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Everywhere you look, newspapers are dying. And even though there are plenty of old-school journalists shaking their heads and arguing we’ll miss miss them once they’re gone, many folks have actually been celebrating the “mainstream media’s” demise lately.

Vanity Fair’s Matt Pressman wonders what’s behind today’s hatred of the media.  After all, aren’t journalists some of our best defenders of democracy?

Here are a few of his explanations, edited down for length.

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Barack Obama might have not beaten John McCain on Election Day if he hadn’t bested the GOP contender throughout the year online, by raising millions more through microdonations and regularly activating partisans through email messaging.

Yet at this point, the McCain clan also has a decent track record using online tools for career purposes.  McCain’s daughter Meghan, for example, has turned her high-profile campaign blog into a gig at the Daily Beast and a place on the pundit circuit.  The septuagenarian Senator is staying hip with the new media crowd too. McCain’s Twitter feed now has over 1.5 million followers.  That’s ten times more than his former running mate, popular political personality Sarah Palin.

So how has McCain been hooking his audience?

Most of his strategy is Social Media 101 (participate regularly, engage other users, share personal anecdotes and interesting links, etc.).  But there’s a new tactic he’s been using recently that can be adapted by anyone who’s looking to establish thought leadership online.

It’s not really a secret that we all are suckers for lists and rankings.  McCain (or perhaps his “ghost tweeter”) recognizes this trick.  Recently, he has started to send out his top ten pork barrel projects via Twitter each day.  And he breaks them down and ranks them before shooting them out one by one until he reaches his most outrageous spending project of the day.  This keeps the McCain brand in the conversation throughout the day and maximizes his feed’s viral appeal.

And now for your enjoyment, here is a short sample of McCain’s most outrageous pork barrel picks:

• $165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont
• $325,000 to study seismic activity in Memphis, TN
• $195,000 to research how to increase the lifespan of peach trees in South Carolina
• $130,000 to relocate the residents of 130 homes in DeKalb, IL
• $900,000 for the City of Whitefish Emergency Operations Center in Whitefish, MT (Population: 6700)

Photo credit: Flickr user “World Economic Forum,” CC 2.0.

Many conservatives love what they hear coming out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth.  And many liberals are horrified that so many Americans could love Limbaugh’s show.

But most of us understand that today’s talking heads are nothing more than entertainers who take extreme positions to keep their audiences hooked.  I doubt Rush, Keith Olbermann or Glenn Beck believe half of what they say and I am confident that their audiences know that they shouldn’t take any of that combative commentary seriously.  For all we know, when the cameras are off, Rachel Maddow and Ann Coulter count their money together over a cup of tax-protestor tea.

I bring this up because some folks are looking for career lessons from Rush Limbaugh’s failed attempt to be on the team that might end up buying the St. Louis Rams. In case you haven’t been following the saga, the players union spoke up and rejected Rush because he’s chosen to make lots of inflammatory comments about the league and its players over the years. Furthermore, the other NFL owners don’t want their brand tarnished by politics, even though they may personally agree with Rush’s views.  Therefore, it’s in their collective economic interest to keep this walking controversy out of the owner’s box.

Kris Dunn, editor of the HR Capitalist blog, believes that Limbaugh’s failure might serve as a cautionary tale for any working stiff with loose lips.  Here’s his hypothetical:

How about the time you made Marge come in when her kids were sick and you openly stated, “remind me not to hire people who have kids”.

You thought no one heard it, and even if they did, it was a joke, right?  Wrong - in the new transparent world that’s right around the corner, sites are going to start collecting information on your abilities as a manager - and yes, your biases - via user generated content.

It’s right around the corner.  The NFL players won’t play for Limbaugh, and someday soon, how you treated Marge is going to come back and haunt you when you need a candidate, and the best sources of candidates for your position are working moms.

It’s true that in this new age of web-powered transparency, being a jerk could have lasting consequences for your career and your company.  However, I am not sure that’s the key takeaway. It’s hard to draw a parrallel when most of us aren’t public figures who get paid to be offensive.

So Rush can huff and puff all he wants about “race hustlers” and the “liberal media.”  He could even threaten a libel suit. But at the end of the day, he can’t use the millions he earned making degrading comments to buy the team.

What do you think the lesson is?  Share your thoughts below.

A new Citibank/GfK Roper survey has found that America’s small business owners aren’t that fond of the latest social networking tools:

The study found 76 percent of small-business owners polled were not using social media or finding it helpful in generating business leads during the last year, and 86 percent said the did not use such sites to get advice or information.

I’m sure a lot of new media gurus will take this as yet another piece of evidence that most companies still “don’t get it.”  But the results shouldn’t be surprising and it’s not that irrational for business owners to conclude that Twitter is a waste of resources.  If 86 percent don’t use social networks themselves to get information, than it’s reasonable to assume their customers and colleagues aren’t using them either.

And if those social networks don’t actually lead to sales, than what’s the point of having all those friends and followers?

