Two weeks ago, Gawker blogger Maggie Shnayerson got an e-mail from her boss, Nick Denton, telling her the bad news, according to the story. "Last month, you got about 400,000 pageviews; this month you're at 160,000," Denton wrote. "You should be doing some 670,000 views a month to justify your advance."

Related
Can journalists survive on clicks alone? (Jan. 1, 2008)

Readers, too, have seen this as a decline in quality for the company's chain of websites, which now seem to value sexy, sensational news more than ever before. High-minded readers are leaving the Gawker sites, and therefore, the Gawker brand is changing, the Guardian story says. "Go low, people. Go really, really low," comments one former reader. At the end of the day, though, advertisers don't seem to mind, and the jury is still out on whether Denton is a palm reader for the media business.

I talked to a reporter friend of mine today about the value of "hyperlocalism" in election coverage. At metro newspapers across the nation, journalists were dispatched to coffee shops and polling places to get color and opinions from American voters. Those short pieces were then tossed onto blogs, giving readers quickly-changing updates. The theory was to pull the coverage away from the talking heads and pollsters and bring the focus to the wisdom of the people who are actually making the choices. But looking at the coverage online, my friend and I agreed, the color was often dull and too much effort went to getting it. This type street-jump coverage seems to please editors more than it edifies readers. Take the Orange County Register blog called "All things Presidential," for instance. Reporters were "hanging out" with campaign supporters and interviewing voters who "shrugged their shoulders" when asked who they prefer. It was a nice effort, but it brought little to the day's discussion, a fact shown by the number of comments readers left at the bottom of each post (most had none by almost midnight).

Now go back to the Google map. Regular people, the kind editors love, are contributing to the international discussion about the race. "I am going to be a wreck in the fall if Super Tuesday is any indication," writes a woman in Queens, New York. The map moves around depending on where the comment is coming from. It's fun for readers to watch, and probably more fun for the people writing it. "I can't believe CA is going for Clinton," writes a man in Portland, Oregon. Real-time election results are also posted beside the map. The coverage loses the live color and depth that a reporter can provide, but if that color and depth were hardly there anyway, you're not losing much. Plus, it still provides the news, and it's probably cheaper to set up if you have a knowledgeable and savvy developer on staff than it is to send a dozen reporters out to local coffee shops.

During one of the most exciting and historic races in presidential history, the site helps voters easily cut through the noise. "Some of my colleagues at the paper bristled when I floated the idea of us checking the 'truth,'" Adair wrote. "But I think it's really just synonymous with being accurate." In an era of journalism when everybody is talking about experimenting with the news, Adair and PolitiFact appear to be among the few doing it successfully.

Text and Ideas: How did PolitiFact come about? Whose idea was the whole thing?

Bill Adair: It was my idea, but I got immediate encouragement from my editors. I've covered the last two presidential campaigns and recall sometimes being frustrated that we in the press were simply repeating claims by the candidates that I knew weren't true. We did it because we felt it was up to the voters to sort out. I thought it would be helpful to have a Web site where we fact-checked the individual claims by the candidates, so voters could see what's true.

I think it's the role of the news media -- indeed, our obligation -- to tell voters what's true and what's not. Even when we have fact-checked in the past, we've been too wishy-washy. But with PolitiFact, we make the call.

Text and Ideas: Explain the "Truth-O-Meter." Where did it come from? What was the inspiration for it?

Bill Adair: Those kind of meters have been widely used, so I can't claim credit for it, but I got a lot of good feedback in 2000 when we used one to make a tongue-in-cheek prediction of Sen. Bob Graham's chances of being picked as Gore's running mate. I called it "the Graham-O-Meter."

The idea of the Truth-O-Meter is to give voters a simple way to know the relative truth of a statement. They don't have to read our entire article; they can see at a glance by seeing the Truth-O-Meter.

Text and Ideas: The site is focused on fact checking -- it even has the word "fact" in the title. Yet everywhere a reader turns, he or she is confronted with the word "truth." Aren't they two different things? Why use the word "truth" so frequently?

