Kevin: A fascinating interview with Michelle Leder of Footnoted.org, a financial news site that was recently acquired by Morningstar. Footnoted digs through securities filings to find nuggest of interesting information. She challenges a number of assertions made about the web and journalism. She challenged Jeff Jarvis on the sustainability of the advertising only model for blogs. For entreprenuers, she says that they need a safety net and a backup plan. Excellent advice based on some experience and success. One take away for me is that if you add value to information, you've got a product that you can sell. If you don't, you'll struggle.

Kevin: If you're working on a hyperlocal project, you'll want to read this. Howard Owens, formerly of GateHouse Media launched a hyperlocal site in Batavia New York. It just won the New Frontier Award from the Inland Press Association. Very interesting. Look at the answer to the second question: "First, that online advertising works. Second, the way the typical newspaper.com handles online advertising doesn’t work.

Ads are content."
The other thing to do note is that this is a two-person flat out operation. He says he works 16 hours a day, which might be an exaggeration, but it still shows how lean the organisation is.

Kevin: If you look at your web stats, your site probably has a lot of 'drive-by' visitors. Visitors who either came from a search engine, an aggregator or your front page expecting one thing and getting something else. They stay a second and leave. This post has some good ideas on how to reduce the 'bounce rate', how to keep people on your site longer by showing them other things they might be interested in. Related content works, but it has to be more.

Kevin: Tim Beyers says that the infighting at the New York Times Company "will be lucky" if infighting over pricing for its iPad edition doesn't destroy the venerable newspaper. Gawker has reported that the print subscription department wants to charge £20 to $30 a month for the Times iPad app. As Beyers points out, News Corp only charges $12.50 a month for web access to The Wall Street Journal and Barron's.

Kevin: A good list of web data and visualisation tools from Matt Stiles of The Texas Tribune, a new news site and service focusing on Texas politics.