Newspapers will not go quietly into that dark night. And these are stands and smart moves that they should take.

Because every person who cares about fashion should be reading LATimes.com. Los Angeles is a world fashion capitol. How much of a world share of fashion does latimes.com own. It is a significant audience – there are 2 million fashion blogs in the world. And good ones are popping up every day.

Fashion is an area this paper could own. Now if they played their cards right, this niche audience of four million a week will be at least considering going to the LA Times.com website for fashion, perhaps even news.

But only if its free – because there will always be imitators or alternatives who do it out of love. The latimes.com needs the audience.

And I’m sure a lot of people in LA watch Project Runway (Season six villain and winner Jeffery Sebelia lives in downtown LA and “is the nicest guy” one of his neighbors told me). The locals may need reminding about the great things this paper does for us. And they can get it on lifetime.

Sorry to say they didn’t take full advantage. The fashion blogger is on her way to London so she couldn’t blog or tweet or anything I guess. Also if you want to attract fashionistas you need to add a button that says FASHION and not just Image – sometimes you just need to be clear not cute.

Oh and Dean Baquet told Politico that Glenn Beck should cover the news – like our troops in Afghanistan, the economy, Iraq, health care and “the aftermath from one administration to another.” That is the agenda of the New York Times.

Their opening paragraph is indicative of their misunderstanding of the situation and their small world view:

“On the day Michael Jackson died, the Los Angeles Times drew its heaviest Web traffic ever. When Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina admitted to an affair, The State of Columbia, S.C., had the best online numbers in its history. And the day before Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game in July, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch garnered more page views than ever before.”

These were three international stories that attracted readers from all over the world. And these newspapers weren’t providing information that wouldn’t be found in other places (either at the exact same time or very soon). Their websites were the beneficiaries of being in the right place at the right time.

But the article is based on a very different premise – “further proof that newspapers on the Web remain a top choice for breaking, local news”.

Honestly look at how the masses found these sites. It wasn’t by choice – it was by Google. People heard the news on CNN, Twitter or their email homepage that often touts salacious news (like MSNBC on Hotmail). They then performed a search, and near the top were the local papers who were covering this story as well or better than anyone else, something Google appreciates and knows because of the time a reader spends with the story after making the click.

The next question the article asks – “will readers pay for such material from these sites?” – was quickly dismissed. The discussion moved to how to get the money and how much money they could get from the millions who happened to click on their sites for a big story.

Only Janet Coats, editor of The Tampa Tribune, based he opinion on what she has seen in real life: “The whole idea of charging for the Web ‘is delusional. People have lost their minds. They need to have a cold cloth on their heads and go lay down for a while.’

“For Coats, a more aggressive approach to getting online ad revenue is the answer: ‘We have spent 15 years in this industry getting newsrooms to change. By God, they have changed. How much have things changed on the ad side?’”

Here. Here. How did Google create an ad network that is better connected to the local businessman than the local newspaper? Google won it by understanding you can sell a lot more pizza for 99 cents a slice than you can by selling it for $5 a slice.

Today Citilista believes that local advertisers are the key to a successful online venture because we offer local news that attracts local residents who shop, eat and play locally. The local businesses can’t afford an ad in a newspaper or cable or network. But they can afford to have a membership and a presence on a locally produced newspaper and social network that is a billboard both within the neighborhood and on the information super highway.

These executives forget that even before the Web 2.0 revolution newspaper circulations were dwindling and younger readers were not reading the paper. The only reason newspapers made money were with advertisers who had no where else to go.

“Readers seem to be willing to pay for Web content that is useful” the story continues – but no examples are given. What content are people paying for today – 99 cent iTunes songs? That’s about it.

There is so much out that that is already better than what newspapers are providing – and it’s free – Everyblock, Yelp! The list goes on and on.

But they say what about charging for high school sports, college football, the Miami Dolphins mobile apps, investigative news, local politics.

“I can’t see anyone subscribing to see our investigative work,” said Jim Witt, executive editor of the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram. “No one does it often enough to subscribe for it. Other investigative Web sites like ProPublica are popping up, and it doesn’t get as many hits as other things.”

Again he doesn’t know the issue. ProPublica doesn’t care about hits – they are a non-profit that runs their stories in existing newspapers!

For newspapers that do provide a public service, they need to think about the membership model. Public radio stations and TV stations don’t block their content from people who don’t pay. They ask listeners and watchers to support a product they believe in and then supplement that with advertising. If newspapers were to embrace this model – along with embracing the bloggers who work for free covering their interest areas better than most reporters ever did – there may be a place for many of the players in old media.

“The social networks have really never made us money,” said Wells, the paper’s ad, marketing, circ and operations VP.

The Californian began selling its home-made social-networking software to other papers but apparently that didn’t work. Now layoffs reduced the newsroom staff by 40 percent.

It’s back to the print edition and the genius idea of putting the classifieds on the back page. That alone will increase ad revenue $450,000 a year?

“So the question is what are the goals of these user-generated sites? They are all generating revenue, however, to date they are not covering all their costs,” Wells said. “Yes, they have helped The Bakersfield Californian expand or hold their market footprint while the core product has declined. There are unique users of these non-paid daily products that do not read The Bakersfield Californian.