Bill Adair: I think voters have gotten cynical and believe there's not much truth in politics any more. But our site, by making rulings on the candidates' statements, helps them decide what's true and what's not.

Of course, part of it is marketing. We call it the Truth-O-Meter, after all. And our song is called "Gimme the Truth." But I like that. The truth is what we're seeking! (Sounds like a Springsteen lyric!)

Some of my colleagues at the paper bristled when I floated the idea of us checking the "truth," but I think it's really just synonymous with being accurate. We've gotten a few e-mails from readers who think we've over-promised. But we've gotten far more feedback, from dozens and dozens of readers, thanking us for the site. So I think we've struck the right balance.

Text and Ideas: Checking out claims by political candidates is a long-standing tradition in journalism. How does the Web change that tradition? Are there more claims to check? Do you take advantage of ways besides text to tell the facts?

Bill Adair: It's a long-standing tradition, but that doesn't mean we've done it well. Too many "fact-checking" stories don't really clarify the facts. You read to the end and you think, "So which side is true?" The truth (there's that word again!) is that we've been too wishy-washy and we were afraid to say to readers that a candidate was lying.

I'd say that's still the case with a lot of fact-checking stories I read. I think my colleagues have been scared into creating false balance. They feel every point needs a counterpoint. But PolitiFact proves it's okay to make a call. Indeed, that's what readers want.

The Web makes it easy because we can sort things for readers so they can easily explore our databases to check a particular candidate or an issue. We don't just have a blog with metatags. We have a rich database that readers can tap into.

Text and Ideas: How do you handle the workload? With print journalists doing more now than ever online, does checking facts for the website just add one more time-consuming thing to an already busy journalist's life?

Bill Adair: I'm working full-time on PolitiFact and am fortunate that my editors believed in the project so much that they would free me of my other obligations.

Text and Ideas: The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which also runs the competing website FactCheck.org, recently studied how often major U.S. newspapers ran stories that checked the facts of ads -- sometimes called ad-watch stories. The study found that St. Petersburg Times wasn't even in the top five during the last election cycle. It also found more than ever, newspapers are writing these kinds of stories. What do you think has prompted this energy to dig into candidates' claims both at the Times and nationwide?

Bill Adair: Yeah, the fact we weren't in the top five last time was one of the motivating factors for me. We didn't do nearly as much fact-checking in 2006 as we should have. But I'm proud we’re now making up for it.

I thought the Annenberg study was encouraging, but we need to keep it up. We need to do more of these stories and we shouldn't be scared into false balance. It's okay, when you're sorting the facts, to say which ones are right.

The downside for the paper was the inability to easily track how many users actually clicked over to the project on DallasNews.com after watching the YouTube video, deputy managing editor Anthony Moor told OJR. YouTube shows the trailer has only been watched a few hundred times. "It’s not a lot," Moor said. "I’m not going to say that this is a breakout way to reach the audience, but we have to do things like this."

Indeed, this shows the potential newspapers have to reach out to people in different ways. If the paper's marketing department was able to pay for that video to become a flash ad on websites dealing with justice issues, or if the newspaper reporters and editors worked hard to spread it to a wider social network, the video could pull in thousands of extra readers, many who wouldn't have seen the project otherwise.

First, let me say I'm glad the Times is experimenting with this kind of technology. The technical folks in journalism figured out long ago how to make news websites available for any cell phone that has internet access. They dealt with the challenge cell phones present: small screens and limited buttons. They made news available to anybody with the time and money to surf on their cell.

But what most news outlets still haven't figured out is how to get the news to those of us who have cell phones, but can't pay the high cost of accessing the web by phone. (My current plan allows me to access it for the outrageous fee of $5 a month plus air time, too much for a poor journalist to pay.) The Times is trying to solve that problem. A press release from the company says the new service is available for "any type of cell phone or PDA." It quotes NYTimes.com vice president Rob Larson as saying it's meant to make the "quality news and information" of the paper available to readers "wherever they may be." And get this: for free.

