That’s right, it’s time for another Carnival of Journalism and this month, I’m proud to be hosting. Not sure what a blog carnival is? Check out this entry on Wikipedia. The Carnival of Journalism includes posts from some of the brightest minds currently blogging on journalism, in my humble opinion.

The Carnival gets underway with a post from John Hassell of the exploding newsroom fame. For those of you who don’t know, John is the online editor at the Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ. He enters the carnival with “A day in the life of a big local story.” Want to see how a major daily fires all guns at a story? Then check out his post.

Not wanting there to be only one John at the Carnival, John Ndege offers “Out Scooping the Wire News Services.” John Ndege is a great blogger whose insights go beyond journalism. If you are earching for some guidance in this crazy journalism/Internet world, take a stroll through his blog. For the Carnival, he ponders the future of news wire services and the impact of services like Twitter.

Soon to graduate from the University of South Florida, Wendy Withers offers the Carnival a post with some great “Advice for college journalists: Online portfolios.” Wendy has always offered some great insights (it has a spot in my reader) and this post is no different. Her tips could be the difference between a graduate moving into their own pad and starting a job or moving into their parents attic and looking for work.

Think we’re done? Wait! There’s more to come so keep checking back as more posts will continue to go up. Have your own thoughts? Drop a comment below and let people know what you are thinking.

See, I told you we weren’t done yet.

Charlie Beckett, someone who seemingly wears more hats then I can capture in a few witty words, reminds us that sometimes there is good writing beyond the blogosphere with his book review of Can You Trust The Media? by Adrian Monck. Full disclosure, Adrian also participates in the Carnival of Journalism (see below). Read the review and, dare I say, buy the book.

Moving back across the pond, Jack Lail, managing editor/multimedia for The Knoxville News-Sentinel (someone who always manages to be blogging — how he pulls that off I’ll never understand) offers “The ‘Golden Age’ of Web news.” His posts always give me something to chew on for a few days and this one isn’t any different:

All-media-meets on the Web has created a local news and advertising battlezone in market-after-market the likes of which I’ve never seen in a 30-plus-year career.

The author himself, Adrian Monck, takes a moment to address some of the observations about his book in “Can You Trust The Media? – Review.”

Think the Carnival’s done? Not quiet, check back later for more.

And before I could hit “Save,” along comes Andy Dickinson, faculty member at the University of Central Lancashire and prolific blogger (and apparently wine drinker) offers “What is a picture worth?” Although he describes it as a “bit of a ramble of nice words and tricky pictures,” I don’t think I’d be that harsh. Give it a read and let Andy know what you think.

So a funny thing happened to me on my way to starting my new job. In addition to everyone in our household (with the exception of our cat, Boo) getting monstrously sick, I managed to lose my bloggers voice. I initially chalked up the occurrence to the toll the flu had taken on my body, mind and spirit. But the more I tried to get back into my writing and figure out what was going on, the more I realized it was more then just the lingering effects of my prolonged illness. What I discovered was that I no longer knew what I wanted to say.

The time that I had taken off from daily writing had left my mind muddied and the clarity that I once possessed regarding the myriad of issues facing newspapers was, for the most part, gone. And the more that I tried to figure out what to do, the more overwhelmed by it I became. Not one to give up, I gave it some more thought and realized that more than anything, I was actually frustrated, annoyed and even a bit dismayed.

See, I truly love this industry. And sure, like anything you love, it has it’s wrinkles and warts in addition to it’s ups and it’s downs, nevertheless you still love it. But increasingly, the industry is under attack. Disappearing print circulation, shrinking advertising and surging costs has left it fighting for its financial survival. In addition, our newsrooms and online operations are being overtly influenced by dinosaurs who are content with seeing their employer struggle and fail and by curmudgeonly young employees who have a warped sense of entitlement and the oft-mistaken belief that they alone have the insight and the answers to change this industry for the better.

Even if you don’t work in a newsroom, you can easily encounter both of these elements online, in the blogosphere.

Look around the Internet, and you’ll find all kinds of media/journalism bloggers. I would imagine (without doing any research) that there are hundreds writing just in the U.S. Some bloggers provide great insight and criticism that is sharp and useful. Other are voracious readers and collectors of data and information, their blogs share great works worthwhile to emulate at your own shop. But, and this might just be because of whom I read, the loudest are the bloggers who complain the most about the industry. These are typically young journalists with a short amount of time at any one job. Their blogs are places for them to publicly whine and throw tantrums in an effort to receive attention and obtain validation for their viewpoints. All too often their posts leave me shaking my head and wanting to grab the authors, give them a smack or two and tell them to wake up and, especially, grow up. But that’s not what this blog is about.

So that’s where I am, struggling for my place and wondering where my voice fits in among those writing about our industry. Maybe I’m over thinking it, maybe I just need to start writing again because I enjoy it. I don’t know for sure, but then again, this post is a start!

NOTE: I’m proud to be participating, along with fellow journalism bloggers from around the world in the Carnival of Journalism. In addition to reading my post please visit the Carnival host site and see what my colleagues are writing about. Not sure what a blog carnival is? Check out this entry on Wikipedia.

