What would newspapers look like if they were invented today? Swedish media group Bonnier's News+ tablet concept is one answer.

As elegantly demonstrated in the video below, News+ iPad apps seek to create an intimate daily news narrative that "filter(s) out the din of the Web."

Users receive a new edition each morning that has a clear beginning and end. During the day they can follow updates on specific topics across devices, share reactions with friends and journalists and bookmark content for later. At night they can return to what they saved and browse selections recommended by their social network and the publisher.

I have to say, I don't think there's any piece of marketing that's done more to make we want a tablet, not even those snappy iPad spots. I'm special, of course: I'm a newspaper geek. Newspaper geeks, however, aren't a growth market. As one commenter on Bonnier's video put it, "It's interesting to also target people who love the newspaper. Who are those people?"

They might not describe themselves as such, but there are more newspaper geeks out there than you think. Even those who've never picked up a newspaper want to feel connected to and understand the world around them, two things newspapers, perhaps more than any other single medium, have long helped people do. The modern fragmentation of information sources, I'd offer, increases, not decreases, demand for context and belonging.

Even those who've never picked up a newspaper want to feel connected to and understand the world around them, two things newspapers, perhaps more than any other single medium, have long helped people do.

Another video commenter observed that News+ doesn't really do anything that isn't already being done. "Other than tablet-based formatting," he asked, "where is the Web 3.0 / semantic Web  innovation here?" I don't disagree, and toward that end, would like to see News+ or something like it be developed for the open Web. But, what's wrong with saying, "Let's get what we know and understand right, package it smartly, and iterate from there?"

Indeed, some of News+'s most brilliant features are about, now that we have the technology, righting longtime Web 1.0 and 2.0 wrongs. These are things publishers can and should be righting on all digital platforms, things like:

• Offering advertisements that are useful and add value to rather than distract from the experience. In the video, a user browses a map of real estate listings and books an appointment with an agent directly within an ad.

• Giving visual journalism "its rightful place as an important part of the news narrative." Honestly, if I were a photojournalist or videojournalist working in mainstream news, I would hate the current setup. Only in rare spaces does the presentation match these mediums' awesome storytelling power.

• Recognizing that less is more, that expert news judgment is best applied helping people sort through their seemingly infinite choices rather than piling on more.

What do you think of News+? If you were recreating the newspaper, what would you keep? What would you change?

On its face, it's just a list of restaurants. All it accomplished, however, is a list in itself.

My paper's 50 best restaurants list, unveiled in countdown fashion last week, introduced readers to our new dining critic, drew visitors to our website, sparked conversation on social media, let us play in emerging spaces, recruited text alert subscribers, showcased our (relatively) recently revived entertainment tabloid and reaffirmed the online and offline authority of our brand.  

Of course, it wouldn't have done any of this if it weren't engaging. One of the most revealing symptoms of that engagement was an unsolicited user contribution. A reader saw value in our list to the degree he felt compelled to add to that value — "Cognitive Surplus" and "Spreadable Media" economics in action.

Over lunch, the reader used free online tools, mostly Google Refine, to create a data-rich, mobile friendly remix. His presentation does not include any information ours does not, but it repackages the content nicely.

Granted, this isn't from just any reader — it's from EveryBlock co-founder Paul Smith. But its lessons apply broadly: Strong user-generated content doesn't have to be new content, and, often it is generated spontaneously, outside of traditional UGC channels.

Every field has its buzzwords. You know, words that are used so often to mean so many different things that their meaning starts to erode. At Journalism Lives, we've made restoring their meaning part of our mission. We blogged previously on "digital first" and "interactivity." Today we examine "crowdsourcing."

So, what is crowdsourcing? We'll let participants from the Oct. 6 #wjchat both show and tell you.