The service is pretty similar to one that Google has all but perfected for getting movie times, driving directions, addresses, even dictionary definitions on the go. With the Times service, you send a text message with a keyword, depending on the stories you want to read, to a special six-digit number set up by the Times (698-698 for NYTNYT). Let's say you want the latest headlines from the Times' website. Send a text with the word "latest." If you want Nicholas Kristof's latest column, send "Kristof." It's pretty easy. Seconds later, you'll receive a few texts in return, each with its own headline, and each with the option of reading the story.

Here's where the trouble starts. In my test, I asked to be sent the latest headlines. I first received three, but had the option of being sent a couple more by replying with the letter "m". Two more came when I did that. So now I had five different texts, each with a headline: one about the economy, one about a bombing in Mosul, one about John Edwards, and a couple others. I bit on the politics headline, "Edwards Criticizes Opponents in South Carolina." It was the fourth text I received, and so, to read the story, it asked me to reply to the text with simply the number "4" in the message. Here's what I got in return:

NYT: John Edwards told voters on the day before the primary in South Carolina that he is the only candidate who will re...
More: http://s.nyt.com/s/HE79e7

The problem is obvious. The Times ran out of room. With only 160 characters to work with in a typical text, it may be impossible to get the news, context and insight readers of the Times expect squeezed into a single text message. The Times needs to recognize the limitations of the text message. The headlines work. And those alone, if written well, can provide information and drive people to the website to get the full story. CNN has been doing this for years with text alerts. Through my carrier, I can sign up for free breaking news text alerts from CNN. I've been using the service for years. CNN only sends out a message when the news is really big, like John McCain winning the Republican South Carolina primary, or the news I received this week:

CNN BREAKING Actor Heath Ledger has been found dead in a Manhattan apartment, New York police tell CNN.

I'll get to the content of his blog entry shortly, but first, some of McGuire's credentials. Tim is the former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. During his decade as editor of the Strib, he was also the paper's senior vice president. Before that, he was the newspaper's managing editor. He has also been a nationally syndicated columnist, writing about ethics and spirituality in the workplace. Currently, he holds the chair for the business of journalism at Arizona State University, which is where I met him a little more than a year ago while taking a journalism ethics class there.

The point of reciting his background is to make this point: When McGuire sends an e-mail pleading for sanity in the news business, it's time to pay attention.

The plea comes just days after news that the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Jim O'Shea, is leaving the paper after just 14 months on the job. It's still not clear whether he was forced to quit, fired, or is leaving out of protest, but one thing is clear: It was about cuts to the newsroom. Seen as a company man, it was surprising to learn O'Shea stood up against those newsroom cuts and butted heads with the newspaper's publisher.

"You read it here first," McGuire writes. "More editors are going to bite the newsprint dust in coming weeks and months, and many publishers are going to celebrate the demise of the 'impractical' editor because publishers are focused on the cost/profit debate."

At the same time, though, McGuire asks the news industry to keep looking at the deeper business debate. "Don't let it get simplistic," he writes. "Real leaders have to step into the fray and declare a unified mission that includes profit, top-line growth and enhancing the core mission of informing and entertaining readers."

I'll let you read the rest in McGuire's own words.

Editor's note: I've been short on blogs lately, but am trying to remedy that. Thanks for your patience.

Today, word is spreading that Gawker Media, which employs numerous professional bloggers, will drive full-speed down the second path. Writers will get paid based on how many times per month their work is viewed. For example, if a blogger breaks an exclusive story and 100,000 people click on it, he could make $500, depending on the rate he and Gawker agreed on. Bloggers will no longer get paid for every entry they post, as they did previously, but for how popular those entries are.

The theory, as laid out in a company memo by Gawker heads Noah Robischon and Nick Denton, is that writers will be forced to focus on quality of their writing and reporting, rather than shoveling content onto the web. The goal is to appeal to the widest readership possible, they write. "Where there was a shortage of attitude and commentary, there's now a surfeit," says the Dec. 31 memo. "And what's in heavy demand, and short supply, is linkworthy material, by which I mean a secret memo, a spy photo, a chart, a well-argued rant, a list, an exclusive piece of news, a well-packaged find."

