If I did everything correctly, this site should now be optimized for mobile browsers. I do not, however, have a mobile device with a web browser, so I have no way of testing it.

If you are visiting this site with a mobile device, please let me know 1) if you notice any changes, and 2) if the changes make it better or worse.

Thanks.

One of the new features of SanDiegoReader.com is the staff blogs, and I am excited to announce that as of today, I’m part of it.

Obermeyer’s Cut is the working title for my Reader blogging home (suggestions for an alternate name are welcome). While much of the content I post there will have the potential to be duplicated here, blogs I post here tend to be more focused on Nebraska news and media, and there obviously won’t be any of that there.

So be sure to check out my first post, 3 Trends Most Likely to Impact Cartoons – it’ll lead you to a great new Daily Cartoonist article.

Check out the fall issue of B2B Quarterly for a profile on John “Workhorse” Gottschalk, publisher of the Omaha World-Herald.

One of my favorite quotes:

Also, [Gottschalk] says, the World Herald is not in the newspaper business. “We’re in the advertising distribution business.”

He goes on to talk about how if you only report the news you want to report, instead of reporting the news that affects your readers, your readers will leave you.

So I checked up on the past few years of the Omaha World-Herald’s circulation:

year – daily / Sunday

2004 – 195,964 / 242,018
2005 – 194,222 / 240,026
2006 – 188,866 / 231,115
2007 – 184,150 / 222,469

That’s a drop of more than 10,000 daily readers and almost 20,000 Sunday readers in just three years. (In fairness to the World-Herald, though, many other papers lost significantly more, and the OWH actually climbed from 55th highest circulation in the US to 51st over that same time period.)

The article is also full of horse metaphors, including references to workhorses, showhorses, thoroughbreds and pedigree.

This was almost the winner for “Which idea will be in the Sunday Journal Star?” but it came in a close second.