Today I said goodbye to my colleagues at The Vancouver Sun, more than seven years after I joined as Managing Editor. I start Monday as the new Ombudsman of the CBC, working for the next two months with Vince Carlin until his term expires at year's end, then succeeding him in the role.
My new position involves resolving complaints with the news and information content of the public broadcaster in radio, television and digital. I am grateful for the privilege to work again at CBC in serving the public and consider it a significant responsibility and honour to assume this role.
Twenty-five years ago this month I began managing in newsrooms. Apart from a small break as a host at CBC Newsworld (eventually I worked there and at The Canadian Press simultaneously) and a smaller one advising the publisher at the Toronto Star, I have spent 23 of those years intensely tracking and trying to advance developments locally, nationally and internationally.
The time at the Sun has been arguably the most exciting in my career because it has taken place during the transformation of the newsroom from one producing two editions of the newspaper to one producing every working hour digitally and augmenting some of that content for those papers. When I took my three office typewriters out of the newsroom today, I considered the digital transformation complete.
Our results have been tremendous --- the best in our chain of newsrooms, nice nominations for awards --- and it's a credit to the team that it has met the challenge and has the commitment and leadership to keep doing so. I thank them, just as I thank our friendly rivals at The Province and our longtime television partners at Global. I will miss the association. My new chapter now begins.

Today it became official: I have accepted the role as Ombudsman of the CBC.
It means I am leaving the newsroom and my colleagues as The Vancouver Sun after seven years as Managing Editor. I have been managing 25 years this month.
I want to thank Editor-in-Chief Patricia Graham for bringing me to Vancouver and investing trust and generous boundaries in my work. I have worked closely with an excellent team of managers, reporters, editors and contributors who care about high-quality journalism and the community we serve. The newsroom comprises a committed local conscience.
My new role starts November 1. I'll be based in Vancouver but travel to Toronto and elsewhere to help CBC's news and information team and the general public understand each other and resolve differences.  I am grateful to CBC President Hubert T. Lacroix for his faith in my ability to extend the excellence of the Ombudsman's office. I am excited and privileged by the challenge.
This is a dynamic time for journalists. Techniques and technology are changing ways of eliciting, sharing and distributing. Change has brought about challenges to protect credibility, ensure transparency and provide accountability to uphold public trust. I hope to help meet those challenges.
There is some housekeeping to do in the days ahead as I leave the Sun and my colleagues at Postmedia. I have been Canadian chair of international committee within the U.S.-based Online News Association and have been nominated for the board this year. I will withdraw from the ONA and the election, just as I will withdraw from my involvement in the ethics committee of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
A direct association with a journalism organization complicates my position's need to represent the public interest. I want to avoid any appearance of a conflict in my new duties and provide the best possible service to the CBC by providing the best possible service to the public.

In a post on the PBS MediaShift site, newspaper consultant Neil Heyside argues for the need of more free citizen-generated content to help newspapers deal with editorial economic challenges.

Heyside, part of the CRG Partners firm, suggests a pronounced shift to free or near-free content in certain areas (and not in certain areas) to deal with costs and preserve quality. "It's high time for a content sourcing change in this industry," he concludes.

To do that, Heyside creates a couple of business models that include about 10 per cent citizen-generated content to demonstrate significant editorial savings. He suggests it's wrong to believe that free or near-free content from experts diminishes the quality of the publication.

News organizations are usually in the business of chasing traffic with topics and assets that audiences find most compelling. But a new study suggests some of the traffic bait may not be as economically effective as first thought.

Perfect Market, an analytics firm that examines traffic for publishers, has released its Vault Index to suggest that many hard-news topics fare better in delivering higher-priced advertising impressions as they garner audience.

In assuming that hard-news stories are charging more for ad impressions than many celebrity features, Perfect Market suggests that the yield is better when the subjective issues of quality are applied to news --- in other words, the more "serious" the journalism, the more it delivers economically.

Perfect Market suggests, though, that publishers aren't setting themselves up to capitalize by attaching higher advertising rates on those more serious stories and topics.

New British research suggests there is no correlation between a media outlet's Internet success and print decline. Indeed, as goes one, so goes the other, for better and worse.

British media analyst Jim Chisholm has found that newspapers that do well on the Web are also doing well in print circulation.  "Understandably worried traditional journalists should know that the internet is not a threat," he told the Guardian.

Chisholm argues that the real issue isn't traffic but frequency of visits and loyalty as repeat consumers.

Nearly two-thirds of American Internet users have spent time on a newspaper website in the last month. New data released Thursday from the Newspaper Association of America argues that newspaper-based websites are thriving and have coveted audiences.

The NAA data from the comScore agency indicates U.S. newspaper sites had 4.1 billion page views, 3.3 billion minutes spent and 102.8 million unique visitors in September. One in four newspaper website visitors come from households earning more than $100,000 annually, compared to about one in five Internet users overall.

The visitors were in much higher proportion than those who used the Yahoo network, CNN or MSNBC, the NAA said.

There is no particular stall in the Internet economy on the advertising front in the United States. While other media are experiencing only modest growth at best, the Internet Advertising Bureau reported Tuesday that revenue reached a record $12 billion in the U.S. in the first half of 2010.

That total is up 11.3 per cent from the first six months a year earlier and is up 13.9 per cent from the second quarter of 2009. Display advertising experienced a strong surge, but the fast-growing areas of video and search are the real propellants in the field.

The results, released by the IAB and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, indicate a rebound from a year earlier, when the recession flattened even Internet advertising.

The TNS research firm has released the largest-ever study of media use behaviour. Not surprisingly it points to rapid adoption of the Internet. But it also demonstrates that several countries are embracing digital more rapidly than are others.

Among the highlights of the study:

1. The Internet has surpassed television as the most-used medium.
2. Rapid-growth markets like China and Egypt have surpassed mature markets.
3. Blogging and social networking are blooming in these rapid-growth markets.
4. Social networking growth has been spurred by the rise of mobile.
5. As email wanes, social networking rises.

The British Broadcasting Corp., long a strong leader in online journalism, has issued new guidelines for its employees that take the concept of linking to a new level.

The BBC says linking is essential to good journalism --- but not just links to any place. It wants its journalists to look beyond the usual for relevant links, for explanatory and contextual links, and not just to home pages or story pages (except when that story page is a primary source).

Paul Bradshaw of the Online Journalism Blog praises the new guides as a positive step. The guides are below, posted earlier by The Guardian of London.

A new report from the AVG Security firm shows that the vast majority of young children have a digital presence. Indeed, one-quarter of children have sonograms online before they're born.

The research indicates the typical digital "birth" starts at six months. But a surprising number of parents post sonograms --- 37% in Canada and 34% in the U.S.

By the age of two, 92% of Americans have some sort of digital presence. Some 70% said they wanted to share images with friends and family.

The survey of 2,200 mothers in North America, Europe and Asia was conducted in the final week of September.