On the surface, the logic is good; the system encourages journalists to give readers what readers want. But as some critics point out, popular journalism doesn't necessarily equal good journalism. In a November commentary on MarketWatch, columnist John Friedman wrote a piece titled, "Please! Abolish the Web's evil page-view count," in which he argues that media websites should get rid of lists that show which stories are read or commented on most often. "The worst aspect to these lists is the fear that journalists, trying to win favor with their business- conscious editors, will lower their standards and write top-40 stories instead of pieces with actual depth," Friedman writes. He worries, too, that editors who want to increase their online readership or page views will shy away from hard news, which make an impact without being well read, and lean toward salacious and gossipy stories. This is a business model that essentially tears down the wall traditionally built between the money side of journalism and editorial.

In the cases of Gawker websites like Wonkette, Defamer and Valleywag, which are all devoted to salaciousness and gossip in their own way, the system will likely do what the company leaders intend: allow bloggers to get good, juicy, big-hitting scoops more often. In the cases of high-minded organizations like MarketWatch, the New York Times and Time Magazine, however, the results of this path might not turn out so well.

Since its launch a few years ago, Voice of San Diego has become a regular competitor in the San Diego media market, which includes the well-established San Diego Union-Tribune, a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper that reaches more than 315,000 people daily in print. Donohue says, however, that Voice isn't meant to be another news outlet like the U-T. "We don't cover something unless we can be the best at it or we can add something new and substantial," he writes. And with an editorial staff of fewer than 10 people, it's unlikely Voice could match the major daily newspaper if it wanted to.

Still, Donohue says readers, donors and journalists alike are starting to respond to the online format and in-depth coverage. Nationwide, people are calling to ask: How do we do something similar in our hometown? Among his advice: "We tell people to know their identity before they publish a single story," he says.

In 2006, Donohue, 29, won the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi award for online investigative reporting, which is given out annually by the Society of Professional Journalists, for a piece he did for Voice of San Diego.

Text & Ideas: What was the media landscape of San Diego like a few years ago when you decided the city could use another news outlet?

Andrew Donohue: The media landscape was the way it is and has been in most big cities in America -- barren. In the early 1990s, the Evening Tribune and the Union merged and the Los Angeles Times shut down its San Diego edition, so San Diego quickly went from three newspapers and heavy competition to a one-newspaper monopoly.

Text & Ideas: How did the decision come about to be a nonprofit?

Andrew Donohue: First, we don't need to worry ever about doing anything more than producing good journalism within our budget. Many of the newspapers you see today cutting jobs are still making money -- they're just not making as much as their investors or shareholders think they can make. Remove the profit motive, and you've got a fewer external pressures on the journalism you produce. 

It also conveys to our readers what we believe journalism is: A public service, not an investment to make someone rich.

Text & Ideas: Whose idea was it specifically? And was there a model you followed? NPR? The Guardian? Mother Jones? It seems like those models wouldn't work because they're national publications, not local.

Andrew Donohue: Our founders Buzz Woolley and Neil Morgan decided on the nonprofit structure. There was no specific model that we followed. While there certainly are plenty of other nonprofits in the journalism world, there was nothing quite like we wanted to do -- exclusively local coverage and only online.

As such, we've been feeling our way around -- in the dark at times -- for our first three years to figure out just how this model looks, not just now but into the future. We've had to understand the appetite for a model like this in our community, from general readers, local groups, philanthropists, corporations and traditional advertisers.

We believe now we can borrow from the best of both worlds and create a wide, stable source of funding into the future. So we have a system that borrows heavily from the local public radio and television model in that we run a quarterly membership drive and we seek out grants, sponsorships and local philanthropists. But we also believe that online advertising revenue for news websites will only get stronger and we can count on that money to at least supplement our fundraising efforts.

Text & Ideas:  In an era when journalists are held in lower general regard than in past decades, is it wise to rely on the public for the money you need to stay alive?

Andrew Donohue: We've had to slowly win the trust of every single one of our readers and contributors and keep working hard every day to grow that trust and widen it. We believe that the future of journalism -- and journalists for that matter -- is bright. If you treat your readers with respect and understand their capabilities and intellect, they will treat you well.

