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.

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.

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.

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.

On the cover of today's newspaper is a message inviting readers to sign up for Breaking News Alerts from The News Tribune so you can be "among the first to know" who will be tapped as running mates for Obama and McCain. What about all those people who already signed up for Obama's email or text alert for the same information?

I know several people locally who are signed up - including one who I'm certain is NOT voting for the Illinois senator in November - and it will be interesting to see whether they know the news before the news business knows the news.

Like most newsrooms on "Veepwatch" today, we're anxiously anticipating the announcement (so we know what will be leading our web site and newspaper). But instead of expecting the wires to break the news, we're expecting an individual in the room to receive a text or email from the Obama campaign with the news. If that happens, then any news consumer who signed up for the alert will truly be the first to know.

UPDATE: Yes, it worked. My wife woke up at 2 in the morning for some reason when she heard her phone beep. It was a text message with the Veepnews. So when I stirred about 40 minutes later, she told me the news and I got out of be and sent a breaking news alert from my iPhone.

UPDATE 2: Not exactly. The AP leak spoiled the party, but made for a fresh newspaper Saturday morning.

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame provided a great roundup of what elements make a blog good. Interestingly, in looking at the nine characteristics, I see some advantages for mainstream media bloggers and others for independent bloggers. Here's his list (visit his post to read descriptions of each):

1. Good blogs have a voice.

2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions.

3. Good blogs are the product of "Attention times Interest."

4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs.

5. Good "non-post" blogs have style and curation.

6. Good blogs are weird.

7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog.

8. Good blogs try.

9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules.

Full-time reporters who cover a beat for a news organization and contribute to a blog on that topic have an advantage with Nos. 3, 4 and 8. Since they are paid to work 40 hours a week (or more, if you cover sports) they can be more invested than an independent blogger, unless that blogger has "turned pro" and is supported financially by blogging and doesn't have the distraction of a day job, of course.

Independent bloggers have the advantage in Nos. 1, 2, 6 and 9 since they can write their own rules without worry about editors "directing" their focus. And then, of course, they can break those rules.

Regardless of whether you see it through these lenses or not, if you blog or like to read blogs, Mann's post is priceless.

In case you missed Sunday's paper, you should know about a new section we launched on the web site over the weekend. It's called SoundInfo and it has links to all kinds of information that is relevant to anyone who lives or works (or just cares about) Tacoma, Pierce County or the South Sound. Here's how we describe the site:

Introducing SoundInfo, a gateway to information on topics from government salaries to movie times. From public records and our own reporting, we've created searchable databases and interactive maps that will help you navigate life in the South Sound.

Our executive editor provided an overview with his Sunday column and reporter Jason Hagey took a look at the salaries of Tacoma Power officials to lead the coverage in the newspaper.

This is a popular concept at many newspaper web sites around the country. Most "database pages" that others have launched have generated loads of page views and equal amounts of controversy from public employees concerned for their privacy. We've seen plenty of web traffic but not much in the way of criticism. (Our managing editor blogged about our lack of blowback earlier today.)

Maybe South Sounders are more technically savvy and already knew where to find this data.

If you like jazz, you probably find KPLU on the radio dial in your car. But you can also listen to jazz on your computer any time, any day, by accessing the locally produced mix of jazz music and commentary over the web.

The South Sound is home to one of the leading online radio streams. KPLU's Jazz24, which started streaming jazz music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in February of this year, attracts more than 70,000 listeners each month. Webcast Metrics ranks it among the top 20 most popular webstreams.

Jazz24 also has a "now playing" feature, updated playlists with links to buy the music you hear, links to KPLU's live studio sessions and concerts and the new NPR Music website, which features content contributed by KPLU.

Internet radio is still a growing segment of the web, even though there is disagreement over how to measure the audience (which affects advertising rates and sales). More than seven million people tuned in to the top web radio stations in December, while one report suggested that more than 20 million people listen in during an average month.