The key with new media is to be where your customers are.  If you sell something geared toward younger people, than a Facebook fan page may make sense.  But if you own a restaurant that serves a local market only, than you probably want to monitor your online reputation on search engines and traditional directories before diving into the social media realm.  However, be aware that many of these directories, such as Yelp, are morphing into social networks too.  So you may need to sign up, at least to protect your brand and direct traffic to your true website, sooner or later, even if you don’t plan to actively participate in the prominent web networks.

The bad news for the media industry keeps coming in this week. The FTC is changing the rules related to product endorsements. GE wants to cut its losses with NBC Universal.  Bellweather AOL may start shedding more jobs once its Time Warner divorce is done. Internet advertising revenue dropped 5.3% during the first half of this year, when compared to a similar period a year ago.

It’s been a tough year for publishers and there is little light at the end of the tunnel.  No one knows for sure how for-profit media companies can adapt to the internet era, when content runs free and advertising channels bypass the content creators.  But that hasn’t stopped many from pontificating on why media companies are struggling.

A new book, The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies, written by Columbia Business School faculty members Jonathan Knee, Bruce Greenwald and Ava Seave, joins the fray this week.  Here are a few of their survival tips for the world’s major media players, edited down for length:

• Keep it local, keep it focused Ignore all the conventional wisdom about global footprint, and find businesses that have either a narrow geographic territory or more likely a product niche
• Don’t be such a big shot Overpaying and other means of destructive competition is a communicable disease, so try to find small areas of collaboration in your industry cooperation can be similarly contagious
• Watch your back Even companies that seem to have an impregnable fortress will eventually be scaled, so a constant reassessment of the strength and reinforcement of the the source of competitive advantage is called for
• Dying with dignity is an option It’s hard to admit you’ve lost it, but rather than reinvesting in projects that have little prospect of generating an adequate return, instead, milk a declining franchise and returning the proceeds to the shareholders

You can read the rest of their tips on Columbia Business School’s Public Offering blog and a full article on the book on the Atlantic’s website.

And the big question: Assuming the media companies of tomorrow will have to be scrapier, smaller units, as the Columbia professors argue, will we ever see another global mogul like Rupert Murdoch? Share your predictions below.

Nationwide, unemployment hit 9.8 percent in September. Of course, some regions have been hit harder than others but at a certain point, it may make sense for anyone who is unemployed to consider cutting their losses, packing up and leaving.  The forecast still looks relatively sunny throughout Texas and in coastal metropolises like New York, Seattle and Washington, DC (for a handy breakdown on the best job markets in small, medium and large cities across America, check out New Geography’s tables; for the worst cities for jobs, check Forbes).

Let’s say you’ve made the decision to seek greener pastures elsewhere but haven’t actually moved yet. How can you keep your local-address-less resume from reaching the wastebasket?

Here are six tips for the long-distance job search, edited down for length and clarity, from career guru Penelope Trunk:

• Pitch yourself as specialized Most people are relocating from a city that is in low demand to a city that is high demand; if you want to get a job [in a big city like San Francisco] from Tucson, you need to have one of those skill sets that people do not think they can hire for in San Francisco
• Pitch yourself as a big-city catch Some of you are trying to move the opposite direction: New York City to Tuscaloosa; in that case, you can pitch yourself as having big-city know-how that you can bring to a smaller city
• Get a reality check If you can’t pitch yourself in either of those ways, then you’re going to have to relocate before you get a job
• Be amazing at building local networks If you are still determined to get a job before you move…you need to have a strong network on the ground where you want to relocate; this does not mean inviting forty people in that city to connect with you on LinkedIn
• Choose a city since you can’t choose a job Since you are going to have to move before you have a job, why not make sure you are going to the right place?   For figuring out where you belong, [see] Richard Florida’s book, Who’s Your City, which he has conveniently broken up into web-friendly widgets for your relocating pleasure
• Consider your friends and family Before you relocate for money, consider that the number-one factor for whether or not your next job will improve your happiness is whether you’ll be moving closer to friends and family; [O]nce you have the basics of a good job, it’s your relationships that make you happy

If you’ve recently relocated to find a new job or are considering a move, please share any additional tips or words of wisdom in the comments section below.

Seth Godin, the popular new media pundit and blogger, has caused yet another controversy this week.  His obscure start-up, Squidoo, which lets users create custom pages around their interests, announced a new initiative called “Brands in Public.” The idea is that companies can no longer control everything that’s created around their brands in the age of Twitter and YouTube. So Squidoo will aggregate all the content and let company’s organize that data in a positive light.

Godin got trouble, however, when his firm went ahead and created a bunch of “unofficial” brand pages (click here to see Trader Joe’s page, as a sample) without the permission of the companies behind them. As you might imagine, the backlash has been swift (and Godin now says they’ll delete these pages). Online-marketing consultant Lisa Barone labeled the venture “brandjacking” because Godin will “extort 5k a year” from companies so they can control a page they probably wouldn’t want anyways.  The monitoring tools on Squidoo’s public platform are not that complex; what you are really paying for is “hush money” on pages that could rank highly on search engine results.