Text & Ideas: Are you saying the well-established news organizations don't treat their readers with respect and understanding?

Andrew Donohue: My experience is that brevity is so ingrained in the culture of some newspapers that there's a general belief that readers don't want long stories -- they want colorful graphs and 12-inch stories. I remember being told to essentially dumb-down a solid, in-depth story because people wouldn't want to read all that detail over their morning Cheerios. 

There's always an assumption that they way you get the most people interested is by making the story broad and overly simple. I think that's getting worse and that by continuing these trends newspapers are risking losing their most loyal and important customers.

I always thought that was an assumption that needed to be challenged. And our experience here has proven that if you write the story well, you can actually get more people interested in the crucial topics in their community by giving them in-depth and engrossing stories that tell them why an issue is important.

Text & Ideas: An editorial published on your site in May mentioned that journalists and financial backers from across the U.S. have contacted Voice of San Diego for advice on starting something similar in their hometowns. What question are you asked most often? What advice do you give them?

Andrew Donohue: We get asked the most about finances and the influence our board of directors has on our coverage.

The latter is simple. I understand why people would be suspicious of editorial meddling from people on the board of a brand new, nonprofit newspaper. After all, they're putting in money and time to a brand new cause. It's natural -- and completely healthy -- for a journalist to be suspicious of the scenario. I had the same thoughts when we started. Who would start a nonprofit newspaper with their own money without wanting to get something in return?

But we've never had a problem in our three years with editorial meddling, either from our board or from donors. Our board tells us to go out and do outstanding enterprise and investigative journalism, and that's it. We're not told who and what we can and can't cover.

Now to the former. Lots of people are curious about how they can fund an online daily. Some have the money lined up from philanthropists and want to know more about our fund-raising and ad efforts.

Others just have an idea. The way we went may not be an option for everyone -- we had seed money from a philanthropist to get us up and going. But it's not as hard as you might think to get started. We spend almost every cent we have on reporters. There are institutions out there dedicated to handing out money to new, innovative journalism ideas. There are smart, wealthy and good-hearted people of all political stripes out in your community who'd like to see more from their newspaper. You can literally do so much with so little when you only need to pay web hosting fees and don't have to worry about paper, ink and delivery trucks.

And lastly, most of the time unsolicited, we tell people to know their identity before they publish a single story. It's easy to try to be everything to everybody and chase around the big daily story around town every day. But then you end up pleasing nobody, offering nothing different from what the rest of the media in your city is doing, and being a mile wide and an inch deep.

We don't cover something unless we can be the best at it or we can add something new and substantial. And it has to be local. That means being specialized to begin with and patiently growing over time. And it means resisting the temptation to weigh in on national or international subjects. When we first started, we largely focused on City Hall. But we did it better than anyone else. And when we freed up space in the budget, we looked at real estate. We got a little more money and moved on to public health and then public safety and then education. But we didn't dabble lightly in these things. We took them on once we had the resources to take them on seriously and successfully.

Text & Ideas: Joel Kramer, the former publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, says he used your publication as a model for his own journalism startup, MinnPost. There are differences, though. For one, MinnPost has a print edition. What made you decide to launch without one? And by doing so, are you neglecting people who don't have internet access?

Andrew Donohue: We felt strongly about being Internet only from the start. When we started, all signs where that journalism was headed quickly to the Internet. And those trends have only accelerated since then.

Newspapers spend anywhere from 70 to 85 percent of their budgets on the actual infrastructure of printing and delivering their news. Being online only, we are in the marvelous position of being able to spend nearly every cent we have on reporters and content.

Any other decisions we make about other ways to deliver our news will be made with an eye on what's ahead in the future.

And we understand that there is a perceived gap between those who are wired and those who aren't. But I see homeless people at my local library checking e-mail, so I think we've reached where anyone who wants to access the Internet can.

Text & Ideas: Judging by the photos on the 'About Us' section of the website, you seem to have a young staff. Is that intentional?

