John Stackhouse, an award-winning journalist who has run the Report on Business financial section within The Globe and Mail, was appointed the Globe's new editor-in-chief Monday. He succeeded Edward Greenspon, who held the role for more than seven years.

In his first wave of interviews, Stackhouse has signaled the possibility of charging for the Globe's online content. The organization has tried a few approaches --- a firewall around commentary, for instance --- and now mostly provides the content free online.

But Stackhouse indicated there might be changes in the works.

"We think our journalism has a strong value for our users and we think that audience wants to pay for it directly or indirectly and they understand the value of it, so we just need to continue to find ways to make that transaction work," he told The Canadian Press.  "There's going to be all types of innovations in the years ahead --- whether it's pay-per-use, or pay-per-view or click models - that I think we'd be eager to try out."

The Pew Center's Internet and American Life project continues to cement a number of perceptions about the changing media landscape. Its newest finding indicates Americans are turning rapidly to online classified advertising sites.

Its latest study found 45 per cent used such sites as Craigslist, up from 22 per cent two years earlier. On a typical day, nine per cent turned to such sites, up from four per cent two years earlier.

And the cohort most strongly using the sites are the coveted 25-44 age group.

The findings are further difficult news for U.S. newspapers, which have lost revenue to the online sites.

Steve Outing, one of the industry's most grounded analysts, has been rolling up his sleeves for a long time in trying to help the newspaper business transform first into a digital model and then into a digital model that works as a business.

His latest column for Editor & Publisher is more plaintive than most, in that it critiques the recent musings of U.S. newspaper executives in reversing course to charge online readers for content. Outing argues it won't work, the local media will lose relevance (socially and technologically), and the strategy will open the door for competitors.

But Outing isn't all into the free-to-be camp, either. He believes there are opportunities to drive revenue from readers --- he just doesn't see it happening through a firewall, not when so many others seem prepared to keep giving much of that same content away.

Instead he advocates partnering with advertisers to offer loyalty programs that permit readers not only to gain free access to content but other benefits. In other words, the carrot approach and not the stick. His biggest idea: Discounts for members from those same advertising partners, instead of generic coupons.

Borrell Associates says local e-mail advertising is going to boom in the years ahead and newspapers stand to capitalize on it.

The massive marketing channels newspapers possess are powerful tools, says Borrell, and the activity for email advertising will grow more than 150 per cent to more than $2 billion in the U.S. by 2013.

Borrell VP Peter Conti is quoted on Clickz as saying only a small percentage of local media is focusing on this source of revenu. He argues that newspapers should be hiring a database manager to seize the opportunity.

Fortune.com managing editor Andy Serwer is blogging less and Tweeting and Facebooking more. He concludes that social media is scraping his best ideas and that he has less time for the clunky blog format.

Twitter and Facebook are making the blog obsolete, he asserts. While he's reading and absorbing a lot of interesting culture, he's expressing himself in smaller pieces in the social media space.  He had to draw a line and compartmentalize, but through social media he's taking in more media than ever.

He worries the next step is some Vulcan mind-meld-like, few-character service.

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, says his company considered buying into the newspaper industry but decided against it because it crossed the line between technology and content.

Schmidt told FT.com his company is focusing on helping newspapers develop better online properties. While it looked at using its charitable arm to support the business --- and evaluated purchasing newspapers outright --- it decided acquisitions were too expensive or carried too many liabilities.

He isn't bullish on the concept of micropayments for general forms of journalism, but is more open-minded about it for specialized forms.

Vint Cerf, the Google chief evangelist widely credited as one of the Internet's pioneers, is entering the micropayment-for-news fray by suggesting (well, hinting) that journalism ought to try a fee-for-something approach.

The Internet News site interprets his quote as suggesting that an iTunes-style approach ought to be the route. It's not clear, though, exactly what he's advocating, because there is no direct quote. He notes that media, and particularly newspapers, need new models of distribution and new forms of revenue.

"Exploring alternative forms of distribution is absolutely essential," he told a conference on innovation in journalism. "If there's no way to reward intellectual property, it will be difficult to come by."

There are blogs and then there are blogs. Xark, for instance, is one of those blogs that routinely reveals a new path and challenges an old assumption. Its contributors have been around the block and they're growing a little impatient when others are stuck inside the house.

The latest post is exceptional in discussing a new framework for reporting: the data structure as part of what it calls an Informatics Scenario. It provides a good example of how reporters might gather information in this new era (filling in a lot of fields) and it argues convincingly that metadata provide the new path.

As for challenging the old assumption: It assumes no paid content and an insufficient advertising revenue stream, so it requires metadata to generate audiences and revenue. There's trauma ahead, it argues, but there's also hope in the new.

Steve Yelvington, one of the Web's sage voices on new and legacy media, offers good advice in his latest post on two new forms of journalism to attract audiences.

The beat blog helps a small but loyal audience keep in touch with its issues and the reporters in touch with the source material. We've got a few of them at the Vancouver Sun and they're highly beneficial to creator and consumer alike.

The topic page helps another dedicated audience stay abreast and attracts a new audience with contextualized content of importance. They provide links to content, particularly audio and video, and an understanding of all of the assets in the mix. We've got a few of them at the Sun, too, and we want to create more of them.

The relatively new online advertising market is bound to have its growing pains. Marketwatch features a piece on the pressure on newspapers to alter --- that is, lower --- their online rates and tie them more to results.

Ad buyers complain in the piece that newspapers continue to behave as if they hold near-monopolies on local information. Their cost-per-thousand (CPMs) reader rates are too high, given the performance of those ads in increasing business results.

As if the U.S. newspaper business needs more challenges, the buyers suggest the industry hasn't kept pace with the ways in which advertising is consumed online and are simply transferring CPMs to the digital space. In my experience, that isn't happening as widely as some suppose. CPMs are much lower online, from what I've seen across media. But the larger argument appears to be that the market doesn't accept the rate.