Nevertheless, I had to chuckle when I read an article on Forbes.com about the sexiest TV commercials ever and the interactive feature that they embedded aside the story was a slideshow of photo stills from those commercials. Here’s a story on what should be a very technologically capable website about VIDEO and they DON’T HAVE ANY VIDEOS! I wouldn’t have commented on it at all, but the caption ‘In pictures: judges pick the steamiest TV commercials ever’ under the photo slideshow was too priceless to let slide by…

Someone actually took the time to capture screen shots of the videos and assemble them in a slideshow, but they couldn’t spend an extra 5 minutes compiling the video clips from Youtube and embedding them in the story. It’s laughable to imagine the conversation that took place where the decision was made to not do so.

Mind boggling.

• Village Voice Media is stepping in to capitalize on the opportunity completely missed by the dailies in creating a local advertising network. This may turn out to have been the biggest whiff of all the missteps of the dailies over the last decade. And while that may be arguable given how badly the dailies have handled their fortunes of late, there is no arguing that in these late innings, the creation of a local ad network (both online and offline) represents perhaps the last great hope for local newspaper franchises.

• Unfortunately, the local ad play has also taken a beating in the current downturn, so maybe it’s not the immediate fix everyone believes it to be. (Though long-term, the hype over local ad networks, local search, local media, and local advertising is more than justified). Even local TV, which has also whiffed on many of the opportunities they’ve been presented, is showing signs of innovation and change in the new media landscape.

• Online classifieds are soaring these days (as if anyone needed more evidence of how badly the dailies blew their monopoly in that arena).

• Tucson has lost its daily. And again, while some say enough with the obvious and tell me something I don’t know, the pace of death and destruction in the industry is staggering and is still worth endless commentary and observation. Anytime an industry can lose $18 billion in 3 years, it’s worth commenting on.

• …another article to add to the mix on whether or not micropayments will or won’t save the dailies. And despite the arguments against charging for content, MediaNews is forging ahead anyway.

• Some believe the Kindle won’t save the dailies either (though I’d argue that it might).

• Maybe public subsidies are the answer (even Congress is jumping on the bandwagon)…or maybe the dailies can follow the example set by the Huffington Post and start auctioning off internships and even higher level jobs on ebay.

• Also in the obvious category, the trend with the dailies over the next few years will be local billionaires and/or real estate developers buying their local daily from debt-holders. It’s already happened in San Diego, and next on the list will be Boston, L.A., and possibly even New York. (Something has to happen with the Times as it’s too valuable to be run down to zero and the Sulzberger family is eventually going to riot as their fortune continues to be decimated…). But eventually, most large metro dailies will be owned by local individuals or groups of individuals and we’ll be back to where we were 100 years ago.

• McClatchy is scrambling on multiple fronts to stay ahead of the avalanche crashing down around it. The company has restructured its debt, accepting a 3x increase in the interest rate it’s paying (5% to 15%) in exchange for an extension on the debt of a few years. In the head-scratching department, the company is also experimenting with an additional charge for subscribers who want the TV Guide with their newspaper. Really?!?!?!?

• There is little doubt that the Wall Street Journal will be out front leading the charge in charging readers for its content online. This is a good thing (if done the right way), and in one form or another it will work and it will be an important component allowing certain publishers navigate towards a long-term, sustainable business model online. Circling the wagons and working out an industry-wide program might be the answer, but the dailies just need to make sure they stay out of trouble with anti-trust regulators in the process. The trick will be balancing the need to generate a decent value proposition that warrants a paid fee and the urge to maniacally police the web for ‘pirated’ content.

• Another component of that sustainable business model will be individualized news. There has been countless attempts of this, and many, many failures, but eventually publishers will figure it out and it will become a standard component of news delivery, both in print and online. The latest attempt in this effort comes from MediaNews.

• Newspapers are now less liked than airlines. According to a recent report, the American Customer Satisfaction Index, newspapers ranked below airlines and cell phone companies in customer satisfaction. That’s pretty low.

• With all the chaos swirling around newspapers, it remains an active area for deal activity. This is likely to increase as papers work through bakruptcies, consolidate, shut down, develop new models, and begin arriving at new models that provide some prospects for growth and value creation. Despite the collapse of the industry, print remains an incredibly appealing media channel for consumers and advertisers alike, and that will likely remain so for decades to come. But at some point, all the newspaper debt holders that are quickly becoming equity owners are going to realize that they have less chance of successfully managing a daily paper than industry veterans (who deserve about a D- for their effort even with an exceedingly generous curve applied to the grade) and are going to have to sell at whatever price they can muster. Debt holders who hold out hoping that good days are going to return are delusional. Selling now at $.10 on the dollar is far better than nothing down the road, no matter how painful the write-down might be today.

• The New York Times continues to experiment with new advertising formats on its site. While some may be annoying and hopefully short-lived, readers should be patient and forgiving and let the Times keep experimenting until it eventually arrives at workable solutions. If brilliant campaigns like the Mac/PC ads are any indication, the future is solid for online advertising. I also credit the Times for raising its prices. I haven’t a clue if this will work long-term, but at least they’re aggressively trying to figure out what to do with their business to stay solvent.

• What is sure not to work, however, are weak attempts to launch new publications that are aborted before issue #1 even hits the street.

• As if more evidence is needed, Pew just released a new study showing how badly newspapers dropped the ball with online classifieds. This news comes just as online employment classifieds are beginning to rise once again.