Andrew Donohue: Lots of big newspapers have artificial rules in place demanding that reporters have X years of daily experience and so forth. We don't have those rules. We just look for the most talented and promising reporters out there. So far, it's worked out that we've been fortunate enough to snare a group of young, up and coming star reporters.

Text & Ideas: As part of a non-traditional, online-only publication, what reaction do your reporters get from people who being interviewed for stories? Do they already know about Voice of San Diego, or does it still take some explaining?

Andrew Donohue: When we first started people weren't sure what to think, and neither were we. There was nothing out there to really compare ourselves to, so it felt weird saying we were a newspaper, but we weren't just some guys in our parents' basement with a computer either. But now we very rarely have to explain ourselves. And when we do, people get it.

"Now the professional letter writer is confronting the fate of middlemen everywhere: to be cut out," writes Anand Giridharadas in the Times. "In India, the world’s fastest-growing market for cellphones, calling the village or sending a text message has all but supplanted the practice of dictating intimacies to someone else."

Sound familiar? To many traditional journalists, it should. In today's global media economy, middlemen no longer have a place. Inefficiencies are being cut out. It's why the idea of "Bulletins and Brains," advocated last month by the Associated Press' Tom Curley, strikes me so well. "The bulletins are the first 150 words, getting the news out fast, in conversational radio fashion. The brains are the people who can add real value whether through perspective, deeper reporting or great writing. In short, we need talent, a lot of it and some of it very different," Curley said at a speech in New York. What he' saying is that every story should have a purpose beyond just providing the news.

This goes in hand with a job listing I saw today for a planned website called MainStreet.com. It will be a sister site to TheStreet.com, one of the many homes of financial pundit Jim Cramer. The job listing says the website will feature news "with a twist." It continues: "MainStreet.com will cover breaking news, including celebrity and entertainment news, as a means to get into personal finance." If gives the example of Jamie Lynn Spears, the teenage sister of Britney Spears who recently disclosed she is pregnant. How could you mix that celebrity dish with the world of finance? The job listing says the story would center around "preparing yourself financially to have and raise a child" when facing "an unplanned bun in the oven." In other words, two distant parts of the galaxy will meld to create a highly unusual but specialized news organization.

Whether MainStreet.com creates a black hole or supernova, we'll see. But it shows that journalists who are content to be professional letter writers may find themselves in the same place Sawant and his colleagues find themselves today: "at the base of a gnarled tree, under a tarpaulin mat that shields them from the ceaselessly defecating pigeons that flutter among the branches."

In terms of business models, the publication straddles the line between the old ones and new. Founded in January by East Coast media mogul Robert Allbritton, The Politico is probably best known for its website, a colorful combination of political features, blogs, breaking news and video, all of which aesthetically looks a bit like Salon.com or similar online news pubs. But most of its revenue comes from its print edition, which is published at different frequencies depending on whether Congress is in session. In The Politico's case, its print edition serves the company really well because groups who want to lobby Congress are willing to spend big money on ads. In journalistic terms, that means more money for solid reporting.

Almost a year into it, Nichols tells me during an e-mail Q&A, he's glad he made the move. He's having fun. He's getting to try new things. In a way, he says, the experience has been like his wild days of college newspapering. And that's a good thing. "There's not a lot of fun being had in the MSM right now," he says.

Text & Ideas: You left the largest newspaper in the nation that has more than 2.2 million subscribers for a startup that reaches, according to its website, about 25,000 people in print. What made you decide to give up the big budget and recognition of USA Today for the untested Politico? Was it the title bump? The chance to be in charge?

Bill Nichols: I had a lot of mixed feelings and remain a huge fan of USA Today and the concept behind it. But at this point in my career, an adventure seemed like it would be fun, and it seemed like I was fast exiting the stage of my life when I could still responsibly have an adventure. I think for a lot of MSM journalists, there's also an almost irresistible urge to see what life on the Web is really like. It's been a great move; absolutely no regrets.

Text & Ideas: What advantages does an outlet like The Politico have over one like USA Today?