@henrymlopez: Commenting is crowd sourcing, if for nothing more than a diversity of opinion. So are scientific polls. #wjchat

@zachbehrens: Q1. Crowdsourcing is using the people as a news wire (you should still fact check, though). #wjchat

@ryanjz crowdsourcing is essentially putting a concept out there and soliciting data from the world at-large i.e. open-source journalism. #wjchat

@kimbui Q1: Crowdsourcing, using the wisdom of the crowd to enhance your reporting and your story presentation. #wjchat

@jeffsondermanCH: “Crowdsourcing” is used to describe many different things. From asking an open question to gathering scientific samples #wjchat

No definition is necessarily right or wrong or even better or worse. Some speak to specific applications while others try to be all-encompassing. Below I seek to organize the varying applications into what I'm calling crowdsourcing archetypes. But first, the broader definition.

Targeted, functional

Like some of the chat participants said, crowdsourcing can be very simple and traditional. @henrymlopez's observation that comments and polls are crowdsourcing, if only to obtain a diversity of opinion, is an insightful point.

At its heart, though, and what differentiates crowdsourcing from user-generated content at large, is its utility. It is targeted enough and involves enough people that it can solve important problems that would be impossible or prohibitively difficult for one person or group to solve on its own.

A recent Slate piece, mentioned in the #wjchat,  on crowdsourcing medical advice, says Wired editors invented the term in 2006 to mean just that. "Seeking a problem's solution from a wide community," was how they put it.

Now, on to the types of problems crowdsourcing can solve and news and non-news examples for each.

Needle in a haystack

The more eyes looking at something, the less likely patterns or outliers will slip through the cracks.

News use: The Texas Tribune is a leader in promoting data content and making it accessible. Its efforts attract loads of page views as well as industry praise. The ability of all those eyeballs to uncover story leads was part of the reason the online-only publication made its most popular feature (data or otherwise), a state government payroll app, more user friendly.

Common use: Citizen scientists are fulfilling this archetype when they flag shapes or irregularities in thousands of telescope photos to help astronomers identify and classify galaxies.

Microtasks

The assembly line for the digital revolution. Split up large, tedious or complex projects into simple microtasks anyone can complete.

News use: On its citizen reporting network blog, ProPublica recently explained how it uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to collect, reformat and de-duplicate data.

Common use: You're applying this function every time you fill out a reCAPTCHA, which in addition to fighting spam, digitizes books.

Wisdom of the crowd

Take advantage of people's collective knowledge and experiences to get more, more creative ideas more quickly or to hone in on the most popular ones. 

News use: Tracking election day snafus with Crowdmap, like TBD did.

Common use: David Pogue's Twitter APB for hiccup cures is a fun example.

Network of networks

Study or enlist crowds to discover relationships. Good old fashioned networking but mapped out for you by the social graph.

News use: Everyday social media sourcing. Let the organizing power of online communities steer you to the person or piece of information you're looking for: Purusing Twitter lists to find like-minded people, for example, or identifying Foursquare mayors to find people who know a place or area well.

Common use: Every time you search for or stumble upon contacts on Facebook you're using crowdsourcing this way.

Crowdsourcing also is…

Before ending this post, and opening things up to the wisdom of the crowd, it's worth noting that crowdsourcing doesn't have to involve humans, doesn't have to involve computers and can involve internal audiences like coworkers as well as users. 

With that said, wise crowd, what would you add to or change about this list?

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user victoriapeckham

A confluence of trends is making online video more important, and, in many respects, easier to do…

Candidates "broadcasting themselves" — and their opponnents — by now seems like old hat. And it is. This fall, Web video is part of virtually every big campaign's toolbelt. With political spots spreading across the net like stink bugs, it's easy to forget that this is just the second midterm of the YouTube era.

That's right, four years ago online video as we know it — fueled by Flash compression and broadband adoption — was just beginning to hit its stride. If Web video was only getting going then, there's no telling what it will look four years from now. The five trends outlined below, however, offer some clues:

Internet TV

It looks like the gamechanger that is the marriage of the Web and television sets might finally be upon us. The new Google TV, a revamped Apple TV, their competitors and next-generation video game consoles promise to finally deliver true Internet TV, possibly as soon as this fall. Consider this your save the date.

