Congratulations to Marketingfix, which has been bought by marketing guru Andy Bourland. Yes, folks, blogs are media.

Rick Bruner and I enjoyed a beer together at the great happy hour hosted by Aaron and Jen last Thursday evening.

Rick’s had his nose deep into online marketing since 1995 — while I focused on the journalistic side of things when I started online in 1996 — so I was interested in getting Rick’s more senior view on whether our beta “top clickthrus” feature, which shows the top blogads clickthrus in the previous hour, had been done before. Seems obvious that advertisers might benefit from each other’s experience, right? Rick said he’d never run into the functionality. He offers more views on blog advertising here.

My six-year-old son first beat me at chess on May 11. He didn’t beat me again for a couple of weeks. A few days later, he snuck another one past me. Yesterday he beat me twice and again before school this morning. “Now, I’ve got my plan of attack,” he says at a certain point in each game. “Huh?” I say.

According to Auctionbytes, online auction giant eBay and ad serving technologists Doubleclick have paired up to offer a variation on Google’s Adwords. Worth recalling that eBay is the biggest used car dealer in America.

Sadly, most newspapers still think their classified ad revenues are down because of the soft economy. Wake up guys.

Dave Barry, normally a hilarious comedian, gives a straight-faced account of how the news gets made. “This requires a complex team effort, which I will explain by putting key terms in capital letters: First, the REPORTER gathers information by interviewing PEOPLE and trying to write down what they say, getting approximately 35 percent of it right. The REPORTER then writes a STORY, which goes to an EDITOR, who bitterly resents the REPORTER because the REPORTER gets to go outside sometimes, whereas the EDITOR is stuck in the building eating NEWSPAPER CAFETERIA ‘FOOD’ that was originally developed by construction-industry researchers as a substitute for PLYWOOD. The EDITOR, following journalism tradition, decides that the REPORTER has put the real point of the story in the 14th paragraph, which the EDITOR then attempts to move using the ‘cut and paste command,’ which results in the story disappearing into ANOTHER DIMENSION, partly because the EDITOR, like most journalists, has the mechanical aptitude of a RUTABAGA, but also because the NEW COMPUTER SYSTEM has a few ‘bugs’ as a result of being installed by a low-bid VENDOR whose information-technology experience consists of servicing WHACK-A-MOLE GAMES. So the REPORTER and the EDITOR, who now hate each other even more than they already did, hastily slap a story together from memory, then turn it over to a GRAPHIC DESIGN PERSON who cannot actually read but is a wizard on the APPLE MACINTOSH, and who will cut any remaining accurate sentences out of the story to make room on the page for a colorful, ‘reader-friendly’ CHART, which was actually supposed to illustrate a story in an entirely different SECTION. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but we do it night after night, with story after story, all so that when you, the reader, go out to your front yard to get your newspaper, it’s not there. Check your roof, OK?” (Via Gawker.)

Yale comsci prof David Gelernter gives a nice philosophical overview of print and online newspapers. Along the way, he offers a brilliant brief for blogging, although he appears not to know the word. On print papers:

A newsprint paper is a slab of space (even a closed tabloid is larger than most computer screens) that is browsable and transparent. Browsability is what a newspaper is for: to offer readers a smorgasbord of stories, pictures, ads and let them choose what looks good. “Transparent” means you can always tell from a distance what you’re getting into (Are there lots of pages here or not many? Important news today or nothing much?)–and you always know (as you read) where you are, how far you’ve come, and how much is left. The newsprint paper is an easy, comfortable, unfussy object. You can turn to the editorials, flip to the back page, or pull out the sports section without thinking. It’s light and simple and cheap: Spread it on the breakfast table and spill coffee on it, read it standing in a subway or flat on your back on sofa or lawn, on the beach or in bed. You can write on it, cut it up, pull it apart, fold it open to an interesting story, and stick it (folded) in your pocket to show to someone later. These small details add up to brilliant design.

On “online newspapers:”

The web-papers of tomorrow should be “objects in time,” and here is the picture. Imagine a parade of jumbo index cards standing like set-up dominoes. On your computer display, the parade of index cards stretches into the simulated depths of your screen, from the middle-bottom (where the front-most card stands, looking big) to the farthest-away card in the upper left corner (looking small). Now, something happens: Tony Blair makes a speech. A new card materializes in front (a report on the speech) and everyone else takes a step back–and the farthest-away card falls off the screen and (temporarily) disappears. So the parade is in constant motion. New stories keep popping up in front, and the parade streams backwards to the rear. Each card is a “news item”–text or photo, or (sometimes) audio or video. “Text” could mean an entire conventional news story or speech or interview. But the pressure in this medium is away from the long set-piece story, towards the continuing series of lapidary paragraphs. There’s room on a “news card” for a headline, a paragraph and a small photo. (If the news item is a long story or transcript, only the opening fits on the card–but you can read the whole thing if you want to, by clicking the proper mouse-buttons.) So: a moving parade (or flowing stream) of news items–new ones constantly arriving in front, older ones moving back.

In a footnote, Gelernter admits that the online newspaper (blog) sounds a lot like his company’s attempt to revamp the basic OS, Scopeware.

A number of people have asked me whether I’m worried about Adsense, Google’s new ad service for publishers. Frankly, not at all… unless there’s room in Google’s spartan-25-characters-utilitarian worldview for the likes of this brilliant Gapingvoid blogad:

I’ll be bouncing around New York for the next 36 hours. In addition to seeing a couple Pressflex clients, I hope to consume hot or cold beverages with blog friends and make 601AM’s [url=]happy hour[/url]. My mobile number is 413 441 3098.

Cathy Seipp reprises the joys of freelancing.

Great to see that LA Examiner has returned to its Tabloid(.net) roots with a redesign and an increased dose of scuttlebutt and snark.