Taking a cue from Rory Satran's post A Case for Media Integration, Steve Yelvington adds his own observations on what he believes are the "perils of newsroom integration."

Satran's analysis highlights such issues as newsroom restructuring and the loss of staff, positioning "print-hardened" top editors" at the helm of an integrated newsroom; and respecting the difference between the ways in which print and online journalists write and work.

Steve asserts the importance of keeping the online newsroom separate from the print newsroom at the present time: "I believe we are not finished defining online news, and we need to be careful not to lose the agility of a separate online operation as we seek efficiencies. Print editors will argue that they're innovative, forward-thinking and fast-moving, but I've consistently found an order of magnitude of difference in those definitions.

More importantly, we've hardly even begun making process outside of the "news" concept in local information and community interaction. "

Newsrooms, however "are not designed to address product-development and innovation issues in such areas; newsrooms are production factories."

Yet Steve's argument is not "against integration": "In fact, I think production processes need to be integrated and "newspapers" need to become multiplatform organizations managing a portfolio of products. "

Also, Steve's analysis of Newpaper Next and the ideas that he believes constitute a how-to manual for integration at newspapers: "N2 redefines "the core" as the portfolio of existing products, including the typical existing newspaper website. There are ways to do a much better job in the "core," much of them built around the "jobs to be done" analysis. Newspapers in this regard remind me of the camping knife I had when I was a kid. It had a fork, a spoon, a knife, a bottle opener -- and it wasn't very good at forking, spooning, cutting or opening. (I cringe every time I see an ad campaign for a newspaper website that boasts how it has everything under the sun. Because a little voice in my head says, "and none of it worth a damn.")

There also is a "non-core" category where N2 recommends the development of utility-focused services, databases, unlocking the "collective wisdom" of the community by facilitating user interaction around utility, and the establishment of general community interaction platforms (citing WickedLocal.com and BlufftonToday.com,/a> as examples). "

Mark Hamilton adds a a few thoughts on why he will not subscribe to some newspapers, whether or not they have an online version: "As newspapers struggle for ways to finance an increasingly online presence, one of the ways they can attract money from readers like me is to deliver high-quality, compelling journalism. After all, I can get free access to most stories from any number of sources, whether it’s breaking international news, in-depth coverage of major events, or even neighbourhood-level hyperlocal journalism. I can meet that need without spending a cent (other than the cost of my internet connection).

Despite that, the desire for quality is something I’m willing to pay for, particularly when that quality comes combined with trust in the people providing the compelling storytelling."

Jon Dube distills some stats from a new report by the Bivings Group on American newspapers and the Internet:

*80 of the nation's top 100 newspapers offered reporter blogs. On 63 of these blogs, readers could comment on posts written by reporters.
* 76 of the nation's top 100 newspapers offer RSS feeds on their websites. All of these feeds are partial feeds, and none included ads.
* Video is offered by 61 of the newspapers.

Newspapers Internet efforts, however, could be undermined further if more advertising is lured in a different direction. Terry Heaton explains a new scheme where Google has teamed up with direct-mail coupon distributor Valpak that will allow local merchants to distribute printable coupons via Google maps. Google says the aim of the initiative is "to improve the user experience and increase traffic at the Maps site." Terry, however, sees it a bit differently: "Of course the real aim is, again, to pull money from local advertisers into the Google coffers, and this is another slap in the face of local media companies and local ad agencies who continue to try and force their reach/frequency model on everybody (and insist that the earth is flat). Google continues to prove that they don't need the blessing of the status-quo to suck cash out of local markets, and this will be the downfall of those who view Internet pure play companies as a nuisance instead of a threat. "