The News Tribune's web site debuts a new look today with a colorful homepage and a new emphasis on breaking local, regional and nation/world news.

In addition to the latest news that matters to you, the new site offers:

-- New navigation that helps you find content and sections in a snap

-- Bigger, bolder display of photographs and videos from The News Tribune's award-winning photo staff

-- Easier access to the South Sound's predominant local marketplace for
cars, jobs, homes and more.

Check out the new photo galleries and the vMix video platform.

Your feedback is important in helping us tweak the site and refine the navigation and functionality.

Look for us to add social networking features to the site, easier ways for you to submit news items about your neighborhood and better online tools to help you stay informed.

Feel free to leave a comment below, or respond via e-mail to reader.representative@thenewstribune.com.

--Doug Conarroe, Asst. Managing Editor - Online

The future is now.

Both for me, as I bid farewell to The News Tribune, and for my colleagues here who are going to do great things after I leave.

My decision to pursue other opportunities should not be confused with the notion that I don't think opportunities still exist at The News Tribune. I’m leaving the best job I’ve ever had, working with the best people I’ve ever worked with. So the decision was not an easy one.

I am indebted to the people of The News Tribune for the opportunities that I have before me now. Their willingness to innovate and experiment has provided me with the experiences that I am now invited to share with others in the industry at conferences and workshops. They encouraged me to bring an entrepreneurial spirit to the operation, which in turn led to a entrepreneurial spirit consuming me.

I will miss being a part of the great things the TNT will accomplish in the coming months and years. There are great advantages to having a web site with tremendous brand loyalty and thousands of visitors every day to test a new vision or a new idea. I will miss that, for sure.

Newsrooms will continue to innovate. But I feel that innovation on the business model should be more closely integrated to the content strategy than a traditional newspaper organization can allow. In effect, I’m placing a personal bet that developing new ideas for news and information that are tied to the business model is the best way to move the needle for local publishers.

It’s risky, for sure. But risk is inherent in entrepreneurship and transforming the business of local news and information won’t happen without a healthy dose of it.

I think it's an exciting time. But I just quit a great job to go off and do my own thing during the worst economy in recent memory, so I won't blame you if you think I'm crazy.

Cheers.

Friday is my last day at The News Tribune. And with my transition, this blog will be retired.

Online in the South Sound launched in March 2006. I appreciate those who have visited and contributed to this community and will miss writing here. Honestly, though, it's always grated on me that I wasn't able to give it more time and attention.

I am leaving my position at The News Tribune to pursue other opportunities. I will be focusing my attention on my Journalism 2.0 activities, including more speaking and consulting and also writing an updated version to my book. Next week, for example, I'm traveling to Europe to speak at conferences in Portugal and Denmark.

I am also leading a startup company called Serra Media that is building interactive applications and digital platforms for local publishers. I like to think it's a way for me to do what I've been doing these past nine years running online news sites - specifically the innovation and experimentation - but do it for many web sites instead of just one.

I will continue to blog and Twitter and remain active in the South Sound technology scene. I will also always be a friend to The News Tribune and on Friday will blog here about how I'm leaving the best job I've ever had.

The Melon Online, a local web effort I wrote about previously which started as a news and politics talk radio show, has a new look. And a nice one at that.

With a new look comes an expanded vision for the site, judging by the content and categories on its homepage. In addition to news and politics you can now find health, science, arts and radio and visual content.

Sitecrafting, which developed many of the area's best web sites, is again offering Gear Grants to local nonprofits. The deadline to apply is this Friday, Oct. 24. If you're not ready this time, sit tight. The company accepts application each quarter.

The sometimes tumultuous town of Ruston has a new site called Free Ruston. It's essentially a message board where users can discuss. Not much activity there yet, but it's brand new.

A year ago, I was writing about new web sites for Green Halloween, the Tacoma Gnome, Let's Improve Transportation and Charles Wright's blog. Looks like the Green Halloween and Charles Wright blog are going strong. The other two ... not so much.

Andrew Fry asks about the fate of newspapers in his latest post. And gives me fair warning that he'll be putting me on the spot with this question when I visit his class in a couple weeks.

LostRemote shows us how hyperlocal blogs are building audience and building a sustainable business in Seattle. And makes a key point that I’ve been echoing recently: thousands of out-of-work newspaper journalists could change the game.

Successful local start-up news sites are usually staffed with experience in journalism and online media. Now that thousands more newspaper journalists don’t have a day job, it figures that a number of them will sign up for a Wordpress account and look to fill a niche in their community for local news and information.

What will that mean for the newspaper, especially a mid-sized daily like the TNT? Not much, since hyperlocal blogs that focus on neighborhood-level news will be covering ground the newspaper hasn't focused on in years.

The newspapers' challenge is to ramp up its online business while continuing to produce a print product that brings home most of the bacon. So cuts will continue, until a level is found that is sustainable while maintaining profits. But there will be holes to fill (like the real estate blog Fry referred to) while executives change the oil on this car as it drives down the freeway.

Phil Meyer argued recently that the newspaper of the future should be smaller and targeted to the elite. I'm not sure if that's the right direction for a paper like the Tribune, but the product and service will continue to change as news and information adapt to this new ecosystem called the digital age.

Well, we've had sports-dominated top 10s before, but nothing like this. The list of most popular stories from September is a veritable Seahawks washout.