After spending the past week or so battling the flu, it’s great to be feeling coherent enough to be online and blogging. And what makes my return post even more exciting to write is that it actually contains some real news. And that is that I have a new job!

On March 17, I start as Executive Producer of Philly.com. I’m thrilled to be joining such an experienced and dedicated team in a storied newspaper city like Philadelphia.

This is an exciting move for me and really is representative of my thoughts on the current state of our industry. I believe that nowadays, you can divide news organizations into two camps. There are those papers that are keeping their fingers crossed hoping that classified, display advertising and circulation business will return to the days of yore and that their “traditional” approach just needs a minor tweaking. And, then there are the newspapers that believe they can’t wait and hope for what amounts to be a miracle. These newspaper are aggressively carving out a place for themselves in future of our industry, making bold plays and trying new approaches — I believe that Philly is one such place.

Now I know that there will be those of you who will be saying “didn’t you just join Ottaway last year?” Well, you would be right, and although I believe that Ottaway is among those newspaper companies that are not standing still, Ottaway has been put up for sale by its new owners, News Corp. So when Mark Potts and I began talking about my joining the Philly team, it didn’t take long for me to believe that this was the right move at the right time.

So that’s my big news. I hope you can appreciate why I see it as a cause for excitement. I expect to be back to my regularly blogging self by Monday, so stay tuned; the fun’s just starting.

So someone gave me the flu and it has me wrecked. I’ve started a few posts, but just don’t have the energy to see them through. I hope to be back blogging, tweeting and everything else in a few days. Thanks for hanging in there.

My apologies if you have tried to visit my site in the past 16 hours. My hosting company, DreamHost, turned an 8 hour server relocation project into a 16-hour nightmare. And then to add to the situation, my site and connected services didn’t just “come back up” once they were done.

In any case, the site is now back up and everything should be working. In the future, I’ll try to better communicate when these events might be occurring. Thanks for your patience and continued support.

One of the things that I truly love about having my own blog is the opportunity to experiment. This site has become my own personal laboratory where I can try out new ideas. If I read of something and want to see what it can do, I try it. And if it works I keep it; if not I chuck it. I think it’s an approach that benefits my readers and can help to grow traffic.

As of today, for example, you’ll notice a “listen” button appearing on my blog (it’s above this post if you’re at my site). This is functionality that I’ve seen on sites like Jerusalem Post. Simply, it converts my blog posts to audio files that can either be heard through an embedded player or downloaded to an mp3 player or even added to an iTunes playlist. I know you’re thinking that it’s going to be one of those creepy, computerized voices, but give it a listen — not too bad, actually pretty good. This is thanks to technology from Odiogo and best of all, for bloggers, it’s free.

I’m using this example not just to highlight a new way to enjoy my own blog, but also to hopefully illustrate the importance of experimentation and innovation. Sadly, at many newspapers experimentation and innovation have been replaced with process and stagnation. And, I would argue, at those papers both the employees and the readers suffer.

Employees are more likely to find satisfaction and enjoyment in an environment in which experimentation and innovation are embraced and as a result, will generally perform at a higher level. Readers and visitors to your site will benefit from a better site, better content and/or better functionality and as a result traffic to your site will grow.

I understand, that a newspaper’s website is not like a personal blog. Not everything that is free for me to use on my site is free for a commercial site and that it is not as easy as deciding to add functionality and just doing it. But it shouldn’t be as hard as it currently is. I have colleagues at newspapers where they wait for months for permission to add a Digg or other social networking buttons or where changing positions of elements on the homepage requires a discussion by a committee.

As an industry, I think this really needs to change. We need to be more nimble, more aggressive; we need to be quicker to act and even quicker to react. We need to stop being afraid of new technologies and start embracing them. We need to trust our employees and give them the room to work. Success for us online, would not be a bad thing — it is likely the only way to save our industry.

So take some time and listen to some of my other posts thanks to Odiogo and think about how your paper, your site can better embrace experimentation and innovation.

For those of you who use Internet Explorer and have visited editor on the verge recently, you know that I have been trying to fix a programming problem that resulted in the site not appearing correctly. Well I am happy to report that thanks to the encouragement of some very smart colleagues and determination on my part, the problem has been fixed and the faulty code has been excised.

Whether you use Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, editor on the verge should now appear correctly for you. If you visited previously and found the problems too distracting to ignore, I urge you to come back and give editor on the verge another look.

Interesting piece by Edward Wasserman on MiamiHerald.com today. In “Journalism becoming a consumer product” Wasserman quotes from my “Get the most from your online data” post. Also included in the piece is Random Mumbling’s Jack Lail. Wasserman has an interesting argument and the piece is worth checking out. For those of you not familiar with him, Wasserman is the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.

7:35 p.m. (EST) – For reaction to Wasserman, readers should take a look at “Critic’s slam on ‘popularity pay’ needs correction” by Lucas Grindley. For a deeper dive on the issue, check out his post “Bloggers question the way reporters are paid.”

11:15 p.m. (EST) – Jack weighs back in with “Paying starving journalists will be the death of good journalism.”