Seth Godin has advice for underemployed real-estate agents: Start a newspaper. That's right.

His formula: Assuming six people are in your office, have them each do two interviews a day. Get 20 households to subscribe to your free paper (which is actually an online newsletter). Twice a week send it to them. Within a week it ought to have two dozen articles and 500 subscribers and very soon, if it's any good, it'll have the entire area subscribing. It'll own its zip (postal) code, which Godin asserts is an important achievement.

Godin doesn't take it any further. I presume there's the capacity to sustain it, to fetch some advertising to pay for the effort, and no one else able to do it. Otherwise the "gift" he suggests is yours to give is exactly that.

Marketing and brand guru Seth Godin obviously had had enough when he saw Jennifer Aniston on today's Sunday New York Times Magazine cover (note: it was its annual screens edition).
He took to blogging about the wasted currency and equity of the Times and how it might have positioned itself for a vastly stronger future.
In short, his points:
1. Use the influence and brand to let others spread their content.
2. Leverage the op-ed page and spread important ideas.
3. Build a permission asset.
4. Keep score (with lists).
5. Stringers.
6. New platforms for advertisers.
He concludes: "I guess it's about the difference between: senior management playing defense, supporting and protecting the status quo and avoiding offending the elders upstairs vs.
using existing momentum and clout to build assets for the next business."

The British newspaper, The Guardian, is among the most sophisticated of all news media in the digital space, so any contemplation or decision on its part deserves attention.
The news organization is now evaluating how its journalists should participate in comment threads. This shouldn't surprise anyone --- once journalists were expected to blog, it was not unexpected they'd have to engage ---- but not many outlets are that far down the road. So the Guardian's deliberations on this front will be worth studying.
The Guardian will soon unveil a new Pluck-based platform to widen the interactivity between creators and audience, and there are still many questions from the newsroom's journalists on how plucky they can be in participating, how to use those threads for news, and largely how to ensure the venerable brand is preserved.

If you're looking for a new understanding of media consumption and distribution, here's a quick primer. Loic Le Meur's video blog outlines his "social map" and the critical connections he makes to his friends and acquaintances to push content and pull content. If the news wants me, it will find me, he suggests. It's a fascinating YouTube addition and worth studying --- and, perhaps, implementing.