In his latest post for his PoMo Blog, Terry Heaton sounds the concern many publishers have about the drive for page views at all costs.

He vents a little on the tendency by some to chop stories into pieces to improve the number of ad impressions --- the "price of interaction" being high. He takes the view that the effort doesn't take into account the user, then publishers wonder why the advertising isn't working.

"Somehow, some way, we’ve got to figure out that attaching ads to content the way we’ve done it before just doesn’t cut it online. Until that happens, we’ll continue killing the goose that potentially could be laying golden eggs for us," he writes.

The shift of searching to getting is at the heart of the Wired.com pair of pieces that identify the decline of the World Wide Web and the rise of the application in our digital lives.

Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, one a prominent editor and the other a prominent columnist, have produced companion arguments that the Web is no longer what we use --- that the Internet is a mere conduit for the apps that dominate our time online.

"It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule," Anderson writes. "And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen)."

That it's also a more optimal environment for monetization only strengthens the situation, he says.

Wolff, meanwhile, examines how the open Web is closing and reestablishing a corporate hierarchy --- the "collectivist utopianism" is disappearing and a top-down theme is reemerging. The alternative to the Web came as some entrepreneurs sought to have the clout of Google, only without the open-source approach.

Wolff's piece is far more critical of the developments --- of the value of advertising, of the value of the audience, because of search engine optimization. He says we flirted briefly with the "transformative effects" of the Web but now are "returning home" to Apple, Facebook, Spotify and Netflix, all systems that are closed and traditional.

Anderson's conclusion: Blame Us. Wolff's: Blame Them.

The Wall Street Journal extracted pretty much everything there is to extract from Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, on the direction and challenges of media. Holman W. Jenkins Jr.'s extensive feature gives over much:

1. Google's focus is ensuring it doesn't lose its strangehold on Web advertising when searching is no longer as necessary.
2. It doesn't mind giving away the operating systems for Android --- if you get a billion people using a device, Schmidt notes, you can do something with it.
3. Brands will matter in the time ahead, which is good news for an otherwise lamentable situation for U.S. newspapers.
4. Targeted ads are the only way Schmidt sees salvation in what ails media economically.
5. Serendipity, that great surprise factor for the media consumer, now can be replicated electronically.

These days it is a truism that understanding search engine optimization bears as much on success as does understanding the needs and wants of the audience. One without the other won't achieve nirvana online.

But also contending for attention is the large area of analytics, how many visit and how often, where they come from and what they seem to seek, the sources of their arrival and the time they spend and where they go later --- all of it is important to understand.

The 10,000 Words blog has assembled a handy Analytics 101 for anyone with a website looking to comprehend the portrait of the audience. There is nothing advanced in the piece, but it's an excellent and clear starting point.

Today the Publish2.0 organization launched the Publish2 News Exchange, what it calls a 21st century alternative to The Associated Press that freely moves news and other information between Web and print properties.

It's a little different than the news cooperative model of AP, in that the terms of sharing content are set by the source organization. It seems most clearly focused initially on supplementing and formalizing the newsroom-to-newsroom informal exchanges that already take place but often are tedious to manage and not necessarily helpful with real-time needs.

The platform provides Web publishers with access to print distribution, something they've had to work through individually or through syndication. And it permits them to set the terms by which they'll provide the content --- to whom, when, and for what price.

What isn't clear at the outset is whether the batch of content providers in the fold --- and there are some impressive ones --- cumulatively form enough of a content file for properties to cut the ties with AP. It's not an easy feat, as many have found, and it is best judged by the newsrooms themselves.

More details will emerge this week and are bound to gain the attention of newsrooms who find the cost of a full wire service too onerous. Did we mention the word "free" in the mix?

In his new Media Equations column, David Carr writes in The New York Times about a practice well-known to most modernized newsrooms: Headlines that position stories well for search engine results.

These days search engine optimization might be more valuable than the newsroom stylebook on spelling.
 
A generation ago journalists were taught that a clever first paragraph attracted the audience and editors were taught that a clever headline attracted the audience to the attractive lede.

These days the clever headline and paragraph are loaded with keywords to generate PageRank on Google and be among the first results on any personal search for topics or names. Thus, you'll see full names not surnames online, among other things, to work within the algorithm.

Carr finds some major Web operators demurring about the ruthless traffic-chasing with keywords, but it's clear every successful operation knows how to optimize content to succeed in that climate. His column simply states what we know to be true.

A year ago, Matrin Langeveld provided a startling number: Only three per cent of a U.S. newspaper's content consumption was online. It is time to update the numbers, he suggests.

If the American industry believes it is pushing its readers to the online operations, it should think again. As it loses readership in print, it is not gaining online. The proportion of newspaper content read online remains in the low single digits, but the overall attrition is considerable --- considering the decline in print readership in the U.S.

He calculates a rate of about 70 billion print page views and about 3 billion onlien page views a month. Those nearly 74 billion page views are down from about 90 billion a year ago --- a decline of nearly one-fifth. It's a higher proportion of online views --- 4.5 per cent instead of 3 per cent --- but hardly encouraging because of the overall drop.

Langeveld also calculated a decline in time spent, engagement and the market share of news sites among overall Web users.

"Meanwhile at newspapers, much effort and much dialogue continues to focus on getting readers to pay for content and battling aggregators — energy that might better be spent figuring out how not to lose the sizeable remaining audience for newspaper content, not by “protecting print” but by keeping the current print readers in the fold as they, too, gradually migrate to reading news online," he writes.

The revenue situation for American newspapers was dire in 2009. Figures released by the Newspaper Association of America indicate a dramatic decline in advertising revenue in the year.

Indeed, ad revenue reverted to 1986 levels. In total the decline was more than $10 billion to $27.6 billion for print and online operations.

While the fourth quarter of 2009 featured a smaller decline, even that was a small consolation: the decline was still 27 per cent year over year.

The most precipitous drop came in a category few expect to regenerate: Classified ads. The drop there was 38 per cent from the previous year, and with the presence of such services as Craigslist, most believe it's a permanent shift in business that will not recover.

The president of the association believes there is "encouraging" news in the first-quarter results to date in the industry, a suggestion the worst is over.