I'm thankful that KEXP has such great streaming over the web – I listen to a healthy dose of it from home (it's against the rules at work) ever since the station stopped broadcasting from Tacoma. This always-on, always-connected culture makes geography obsolete; I recently found an application to listen to satellite radio on my iPhone, too.

KUOW's excellent Weekday program featured a few local bloggers today who discussed several issues related to the challenge and opportunities for hyperlocal online publishing.

The West Seattle Blog and OlyBlog were included among the guests, but surprisingly (to me, anyway) no one from T-town was on the list. Seems like Derek Young or Kevin Freitas would have been able to offer some interesting perspectives. But the session also illustrates the active local online communities growing in locations outside the 253 area code.

Like many other news organizations, we've been experimenting with Twitter for publishing breaking news and other information in short bites. It's been interesting to work with reporters and editors to wrestle with how to use it, as well as the interaction with our meager number of followers. Even for those in our newsroom who admittedly don't quite "get it," the exercise of publishing a new way has been healthy and for that I encourage all news organizations to being dabbling. (If you're new to Twitter, here's an explanation in plain English.

Steve Rubel pointed out the potential of FriendFeed today, which takes the content stream concept to a whole new level. I've been meaning to check out FriendFeed for a while, but it took Steve's blog to get me to go sign up. Rubel writes:

People are increasingly turning to their peers for news, information and recommendations. And Friendfeed is more than an aggregation site or a community that's layered on top of others. It's a recommendation engine that surfaces content (both pro and amateur) via your peers - and that's huge. Sure there are things wrong with it, but I believe Friendfeed is incredibly disruptive. It's the next big thing online for consumers. It may even become the next Google.

So while we can't see where all this is going or how it will affect news consumption, it's important for news publishers to be involved in the exploration and experimentation, not just waiting on the sidelines for the early adopters to figure it all out.

So what do you think about Twitter? Game-changing communication technology or flavor-of-the-month fad?

The Seattle Times published an interesting editorial Sunday, cheering on a group of French-language newspapers in Belgium who have filed suit against Google.

The Times editorial writers suggest the surging stock price of Google and the plummeting stock prices of newspaper companies are evidence of the need to change copyright laws. The store shelf metaphor doesn't work for me, however. This is about a new era of information and access and we can't try to force our previous models to fit. The fact that newspapers are struggling financially to evolve (along with many other industries) doesn't mean the rules need to be changed just because the game has.

All I know is that I wouldn't want to try to ramp up a business model for news online without traffic from Google. And if this lawsuit is successful, then Yahoo must be sued, too. And other news aggregators after that.

We should be focusing our energy on innovating and taking advantage of new possibilities, instead of hoping that the rules will change so we don't have to.

Do you have a Kindle? Do you know anyone who does? I've seen people on airplanes with them but haven't personally talked to anyone who has one to know whether they like them or not. The reason I ask is that a a reader placed a comment on an old post and made reference to the new device while bemoaning the contraction of this newspaper's print circulation area.

We just returned from the Washington North Beach area (Pacific Beach, Washington); however this visit I was sorry to find I could no-longer purchase a TNT news-stand newspaper in the town of Pacific Beach (the two news-stands have been removed since our last visit just a couple of months ago), but I did have my AmazonKindle with me; as a result, and the Kindle data network I could purchase single copies of the The Seattle Times newspaper in Kindle format and with the Kindle I was able look at some TNT articles on-line (but not in a good client presentation format for free at Pacific Beach State Park)

So, my suggestion to your TNT with the removal of newsstand papers available; it follows, the TNT should buy a AmazonKindle, see how the other publishers of newspapers do it, what fee they charge for the Kindle delivery, how the Kindle content is set up for client view, and resume so TNT delivery areas that have been abandon for the cost of printed paper delivery.

We're taking the suggestion and acting on it. We've ordered a Kindle and will begin to experiment with how to deliver news and information on this new platform, not fully knowing whether this device is more iPhone or Newton.