	HEADLINE	BYLINE
1.	Seahawks already have potential WR	McGrath
2.	Boeing arguments just don't hold up under close scrutiny	Op-ed
3.	It was broke, so Seahawks fixed it – well, some of it	Boling
4.	Two Seahawk players suspended for Bills game	Hughes
5.	Robinson impresses in first Hawks practice	Williams
6.	Jones laying a little groundwork for Seahawks	Hughes
7.	Burleson will be out for season for Seahawks	Boling
8.	Carlson catching on quickly with Hawks	Hughes
9.	Seahawks give boot to Plackemeier	Hughes
10.	Trufant joins banged-up Seahawks	Hughes

MULTIMEDIA

Most Popular Slideshows:

Inside a secret garden

First look at the remodeled Nordstrom

Spore creatures native to the NW

Skagit County shooting rampage

Celebrity Softball Game

Most popular blogs:

1. Seahawks Insider
2. Lights & Sirens
3. Political Buzz
4. Prep Blog
5. Huskies Insider
6. Biz Buzz
7. Mariners Insider
8. TNT Diner
9. Bring the Noise
10. Word on the street
11. FOB Tacoma
12. Inside the Editorial Page
13. Open House
14. Adventure Guys
15. Grit City

Unfortunately we are saying goodbye to The Bus Stops Here, our local blog focusing on transportation news and policy in the region. Andrew Austin, who came to us a year ago and volunteered to write the blog, did a bang-up job covering that topic for us in the margins of his time.

Those margins have grown slimmer over the months, however, and Andrew doesn't have time to keep it going. So we'll close it down and wish him well.

Thanks, Andrew, for contributing to our community.

Believe it or not, ski season is just around the corner and we will be publishing our annual special section in a few weeks.

You can help adventure reporter Craig Hill fill out the best of Northwest skiing and snowboarding by taking this quick survey.

2008 Snow Ride Survey

Thanks for playing.

You've heard about Twitter by now and may still be wondering "what's the point?" But tonight will be an interesting time to use the service, both locally and nationally.

True, it takes a while to get your head around how this technology improves communication beyond email and blog posts. But, like most of the best things on the web, it's about the community.

The News Tribune's main Twitter account has 135 followers and our new sports account has about 30. That seems like a pretty small number compared to the 100,000-plus households we deliver a newspaper every day, but Twitter is less about publishing and more about connecting.

And it's perfect for mobile.

Followers use "hash marks" - namely a @ or # plus the Twitter account name - to reply to specific Twitterers they follow. This allows direct contact between two people and is the core of what makes Twitter different.

I found more than 230 people signed up for Twitter who list Tacoma, WA as their location. Still, not a lot of people. But look at all the technology development happening around Twitter.

So we’re now using Twitter to send alerts with local high school football game updates to your mobile device. Just sign up for the Twitter service and follow us at twitter.com/tntsports. Or, if you're at a computer tonight, follow along online at the same URL.

And then there's that campaign thing going on. It will be entertaining - or maddening - to watch the global Twitterstream during the presidential debate tonight. Follow along here: http://election.twitter.com/

While The News Tribune has had our share of comings and goings in recent months (I'm still around part-time, in case you're wondering), the Seattle newspapers collectively lost three of the best bloggers in the Puget Sound this month.

John Cook and Todd Bishop are leaving the P-I to start new technology ventures at the Puget Sound Business Journal. This is good news for tech info consumers since Cook and Bishop formed what Lost Remote called the "Techcrunch of Seattle" with their P-I blogs on venture capital and Microsoft.

David Postman, the Seattle Times' political blogger, left the paper to join Paul Allen's Vulcan in media relations.

In case you missed it, football season is back and with it brings loads of page views to our web site for coverage of the Seahawks (and Huskies, Cougars and high schools). Just check out the top 10 stories from last month to see how dominant this topic is on our web site.

As I've noted before, our Seahawks audience is national, meaning those stories have a decided advantage over most of our other content (not many people in Buffalo, N.Y. wondering about potholes in Tacoma, for example.)

1.	Whew, finally good news for Seahawks	Hughes
2.	Man trying to siphon gas sparks a blaze outside Auburn townhouse	Mulick
3.	At first glance, Seahawks looking good	Boling
4.	Special pain for Seahawks in roster moves	Hughes
5.	Forsett making big impression with Hawks	Hughes
6.	Who should stay and who should go? Read on …	Boling
7.	Two Seahawk players suspended for Bills game	Hughes
8.	Anchorage bear attacks test tempers	Wire
9.	Craigslist sting brings eight arrests	Mulick
10.	Moving Burleson into slot pays immediate dividends	Hughes

Most popular multimedia:

1.	Memorial for fire Chief Dan Packer	Koepfler
2.	Citizen Soldiers	Carmack
3.	'Air Cav' comes home	Perine
4.	More from The 81st Brigade	Carmack
5.	Vashon - A Photographer's Tour	Perine

Most popular blogs:

1. Seahawks Insider
2. Lights & Sirens
3. Political Buzz
4. Huskies Insider
5. Mariners Insider
6. Biz Buzz
7. TNT Diner
8. Bring the Noise
9. Prep Blog
10. Word on the street
11. Open House
12. Adventure Guys
13. FOB Tacoma
14. Inside the Editorial Page
15. Online in the South Sound

If you want to be online, you have to be protective of your personal identity. Everyone knows that, especially when it comes to account numbers and passwords.

But sometimes you need a good offense in addition to a good defense.

Recently a frustrated school teacher contacted us because of her listing in our salary database. She wasn't necessarily upset that we published the database, making available the salaries of employees at public schools. The problem was that her entry in the database was the top search result in Google for anyone searching on her name.

I explained to her that the uniqueness of her name combined with a lack of other web references to her name meant the computers and algorithms at Google had no choice but to return the salary database record. And there was nothing we can do to manipulate Google's results (because if we could ...).

So her best plan of action would be to create a web site, a blog - anything with her name and content that would WANT people to find. Over time she could bury the salary database listing in the search results with this new content.

Recently I had to take action in my own defense, after a satirical obituary suggested I met my premature demise over the weekend. Hopefully a comment on that blog - and a reference on this one - will set the record straight.