• The saga of the Boston Globe continues, with growing acrimony between management and the unions.

• Global readership of newspapers continues to rise, and readership of and traffic stats surrounding newspaper websites continues to lend hope that there is an answer for some dailies who are smart enough with their web offerings.

• News that Craigslist’s revenue will soon top $100M provides further proof that while the site has certainly played a role in stealing classifieds away from the dailies, the credit the site receives in the mainstreams press’ coverage of the death of the dailies is massively overblown.

• Given the recent public statement from Google that they will not be the savior for newspapers, perhaps Apple will step in to carry the day. Or maybe it’s the gaming industry. Or maybe it’s the oft-mentioned ‘user-generated content’ that is helping Hearst’s TV station sites.

• Newspapers are finally catching on to the power and appeal of online video. It seems to be working for Philly.com.

• What a shock! Sam Zell might lose control of his not-so-beloved Tribune. I hope the holders of the $8.6 billion in Tribune debt have fun with their new prize.

• For a preview of what’s coming for almost every single major metro market in the U.S., check out the battle in San Diego between a non-profit online news company (Voice of San Diego), a local for-profit online news site (San Diego News Network), and a cratering daily (San Diego Union Tribune) that was purchased by a private equity group with no experience in publishing primarily because of the daily’s real estate holdings. (Sounds pretty similar to the situation in Minneapolis, although we’ve swapped the local online-only, for-profit website for another daily over in St. Paul).

• True/Slant, the latest entrant into the for-profit, online news & journalism fray offers another possible glimpse into the future of online journalism.

• Right on the ball just like they were in accurately assessing credit risk in the housing, mortgage, and banking sectors over the past decade, Moody’s has released a report on the daily newspaper industry. In the report, John Pucalla writes:

“Ultimately, we expect the industry will need to reverse the vertical integration strategy through cross-industry collaboration and outsourcing print production and distribution processes,” said Puchalla. “Although newspapers may lose some of their in-house control over press time, they would also release resources to beef up investment in content and technology.”

In English, that means newspapers are over-leveraged, crippled by unions, and suffering tremendously due to chronic under-investment in value-added journalism and online technology. What timely and prescient insight.

• In a non-daily related story, the Computer History Museum has posted two fascinating documents that provide some visibility into the earliest days of Apple. These should be heartening for every entrepreneur and early-stage company that’s had to make use of their magic crystal ball to gaze into the future with perfect clarity.

(Thanks Lief for the link)

LinkUp, one of the leading job search engines in the country, indexes job listings found on only on company web sites (18,356 company sites in May). Unlike other job search engines such as Indeed or Simplyhired, LinkUp does not aggregate jobs from other job boards but rather aggregates and publishes only jobs pulled directly from company web sites themselves. As a result, job listings found on LinkUp are always current, often unadvertised, and never fake.

Just as encouragning as the slowing rate of decline is the fact that 14 industries showed either an increase or no decline in the number of new or total job listings. In April, not a single industry showed an increase in new job listings, and only 5 had an increase in the total number of listings. In terms of the best and worst industries, Healthcare and Hospitality experienced the largest increases, while Restaurant & Food Service, Technology, and Engineering & Architecture showed the largest declines.

LinkUp, one of the leading job search engines in the country, indexes job listings found on only on company web sites (18,356 company sites in May). Unlike other job search engines such as Indeed or Simplyhired, LinkUp does not aggregate jobs from other job boards but rather aggregates and publishes only jobs pulled directly from company web sites themselves. As a result, job listings found on LinkUp are always current, often unadvertised, and never fake.

In terms of the best and worst performing states, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio added the most new job listings, while Washington, Maryland, and Illinois experienced the largest declines in new job listings. Combined, total job listings in those 3 states declined by roughly 14,000 job listings. In April, the worst 3 states combined for a total job listing decline of over 43,000.

Along those same lines, are apps paying any fees to be promoted in Apple stores? Again, the exposure for free and paid apps is extraordinary, and certainly worth a lot of money to the lucky few who are included in Apple’s prominent in-store promotion.

This is a recent picture from the Apple store on 5th avenue in New York. On a random Thursday night, there were at least 200 people in the store, and daily traffic has to be off the charts. Careerbuilder’s iPhone app is the only job board featured anywhere in the store.

In this current ‘Great Recession,’ the decline in GDP has been only 1.8% to date, and the stimulus response so far has been equal to 29% of GDP. This is 10 times the normal stimulus for a recession that so far is just slightly above average in terms of GDP decline. As a result, Grant is forecasting massive inflation sooner and to a significantly larger degree than mainstream economists are predicting at the moment.

At the same conference, other economists made some interesting remarks about unemployment figures. The first was that in the 5 months between November and March, the average monthly job losses have exceeded 600,000. In April, the job losses were 539,000 and everyone cheered the positive news and claimed that the worst of the recessions was over. While that may be the case, in neither of the past 2 receessions was there ever a single month where job losses were greater than 300,000.

The other point that was made was that even once the economy starts adding jobs, whenever that might occur, the pace of net job gains initially will not be enough to surpass the number of new entrants into the job market. This means that even once there are months with jobs being added in the economy, the unemployment rate will continue to rise until monthly job gais outpace the growth of the labor market. Kind of frightening to think about.

Sorry for the grim post but the stats and information are worth keeping in mind as the economy muddles through into a recovery at some point.