Chris Snider

If you work for a newspaper, please take the time to watch this:

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Obviously the Rocky was in a different situation than most newspapers (being in a two-newspaper town). But I hope this opens a few more eyes to the fact we have to adapt to survive.

The way people consume information is changing. And so we must change. It’s as simple as that.

Or be prepared for more videos like the one above.

From David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Read comments from readers here.

I just got a call from someone in Omaha asking me if I had see this:

Apparently Hearst TV sites are pulling in headlines from other sources and adding those headlines to their site (rather prominently, I might add). I have no problem with this. I think it’s a great idea.

Except for one little thing: When you click on the headlines, it doesn’t take you directly to the source web site. You get a popup window with the headline, a summary, and an ad.

Yikes. It seems that they are monetizing someone else’s content.

What do you think? Genius? Or Evil Genius?

Need some online inspiration? Just take a stroll through some other web sites and learn from what others are doing. With that in mind, here are five ideas that could benefit almost any news web site out there:

The azcentral.com live module. Nothing complicated here. Just a continuous stream of reader comments as they come into the site. Another great way to get people into the conversation.

NewsOK’s live page. A one-stop shop for current live videos and chats. All in one place, so I always know where to look.

The Miami Herald’s news grid. A clever (and straightforward) way to show the top news in several categories at a glance.

The Austin American-Statesman’s Twitter page. Sure, this promotes the Statesman’s many Twitter accounts, but the best part is that it promotes local Twitter users worth following.

The Des Moines Register’s business blog aggregator. Instead of trying to get the best local business bloggers to post using your blog tools, simply add links to their latest blogs and make them a part of your local blogger network.

On a recent trip to Honolulu, I was impressed with the simple, straightforward way the Honolulu Advertiser promoted the web site under it’s flag every day:

This got me wondering how other papers throughout the country did the same thing. What I found was that most site still have a very small promo – one I’m sure most readers never even notice.

Here’s a look at some papers’ flags:

What do you think? Should the refers be more prominent? Does this even matter?