The WaPo’s 10 Web principles; BBC should do less with video; The world’s fastest camera; Quiet structure for online news design; Optimus Prime orders a fajita

‘The Washington Post’s’ 10 Web Principles
“As the struggle between print and online journalism continues, at least one newspaper, The Washington Post, has issued a memo to staffers that hopes to iron out any misunderstandings between the two departments.”

Do newspapers need to be innovators?
“Why am I not seeing tons of slide shows — whether they be Flash or Ajax — every day? Photographers take countless good photos everyday, and my research indicates that people love photos — way more than they love video. And why aren’t photos searchable on sites? Every photos should be tagged extensively. If I go to www.washingtonpost.com, I should be able to easily find photos of President Bush in Iraq on a certain date for a certain event. I can’t. I want multimedia content tagged like crazy and searchable. It’s possible. Technology companies built the technology, now newspapers need to embrace it. None of what I am talking about is being a pioneer. It’s just being forward thinking.”

Rolling Stone Breaks Climate News! Well, sort of …
“Dickinson’s article, headlined, “Six Years of Deceit,” follows up on six years’ worth of media investigations that have used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and government whistleblowers to expose a deliberate White House campaign to cast aspersions on climate science and the threat of global warming. Dickinson brings some new information to light - including evidence that Karl Rove “vetted” spurious edits to government science reports - but a lot of his piece is elaboration on the previous investigations.”

The BBC should do less online video, says interactivity head
“‘Instead of putting up hundreds of pieces of video every week, is just to be more focused. We want to give them a higher profile so we can get to the point where we can embed them. Once we are doing that, I don’t think we can afford to disappoint the audience. That’s not to say that stuff is badly made, it may just not necessarily complement the text that we have written and it may not just suit the platform that it’s on.’ Video embedded into stories, he added, was proving to be popular with audiences in early experiments, as they tended to dispense with the traditional news format, instead just showing the footage necessary to enhance the text story sitting beneath the embedded player.

The Newspaper of the Future, Just Like your Library
“The main point: Just because they aren’t employing as many people doesn’t mean newspapers in the future will have to suck. ‘The connection between quality and head count would seem intuitive, but a dip into the microfilm archives of the New York Times and Washington Post shows that decent newspapers have been produced with far fewer hands.’”

‘Shake-up: Old Media Meets New Realities at the AJC
The newsroom population is only part of the picture. With daily newspaper circulation in a slow-motion plunge across the country, the AJC is struggling to transform itself from a lumbering print-media dinosaur into a nimble multiplatform information provider able to reach customers in print, online, by mobile download – however future generations will get their news.”

NPPA Multimedia Summit Video
Jim “Celda” rocks! As does Jim Seida.

World’s fastest camera shows how things break apart
“With the ability to take pictures at a speed of 200 million frames per second, Arun Shukla’s high-speed camera can make even the fastest moving objects look like they are standing still. In an effort to assist the military and a variety of industries, he is using this one-of-a-kind technology to study how things break apart.” (via digg)

Quiet structure for online news design
“While I believe that a few structural and hierarchical elements could have been addressed better, the overall result of this redesign is a very neat, very clean and clear presentation of information; exactly what an online news site needs.”

CJR: Damage Report
“Most of the two hundred journalists who left The Dallas Morning News landed on their feet. Those who stayed are not so sure.” (via Romenesko)

St. Pete Times prints ad blaming gay people for hurricane
“The ad reportedly implied God sent Hurricane Katrina to wipe out gay-friendly New Orleans. And because St. Pete hosts one of Florida’s largest gay pride festivals, guess which city the pastor who printed this ad predicts is the next to feel God’s wrath?”

BackFence Shuts Down
“The ambitious site raised an initial round of $3 million, but never had high penetration in its communities, or sold enough Yellow Pages listings or banner ads to be optimistic about its future.”

Optimus Prime is Refused Service at McDonalds, Shows Mercy to Feeble Humans
“Apparently it’s against the law to order a fajita as Optimus Prime.”

Mozilla releases Firefox 3 Alpha 6
Woot.

Ability to Pull All-Nighters Can Be as Useful as B.A.
“Keg stands” = “Able to work in difficult positions”

Groovy dancing girl - Daft Punk inspires daft dance - on Bore Me
Here comes the weekend! Have a great one.