Eleven years later, there are more Starbucks than ever.

That’s the future of the Web. It born in the public consciousness in the mid ’90s, was reborn as Web 2.0 with greater user capability about five years ago and now is subsuming newspapers, bookstores, music studios and TV.

It is much more powerful than Starbucks (which is undergoing growing pains at the moment).

We’re lucky to be a part of this genesis. It’s like being in the right place at the right time – Hollywood in the 1930s, Detroit in 1920. We are poised to take advantage of the 2.0 revolution just as it is occurring.

Sometimes success is being in the right place at the right time. But you still have to take advantage of the opportunity.

Other potential buyers included AP, Fox News, Glam Media and even Technorati.

NowPublic has citizen reporters in 140 countries. The Examiners claim to have 13,000 citizen journos in 20 markets across the U.S.

Recent hyperlocal news: Old media vanguard the Washington Post shuttered its hyperlocal citizen-j project, LoudonExtra, while MSNBC.com bought neighborhood news network Everyblock. Around the same time, AOL’s local news play Patch just added two new sites under its umbrella.

Craig Kanalley will teach what is believed to be the first college-level journalism course focused solely on Twitter and its applications.

USC has one of the only, if not the only, master’s programs that focuses not just on the technology of web 2.0 (and Journalism 3.0) but on the fundamentals of building an audience. The Communications master’s in Online Communities is an intense full-time program in just it’s third year.

The three members of Citilista, in addition to having real-world journalism, public relations and social media backgrounds, have nearly completed the Annenberg Program in Online Communities. Citilista.com and EchoParkOnline.com is the final project.

The confidential plan was not for distribution but was mentioned at the Nieman Lab and broadcast widely through Romenesko.

The document pointed to the success of the Wikipedia model – “standing, authoritative pages.”

The document fails to mention or acknowledge that Wikipedia is crowdsourced information, updated and maintained by readers who volunteer to participate. Part of the appeal is that it is updated constantly and very accurate. But it also hundreds of thousands of in-depth entries on nearly every topic, no matter how new or arcane. The provides an unlimited audience instead of just those courted by mass media mentality – see the The Long Tail or Clay Shirky.

The document also left out that:
• There is no advertising on Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia has only a few dozen paid employees.
• Wikipedia does not charge to read its content.

Many of the flimsiest newspaper archive (except the New York Times) charges to see its archives.

“AP simply can’t continue to provide the same quality of golabal news coverage under the current rules, where second hand news gets most of the eyeballs.”

The AP wants to be like Wikipedia Then they point out Wikipedia garnered only 6.8 percent of the audience who searched “Michael Jackson” in the month after his death. 6.8 percent made Wikipedia the second largest beneficiary of traffic?, slightly behind only Google News (7.1%). AP and Google already have a partnership.

The piece never gets into the fact that the market for news is so diluted that it seems impossible to discern the producers from the users. Will AP applaud bloggers for pointing people to news sites or will AP seek to punish bloggers for reprinting information?

In spite of thousands of members providing the content and backing from Hollywood moguls, quarterlife never found its voice.

Or perhaps the community of artists had no center.

While the site was heavily cross-promoted on network and cable TV and MySpace, real world outreach was nil. And there was never a compelling reason for these artists to share their work.

“Even with our minimal paid staff (only two!), due to hosting, rent, maintenance, and insurance costs, it still costs WAY more each year to run the site than we receive in ad revenues. We simply cannot continue any longer this way.”

Cases like this provides teachable moments.

Marketplace asks“Are Web fees for formerly free sites becoming the norm?”

No one will stay with Kodak, not when there are dozens of sites that are free and provide the same quality of service. Has anyone heard of Flickr?

LA Times business columnist David Lazarus said “the problem is most of those users do not buy things from the site — prints and CDs and whatnot — they’re just keeping their photo albums on the Web.”

It would seem the smart, prudent thing to do is to say that in order to keep your stuff on our site, we’d like you to buy a certain amount of product every year.

Instead the hammers comes down: If you have 2 gigabytes or less stored online, you’ll be paying $4.99 a year at least. If you have more than 2 gigs stored, you’ll be spending $19.99 a year at least.

Again Renita Jablonski: “So is this the end of, as you call it, freeloading on the Web?”

Craigslist in San Francisco charges $150 to post a help-wanted ad. Kobe Bryant charges a $49.95 a year membership fee.

Lazarus then asks: “What about things that we all take for granted — free e-mail from Yahoo and Google and Hotmail — what if fees start getting attached to all of that?”

They compare fees for email to charging ATM fees, once a free service.

“I think it’s a very good parallel for what we’re facing in terms of the Internet, where things come out with no fees attached and gradually you see the fees starting to pile on as people start becoming accustomed to the technology and as the technology becomes a routine part of people’s lives,” Lazarus said.

Good point. Once the audience tries out your free service, they will pay for it if it’s worth it and they have no other options – like the inside scoop on a basketball phenom’s life.

But Kodak will take a beating because you can’t charge a fee for things your competitors give away for free. In today’s world you have to be much more clever, and much more appreciative of your audience.