It’s all quite ironic since Godin claims to be the father of “Permission Marketing,” the theory that customers will only respect brands that respectfully ask them to opt-in to receiving any company communications.

But the reality is that Godin’s approach is not that novel and many internet companies he admires on his blog already depend on some form of “brandjacking.” In fact, it’s the business plan of nearly all the Web 2.0 companies that don’t charge users for their services.  Let the crowd create the content, build a platform to aggregate and organize that data and then charge companies if they don’t like the results.  Good luck telling Google or Yelp that you want to opt-out of their listings.  Your company has been “brandjacked” all over the web whether you like it or not and you’re going to have to pay to put your ad above the rest.

But why would you want to opt-out of Google, you may ask?  Well, if you’ve ever Googled your name, perhaps you’ve seen a profile created on your behalf on directory parasites like Spoke.com or 123people.com. It’s the same shady deal.  Those sites claim they are doing you a favor by connecting you to other professionals.  But I can already connect with my network through better tools like LinkedIn and Facebook. If I want people to know my email address or phone number, I can list it.  So when I saw that Spoke.com’s spiders had scoured the web and listed an email account, phone number and bio related to me at a company I no longer work for,  I emailed them and told them that the info was not accurate and that I wanted them to immediately delete this profile.  Their response: You need to log in and waste your time before you can opt-out.  This was quite frustrating.  As a matter of principle, why should companies be able to exploit your brand or your person for commercial purposes without your permission?

I enjoy tech pundit Seth Godin’s blog and have referenced a post of his in the past on BNET. Godin doesn’t shy away from telling it as he sees it and that’s what keeps his blog thought-provoking.  As you might imagine, one of his latest entries, which takes aim at nonprofits for supposedly resisting social media tools, is causing quite a stir in the advocacy community.

According to Godin, nonprofits exist to create change but actually “abhor” change.  His proof?  None of the top 100 Twitterers (according to Twitterholic’s top 100) are nonprofits because Twitter is too “scary” for the direct-mail crowd.

No doubt, on the surface, it seems crazy that Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian have more followers than any group looking to protect human rights or improve healthcare for the masses.  But this metric doesn’t prove anything.  The celebrities and news organizations which dominate Twitter have wide fan bases.  Nonprofits, on the other hand, are usually focused on solving local problems.  Even the groups with global agendas work within coalitions fighting for the same cause.  Therefore, no global warming group will hit Kutcher’s numbers because there are many groups splitting the follow population.

Furthermore, most nonprofits do, in fact, “get” social media and have invested their resources to develop Twitter pages (one Twitter account is tracking more than 9000 nonprofits) and Facebook fan pages.  Some groups like the Sierra Club have even launched their own social networks.

Finally, one last point needs to be made.  Godin is wrong when he claims that social media tools are free and that nonprofits have the volunteer resources to build up these networks (but refuse because they don’t want to give up control).  Twitter may be free to use but it costs tons of time and money to craft a plan, develop these pages, train staff and monitor the community.  And as Godin said, the goal of any nonprofit is to create change.  If none of these “slacktivists” end up donating their time (in the real world) or money to the cause, then what’s the point of having 100,000 virtual fans?

@Jeff De Cagna My oversight: here’s the link to Seth Godin’s original post.

One in four “online Americans” now regularly creates or reacts to social media content.  With the click of a mouse, its never been easier to broadcast complaints about customer service on Twitter, protest a politician by joining a Facebook group or support efforts to save the whales by signing an online petition.

In some cases, these social media connections have real world implications.  Protesters may meet up online before taking their pitckforks to the townhall debates.  Media coverage of a viral campaign might affect whether consumers hold their brand allegiances.

However, it’s worth asking whether most of these efforts amount to anything more than “slacktivism,” defined as “feel-good online activism that has zero political or social impact.” It’s nice to have virtual fans supporting your cause or company.  But ultimately, social media platforms should serve as tools that help you achieve specific objectives.  Are you really converting these connections into cash?

According to a new survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., an outplacement consultancy, hiring managers think social/professional networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the second most effective job-search tools available. The best is good ol’ fashioned networking (presumably the face-to-face, on the phone or in the field type) and the least effective is a job fair.

But that doesn’t mean you should haphazardly inundate every executive you’ve ever worked near with Facebook “friend” requests.

Another survey released this week by OfficeTeam, a staffing agency, shows that nearly half of executives are uncomfortable being friended by the employees they manage (48 percent) or their bosses (47 percent). Part of the reason may be that power players simply don’t need to wade into the web 2.0 realm because traditional networks based on education, social background or spiritual beliefs still matter the most. Others may want to keep their networks and personal life away from the prodding eyes of their underlings.

“The line between personal and professional has grown increasingly blurred as more people use social networking websites for business purposes,” argues OfficeTeam’s Robert Hosking. “Individuals should classify their professional contacts into a ‘work’ list and limit what personal details this group can view.”

Or perhaps its best to go one step further and establish a personal profile for your real-life friends that’s under maximum privacy settings and another public profile for all your casual acquintances and collegeues.  If you have an office line and a personal cell, then keeping these domains seperate isn’t really that much of a stretch.