Bill Nichols: We're a startup, so we don't have the burden of institutional history that many of our competitors do, even a publication as young as USA Today. Which means, if we want to try something new, we just do it. We're also structured in a very entrepreneurial, non-bureaucratic way, so we don't have focus groups or corporate pow-wows to contend with. If we want to do something, we just do it. If it works, we keep doing it. If it doesn't, we don't do it again. I think that's a big advantage, given the speed with which the technology of the Web changes and the speed with which the news cycle now moves. We're a lean, mean fighting machine.

Text & Ideas: What disadvantages does it have? Smaller budget? Smaller staff?

Bill Nichols: There are definitely times that all of us who worked at bigger, more established places miss some of the creature comforts and the luxury of bigger numbers and more support. We certainly have people working an awful lot of hours. But those staff numbers are coming down throughout the MSM -- and we're proud at Politico that our owner, Allbritton Communications, has chosen the novel approach of actually spending money to improve the product, rather than retrenching. It takes courage to do that in the current environment.

Text & Ideas: With printed newspapers on the decline and the traditional advertising model seemingly broken, other new publications have chosen to be online-only. Why did The Politico decide to invest in a print edition?

Bill Nichols: Part of the reason is that the idea for Politico began as plan to put together a third Capitol Hill newspaper, then morphed into something much more ambitious. So the infrastructure for a newspaper was already in place. But the larger reason is we feel that print advertising can carry us through out early years, as the environment for on-line ads becomes more mature.

Text & Ideas: What were the early days like after the publication launched in January?

Bill Nichols: Imagine the wildest days at your college newspaper. I came in after the publication had actually launched, so I missed some of the most harrowing stretches of all-nighters and 20-hour days. But within that chaos was also a lot of fun -- which is one of the main reasons I got in this business in the first place. There's not a lot of fun being had in the MSM right now, and at Politico, we try to make that a priority. We don't want to be another insurance office.

Text & Ideas: What kind of response have you gotten from fellow journalists both inside and outside the Beltway since you started at The Politico?

Bill Nichols: We've really gotten great response. We feel like our voice has become part of the conversation within the world of Washington. And we've established partnerships with the four flagship papers in the early primary and caucus states -- New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina -- which has helped us establish the brand out in the country. Most, if not all, of our colleagues who thought we were crazy less than a year ago seem to have changed their tune.

Text & Ideas: The publication has been running for about 11 months now. What will it look like a year from today, and do you expect to have more competition?

Bill Nichols: We'll have more people and probably even more platforms; we've already begun establishing new projects that explore the intersection between Washington and Wall Street and the politics of Hollywood. As for competition, I hope we're cornering the market on smart and revelatory coverage of Congress, lobbying and the world of politics. If not, we welcome all comers who want to set up shop in our corner of the new media world.

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Coming next week: Questions for Andrew Donohue, the executive editor of Voice of San Diego, a newspaper without the paper.

Take a look at the example I created below during my fiddling. It's a slide show that gets all its content from Yahoo! News. The creators of VUVOX made it possible for these kinds of slide shows to tap into the kinds of feeds that most newspapers at TV stations have available on their websites already. They're called RSS feeds, or Really Simple Syndication. In this case, Yahoo's RSS feed works really well because most of its entries have a photo attached to them. Because this is a photo slide show, feeds that have only text are useless here.

With just a few clicks to set up, VUVOX snatches those photos from the feed, arranges them into a format of your choosing, and adds links to the story each photo is associated with. In theory, this slide show updates itself whenever the news organization updates its feed.

Right now, VUVOX is a neat toy. In practical terms, it's hard to imagine news organizations using it on a daily basis. But like other neat toys before it (YouTube, Twitter, etc.), this one brings a lot to the table. For one, it harnesses the power of RSS feeds like no other website I know. It's an example of the amazing potential these feeds have -- potential we probably don't even know yet. It's also stands as a strong message to news organizations that they should start tending of their news feeds as much as they do their websites. No longer are these feeds just going to be used as easy ways for busy people to read lots of news. They will be used to bring new readers and viewers in from out in the cold.

Crime news from Yahoo!