Ok, so things have been quiet around here so there’s a lot to catch up on. Yea, Time did their “You” as the Person of the Year for 2006. Yea, Amanda Cogdan…nun…Cogdan… uh, whatever! started out her “new” show on ABC. I’m not going to talk about all that old stuff. Here’s a mix of things you may have missed:

YouTube – Nerdcore For Life Trailer
Why do microphones make people so smart? Check this wisdom: “In the ’20s we had women’s lib, in the ’60s civil rights, in the ’90s gay pride and in the new millennium… bitches better fear the nerd revolution.” Make that into a tshirt and you’ve got my $20.

Lesson for the Editor: Learn to let go
Experience from the Learning Newsroom in Lincoln. A few other points:
- Making meetings more efficient. I’m insisting that news meetings start on time, end on time and don’t wander into topics that a whole roomful of people don’t need to spend their time on. It seems to be helping the energy of the meetings and the quality of the collaboration.
- Online editor did a series of fun, multimedia staff training sessions to explore our Web vision, tell people what their role in it can be and give them the skills they need to play those roles. Next step was meet with the department heads to talk about how they can change their processes to integrate the Web into what heretofore have been print-first operations.

REPEAT WITH ME: “WE ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF SERVING”
“We are in the business of serving. Serving information. Serving useful information. Serving real information. Serving, serving, serving.”

Craigslist CEO: Profits!? We don’t need no stinkin’ profits!
Forbes says “the business plan, by any rational standard, is completely insane.” That’s pretty awesome. … I wonder who the “Joe” commenter is… I know of a Joe, who runs a housing startup site competing against Craigslist, that loves to pick apart Craig.

The coming collapse and rebirth of newspaper journalism
“Editorial content is outsourced to an army of individual enthusiasts and bloggers who find interesting information on the Web and feed it to the site operators. Editorial expenses, which account for about a third of the operating costs of a daily newspaper, are practically zero. Circulation is outsourced to Google and links from other sites. In fact, there really is no concept of circulation in these new media because there.s no way to .own. the reader. This is a very different model from conventional publishing, which relies heavily on subscriber lists to validate advertising rates. The Web approach is much less controllable but also much cheaper.”

Amazon’s coming MP3 service
2007 is looking awesome already! Amazon’s planning to sell music loose, sans DRM.

The FWA – People’s Choice Award 2006
Vote for the Flash Web Awards 2006 best site of the year, lots of crazy awesome stuff here… to bad its all ads and portfolio sites, but there’s lots of cool stuff.

Rochester Paper’s Union Becomes 2nd to Question Gannett’s ‘Info Center’
“Union officers say they fear the newspaper intends to invoke a vaguely worded ‘flexibility’ clause in their final offer that would, essentially, allow managers to impose onerous work schedules.” Hm… can union shops do convergent work?

Flack over Time’s Person of the Year
Bloggers sure have a lot of opinions. Err… wait, I’m not supposed to mention this.

Home Depot Improvement Scams Father Of 2 Premature Babies
Did Consumerist just jump the shark? They’re trying to make a sob story about a guy who spent $130,000 on a kitchen at Home Depot and is mad because it’s taking a while to do. I can’t even imagine what a $130k kitchen looks like.

Network Fogies Getting Into YouTube-Like Racket
The rumors appear to be true, the big TV networks are building a Deathstar.

Newspaper use vs. consumer internet
Newspapers get pwnd more and more. (Via on2)

The Post-Crescent Information Center
Video and details on Gannett changes at his Wisconsin paper from Rake-master Mike De Sisti.

Working backwards on the last wetlands story
Tips on doing a web/print project. “4. Develop and plan web graphics, like this interactive Google map, first, then adapt them to print. It’s much easier to go from interactive to static than it is to make static interactive.”

Classified advertising it’s going away and taking newsrooms with it
“But you’re in for some changes. Because not long from now, those ugly little ads are going to vanish, and with them will go 35 cents of every dollar in ad revenue your newspaper makes.”

Cleaning up CNN’s website
The Kos does a visual evaluation removing CNN’s site fluff, sensationalism and ads, looking for the day’s real news. How would your site do?

Mondo Spider project – Ridable Mechanospider
This is pretty awesome but I fear it.

What would radical transparency mean for Wired?
Six tactics of transparent media, their upsides and risks.

Gannett photographers rap about the newsroom changes
Sportsshooter members sound off about their experiences working in the new Gannett “Information Center” it’s not exactly pretty, but photographers tend to be a little … holier than thou… so take the responses with a grain of salt.

Website of the Year 2006!
England’s “websites of the year” and it’s from http://www.WebsiteOfTheYear.co.uk so it must be true.

The 70-Hour Week Is No Sweat For a New Breed of Executive
The jump from 40 to 60-70 hours is actually remarkably easy.. When I was a teen I thought that was preposterous… but when you get into big projects or training people… it just happens. … often.

The coming collapse and rebirth of newspaper journalism
LONG essay… with some interesting stuff. “This will be nothing less than a complete rebirth of journalism around the concept that information is plentiful and cheap. Instead of 1,500 print newspapers, there will be perhaps five to ten national “super-papers” and many thousands of regional and special interest community news sites. The process of getting there will be wrenching and controversial, but the new model will create a more dynamic and diverse information landscape than we have ever known. It will be incredibly exciting. I hope to be around for the ride.” (Via VisualEditors)

Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect
Checkmate.

Amanda Congdon and ABC News: Disappointing and a disgrace to women
Ok, I lied.

Reindeer Arm Wrestling: A Gift From OfficeMax
This flash game is unnecessarily difficult but hilarious. (Via Rubel) More holiday time-wasting games here.