Mobile video

Web video on family room bigscreens promises to be, um, big, but so does video on the smallscreens in our pockets and purses. Mobile video is "exploding," and should grow even faster as more 4G networks come online, ReadWriteWeb reports. Meanwhile, tablets, another technology that appears to be finally living up to its hype, are creating a brand new market for longer-form, higher production value Web video.

Social video

Even the least social media savvy among us probably knows the term "viral video." Yes, as Rick Astley, Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson and Antoine Dodson know all too well, videos are the most spreadable of spreadable media. Videos also promote the stickiness, or prolonged engagement, advertisers covet. All of this makes video likely to be a big part of any social network's growth strategy, as we're seeing with the #NewTwitter. Twitter's biggest update since its 2006 launch allows users to view video and other media embedded in tweets without leaving the service.

Broadband expansion

One out of every three American adults does not have high-speed Internet in his or her home. Watching video, tedious on dial-up, is impossible, obviously, for the 80 million Americans with no home Internet access of any kind. The federal government and corporate projects like Google Fiber are making earnest efforts to bring highspeed into more households. This, in addition to providing residents with a service some countries have deemed a human right, will increase demand for Web video.

Production and distribution advances

As demand for online video increases, it's, fortunately, becoming easier to fulfill thanks to technological advances in video acquisition, editing and distribution.

Bursting onto the market three years ago, super portable, super easy to use Flip video cameras turn anyone holding one into a potential videojournalist. By offering similar functionality plus live-streaming ability on a device users are already carrying around, video camera-equipped smart phones could displace Flips and similar cameras as quickly as they arrived, some predict.

The rise of cloud computing, meanwhile, both simplifies storage of this data-heavy medium and creates exciting collaboration opportunities, as video editing community Stroome demonstrates.

Finally, HTML5, in addition to enabling some real nifty interactivity, eliminates the need for video plugins, making life easier for developers and providing users a consistent experience across platforms.

…Yet, few news orgs excel at it

60 Minutes

The New York Times

The Roanoke Times

The Shelby Star

If someone tells you, "I'm a journalist," tell him he's being a bad journalist for being so vague.

On Labor Day 2010, his statement could refer to almost anything: Developing iPad apps. Running social media campaigns. Remotely producing multimedia packages. Writing an e-mail newsletter for a nonprofit.

As new positions emerge, traditional positions evolve and non-journalistic organizations take on journalistic tasks, the list is as long and as diverse as ever. We could have said the same thing last Labor Day. And we'll be able to say it again next September and beyond. Below is a snapshot of the many ways one can be a journalist today.

The Mobile Maven

Newsroom jobs devoted to social media have proliferated over the last couple years. The next few should bring similar growth in mobile-specific positions.

At the end of June Poynter caught up with three organizations that have already created mobile jobs and shared why they said they added them and what the people in these positions do.

Above all, the mobile gurus at the Orlando Sentinel, CNN and Philly.com serve as evangelists for the rapidly growing platform, making sure their peers are aware of the opportunities and challenges mobile presents and that mobile audiences possess different wants and needs than their print and Web counterparts.

More specific duties reported by the three outlets included monitoring and responding to metrics, ensuring social media efforts play nicely with mobile, researching app revenue models, crafting breaking news plans and serving as a liaison between the newsroom and marketing, sales and advertising departments. 

The Multimedia Reporter

Traditional journalism jobs, like reporting and editing spots, have changed. Many job posts and job descriptions now reflect this, calling for reporters and editors with a wide array of skills. These can be anything from basic HTML to video editing and social media proficiency.

Here’s an example of  a JournalismJobs.com post for a high school sports reporter at the Star-News in Wilmington, N.C. We're quoting only the part of the ad that includes a brief description of the job duties and skills required:

What you'll do: • Coordinate coverage of five local high school conferences (about 20 schools) and four independent schools with sports editor and photo department. • Caretaker of StarNewsVarsity.com, our Varsity Now blog, @StarNewsVarsity twitter account and StarNewsVarsity Facebook page • Weekly video shows during football and basketball seasons. • Continue our great relationships with the NCHSAA, NCPreps.com and other newspapers in Eastern North Carolina • Regular beat reporting, as well as enterprise and investigative work.

