From Today's SF Chronicle . . .

File Under "That Really is a Train at the End of the Tunnel, Dave"

Dave Van Dyke, president of a radio industry consulting firm, Bridge Ratings LLC of Glendale (Los Angeles County), said most podcasts are by nature amateurish, and called their audience a "blip on the radar.'' Less than one-tenth of 1 percent have even heard about it,'' he said.

Still, the rise of podcasting and booming sales of portable digital audio players is causing the radio industry to take notice, not necessarily because it poses a threat, but because it represents a new method of distribution, Van Dyke said. "

Hmmm... not as easy and straightforward as one might hope or think. My Adobe Premiere Elements software is not here yet, but I should check the online documentation to ensure it can edit MPEG4 clips. So far, not much can, including (believe it or not) the Ulead SW that came with my Xacti camera.

Stay tuned... or better yet, offer advice.

Today, we talk about the impact of Blinkx's deal with Movielink and what it means to search and premium content.

So, I told my wife last week, after leaving the Mariners-Padres Spring Training complex, that I’d bet the newspaper in San Diego (Union-Tribune) would love to show its readers video clips of the Padres warming up in Spring Training. The paper certainly cannot afford to send a reporter this early to Arizona to cover the team. Heck, I’d be willing to just have the team link to this blog and see Jake Peavy warm up and take a glance at beloved former Padre Dave Winfield.

It’s the future: citizen journalism. Let’s put aside the fact that I was a newspaper reporter and columnist for more than 10 years. Even if I were an untrained person with a video camera and I shot 10 minutes of the Padres walking from the clubhouse to the field, I’d bet fans in the San Diego area (as well as San Diego expats) would eat the content up with a cyber-spoon.

The paper doesn’t need to pay citizen journalists. Just link to my site and let me monetize the traffic (if I want) via ads. Most reasonable citizen journalists would be willing to agree to a code of conduct; heck, if the paper is willing to drive traffic to my site (after it gets traffic to its site and improves its brand image), why on earth would I or any citizen journalist want to kill this golden goose? Yes, there will be people who take advantage and do things on their sites that is deemed inappropriate; I will guarantee you this (as a veteran newspaper person), it won’t be anything worse than I have seen in the paper over the years. I can recall a typo in a Seattle-area newspaper where the Milwaukee NBA team's name was printed with the letter above and to the left of "B" on the keyboard.

It’s not just events like Padres Spring Training. It’s all sorts of micro-local content that is outside the economic constraints of the newspaper’s coverage parameters. It includes meetings, festivals, social gatherings and "stuff" that people in the community care dearly about. Today, and in the future, newspapers will have to do far more with a lot less. Why not turn avid (and talented) readers into citizen journalists?

This will evolve in a few ways:

1. Newspapers will begin to tap into citizens as extensions of their local coverage. The paper will appoint an editor who will review content to make sure it’s fit to print. The paper will link to the CJ’s site. I think newjersey.com did this. It still might.
2. Newspapers will develop an ecosystem using a product such as iUpload (and others) to allow individuals to develop content for the newspaper. This platform contains a workflow engine so the citizen journalists can be tightly integrated into the newspaper’s process. There are many permutations of this scheme.
3. Citizen journalists Websites (such as Backfence) will emerge to build out community newspaper solely built on the talent of local writers, photographers, Videobloggers and Podcasters. Some of these sites will employ a workflow process and a template to ensure continuity; others will just go free form and post individuals’ contributions as is.

 I have to tell you, it’s really cool to participate in this citizen journalism trend. It’s amazing the number of people who have something to say or are willing to jot a few notes about an issue of local interest. As newspapers get further away from being to afford micro-local coverage (hyperlocal journalism, so to speak), and the big Medias Titans (Yahoo, MSN, Google) take an interest in local content, the greater the impact of citizen journalism. Newspapers are warned.

There are tons of skeptics out there doubting the veracity of this trend. To them, I say, “Why not?”