said, the future is already here -- it's just unevenly distributed.

On the whatevereth day of Christmas, my browser gave to me:

If your website's message boards read like a men's locker room, here's a clue that you're out of sync with society. A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life project points out that women now outnumber men online in the United States, and that's especially true in the troublesome (for newspapers) 18-29 age bracket.

Have I been stuck on a message for this long? Steve Rubel's post on how to read books for free using Google reminded me I haven't looked very closely at Google Books since it got fat with content. I searched for my own name (doesn't everybody?) and found myself quoted in Christopher Harper's 1999 "And That's the Way It Will Be:"

I received some thoughtful email feedback to my best-case scenario, five years out item. Here's one point that I'd like to focus on: "Video and audio content generation will become a normal product of the papers. Non-printable media must become more prominent in the future."

I agree wholeheartedly. I'm just not sure what form it should or will take:

I was asked to write 250 words encompassing an "ideal vision of what a newspaper business unit will look like, five years from now." I can't hold it to 250, but here's a 488-word look into a best-case scenario:

The website will no longer be an "online edition." Print and online products will have evolved significantly apart, each focusing on the unique characteristics of its medium, but operating as a team to serve the community.