Skills You’ll Need: • Cover It Live • Video (shooting for sure. Editing would be a plus) • Basic HTML knowledge • Audio & photo editing for blog posts

The job title may be for a high school sports reporter, but it’s so much more than that, involving several multimedia tools and new ways to interact with readers. Today’s journalism jobs remind us of what it must be like to be a linebacker or cornerback on the football field: your head has to be on a swivel, watching everything.

The Jack or Jill of All Trades

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention jobs at Patch, the AOL-owned network of hyperlocal sites that's hiring more aggressively than probably any other news brand out there.

Questions swirl as to whether Patch's business model is sustainable, especially when it's expanding so fast. But, in pure journalistic terms, whether its 100 and growing sites are successful rides on the shoulders of its local editors.

Work-from-home (or, maybe more likely, work-from-coffee shop) local editors receive a salary (reportedly around $40K), benefits, a freelancer budget and equipment including a laptop, smart phone, camera and police scanner. Finding and writing stories, taking photographs, shooting video, recruiting freelancers, editing freelancers' work, making sure freelancers get paid and interacting with the audience on social media and in the community, local editors take care of almost everything else that goes into covering a small community (Patch targets localities of 70,000 persons or fewer).

It's a juggling act, for sure. But it's also unique opportunity for young, entrepreneurial journalists to solidify their professional reputation. Patch local editors will be able to point to their site and say with conviction, "That's mine. I built that."

The Online Content Guru

Other positions have evolved to be more specialized to the ever-developing online world. These positions tend to be online editor or Web producer roles, solely focused on news websites. Like the changed high school sports reporter, these roles involve multimedia and audience engagement, but on a more specialized level.

One example is this JournalismJobs.com post for an online content editor for Gazette Communications in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The position involves many of the duties you’d expect to see in an editorial leadership role, but we think one key difference is the opening line:

This position is responsible for developing content, maintaining the voice and being the champion for KCRG.com and associated major social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook.

Here, you see not only the focus on social media, and thus audience engagement, but also attention being paid to the organization’s brand. Branding has become so important these days because your brand exists in a sea of many, and everyone wants a way to stand out.

The Online Engagement Specialist

Companies, nonprofits and other organizations also have the need for journalists. Increasingly, organizations run their own newsrooms and information networks in a sense, relying less on traditional media to get the word out about their missions. Job opportunities that require journalistic skills and new media capabilities continue to pop up.

One example is this posting from Idealist.org for an online engagement associate for the nonprofit, Green for All. The job posting says:

The ideal candidate is an Internet savvy professional, experienced with new and social media, email outreach, online advocacy and fundraising, online-to-offline mobilization strategies, and creating innovate campaigns to grow our online community and presence.

You may see this as a traditional public relations/marketing position, but like always, journalists can be a great fit in these positions because of their skillsets. Plus, if you find a company or nonprofit that matches what you value, all the better.

The Journalist/Programmer

The rise of journalist/programmers has been well documented. Masters of both database structure and story structure, journalist/programmers use their hybrid skillset to spot stories experts in only one area would miss and to tell them in ways more accessible and engaging than a stand-alone table or article.

Such workers, Mashable wrote earlier this year, "are bringing unprecedented value to both major and startup news organizations." Texas State University in San Marcos assistant professor Cindy Royal explored the professional subclass in detail in a case study of The New York Times Interactive News Technology department. How this new breed of journalist moves outlets away from mere multimedia pieces and toward truly interactive ones is among the topics her paper explores.

Precisely what a journalist/programmer does varies widely depending on the needs and resources of the organization. Some might focus exclusively on PHP, others exclusively on Flash. More likely, though, employees, as we've seen in the other jobs in this post, are generalists within their specialty, like in this job Newsday is currently advertising.

Image by hisks.

Fact: Most news-centered websites do suck. Mark Luckie has pointed out several reasons why, and he's right. For one, many newspaper-orientened sites tend to approach things from a print-based perspective. Well. Stop that. Now.

But you know what? There's hope out there.

Take a look at some of our favorite news site designs, and read why we think they work.

The Salt Lake Tribune (organization)

Form and function in a news website? Where do you get that these days? Utah, apparently. Simple but elegant, authorative but fresh, The Salt Lake Tribune's site — redesigned two months ago — impressed us like few news site designs in recent memory.

One of its best aspects is its organization. Both on pages and in navigation dropdowns, headlines are grouped under white-text-on-dark-background headings, making the site super scannable. (Bonus: The site's primary design color changes with the news flow. Cool!)

NPR (typography)

It's funny how an organization centered around one of the oldest means of mass communication has mastered the Web. Sure, NPR has a lot of resources when it comes to its website, but you know what it does better than most (and what any news org could do)? Pay attention to its audience.

That, and the site makes story headlines easy to read. NPR, like most big news sites, has a ton of information on its home page. But, unlike many of its competitors, it doesn't visually overwhelm users. Users always know what the big story is, thanks to the feature area, and the strong typography leads them down the page nicely. The ample white space, and simple color scheme also make the site visually appealing.

KTKA-TV (layout)

We each got our start in print newsrooms and are probably still shedding our anti-broadcast bias, but, what the page view is up with local TV news websites? Who told stations they had to be cluttered, chaotic messes? And who forgot to tell KTKA-TV in Topeka, Kansas? Clean, orderly, fast-loading, KTKA.com is the anti-TV-news-site TV news site.

While a maverick in design, KTKA doesn't run away from the strengths of any broadcast brand — community and personality. Station-related tweets and staff bios are prominent home page features. And KTKA does it all without overburdening its staff, leveraging the automation power of its CMS to organize content and keep lead stories fresh.

Orlando Sentinel Varsity Sports (photos)

Remember when you first became a print journalist, and your first few stories ran? We do. We also remember it sometimes seemed like hardly anyone in town read them. But they probably at least looked at the photos. This still happens on the Web.

The Orlando Sentinel's high school sports section accomplishes something we believe few news sites do well. It focuses on two things users want to see: headlines and photos. The site lacks any sort of fancy polish, but it's easy to use, and the abundance of photos and snappy headlines makes you want to explore the page. That's interactivity in its simplest form.

MSNBC (engagement)

The growing body of users who access news content via social networks, RSS readers and other aggregators may never visit a site's home page. Smart publishers realize this and are starting to give their article pages greater design attention, with a focus on luring users deeper into their site.

MSNBC.com's recently redesigned site does article pages especially well. It showcases recent articles and videos above the top navigation; lets users jump to multimedia, comments and related links via slick, colorful buttons floating on the right side of the page; and presents these and other engagement opportunities below the article text (truncated for longer articles unless users click for more).

All this says to Web surfers: This wave keeps going, don't paddle back out just yet.

The Naples Daily News (branding)

We think we know why no one pays attention to your news site. It looks like all the others. Lame. The Naples Daily News' website has strong branding, something many news sites do poorly. The blend of blue, green and black colors makes the top half of the site more distinctive than most, and that adds to the branding.

Normally, a lot of white type on a black background can be bad, but it works here because of the white and light gray background farther down the page. This creates good contrast and makes the site easier to scan. Well organized with strong sectioned-based content and areas for featured content, the design gives users something to dive into.

This approach can be seen on other Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group sites like the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Share your favs, score invite to the new Digg

Of course, we know that this list is subjective. That's why we want to hear what you think. Share your thoughts in the comments, and by all means, provide some links to your favorite, well-designed news sites.

The first five people to share a link to their favorite, well-designed news site (different from the ones above), and tell us why in the comments get an invite to the new Digg!

Update (3 p.m.): Digg has rolled out its new version today (8/25/10) so invites are less enticing at this point. But please feel free to share your favorite sites in the comments.