The Orange County Register confirmed it will outsource copy editing and page layout to an editorial services company based outside New Delhi, India. So much for local knowledge and the sense of place that only local publishers can deliver.

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Jay Rosen has posted his cogent take on “semi-pro journalism” on TechPresident. Provocative metaphor about the news tribe and its survival drama.

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At this week’s Personal Democracy Forum, a sponsor distributed a low-tech, but highly effective stress toy to attendees willing to listen to their pitch: a rubber ball on an elastic string that connects to a velcro band. Strap the band to your finger and you can play catch with yourself. Which is what I came to PdF to do. To my surprise, I also liked the pitch. The sponsor, a division of Washington-based public affairs consultants, uses the Internet, software and analytical brainpower to track story lines and news coverage to measure influence. Which, in a way, is what I do, too.

I discovered that a lot of folks came to PdF for the same reasons. They played catch with familiar ideas. And they used the event to measure influence, familiar and emerging. PdF soared with both activities. An impressive roster of speakers from the converging worlds of political action, civic technologies and individual empowerment stimulated, and occasionally stirred, a network of Web buddies and budding online politicos.

Missing an Aha! moment that changes the world, PdF is more noteworthy for its momentum. At this moment, you can feel democracy shifting amid civic engagement enabled by technology. PdF is a forum where you can almost get your head around that big idea. Organizers Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifrey deserve as much praise for their impeccable timing as their star-studded roster of speakers. In two days of dense programming, content frequently rose to the level of the venue, the stunning Frederick Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Playing catch on an elastic string, a few highlights and insights:

– FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, high-profile tech execs and industry advocates launch an initiative to make broadband access a national priority in the U.S.

– Lawrence Lessig touts the Change Congress movement by using every distracting feature in Keynote.

– Arianna Huffington declares that she knows The Truth that others don’t. About 50 people in the audience who blog at Huffington Post say they agree with her.

– Jay Rosen likens professional journalists to a migrating tribe in the midst of a survival drama.

– Mayhill Fowler demonstrates why she’d be irrelevant without a tape recorder. Did anyone actually read her story (lead buried somewhere in the 7th graph)?

– Virtual Reality pioneer Mark Pesce forecasts that the future looks nothing like democracy “because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him.” The brilliant-but-huh? text here.

– Obama Girl, because she was there.

– Elizabeth Edwards charms the conference via Skype from her living room because her flight is canceled. Husband, John, the former presidential candidate, wanders into the room and is surprised to find his wife talking into a computer.

– Mark Soohoo, the deputy internet director of John McCain’s campaign, defends his boss for not personally understanding how to use a computer. Tracy Russo, Soohoo’s counterpart on Edwards’ former campaign, takes issue. Then fireworks. The video:

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I’ve suggested, among others, that leadership – or, more accurately, the lack of it — is at the heart of the news industry’s woes. The current generation of CEO’s and publishers blame unforeseen external forces – impending changes in media, economics, technology and society that were clear to others more than a decade ago — for their precipitous fall from grace in the marketplace and diminished public confidence.

As one way to try to understand the state of leadership in news and communications, I’m attending the renowned Wharton Leadership Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Here executives from more than 400 companies are considering “emerging trends in the search for leadership.” The first two speakers – former presidential advisor David Gergen and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault — identified critical qualities of leadership at a time of turbulence:

Gergen:
Intelligence and judgment (formerly enough, but not anymore).
Character.
Vision.
Hairy audacity (attributed to leadership guru Jim Collins).

Chenault:
Integrity as expressed through words and actions.
Courage to manage openly.
Collaboration and constructive confrontation.
EQ: Executional Quotient.
Concern for “people” (current bizspeak for employees).
Ability to adapt.

Gergen and Chenault contend that true leadership emerges during challenging times, and that real leadership drives change. Here’s a test based on questions they posed at Wharton. Take it yourself or apply it to your executives:

Are you accountable for results?
Do you articulate a true understanding of issues?
Do you define reality and give hope?
Do you provide a narrative of purpose for your organization?
For your community?
Do you deliver on the promise?
Do you inspire peers and employees?
Do you have a concern for people (again, they mean employees)?
Do your have hairy audacity?

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An isometric landscape, Web Trend Map 3 pins down nearly 300 of the most successful and influential websites plotted against the metaphor of the greater Tokyo area train map. Different train lines correspond to web trends such as innovation, news, social networks, and so on. Whimsy and inside jokes add intrigue and fun to the interface. The bottom layer includes a rating of brand experience analogous to experiences at various types of Japanese restaurants. Here’s a designer (Oliver Reichenstein) who knows how to create an original and creative experience, one that applies fundamental design principles of simplicity, clarity, character, feedback and interactivity.

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The thing about innovation is that you know it when you see it.

One version comes from Tribune Co., which has been exuberant about becoming “an oasis of creativity.” Newsies have encouraged us to watch Tribco’s Orlando Sentinel where Sam Zell’s new regime of former broadcasters is touting an innovation model for newspapers. The first sighting: a redesign of The Sentinel leaked by “oppressed” journalists at the Los Angeles Times, also a Tribco paper. Alan Mutter calls the radical format “scary.”

Desperate may be a better word. Radical is fine, but bad is bad. This kind of “innovation” not only gives design a bad name, but it is a cynical assault on real change. Design isn’t the problem at The Orlando Sentinel or most other newspapers. Relevance is. Innovation and creativity are ways to change that story. Tribco could have started by distinguishing its journalism, then designing inspired products that make it immediately accessible and relevant. Instead, Tribco’s shock jocks seem to have taken their lead from the Broadcasters’ Easy Guide to Change: One, change the management. Two, replace the “talent.” Three, after One and Two exacerbate the problem, change the set.

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Nokia, which is obsessive about consumer research, is showing the world how to innovate from the outside-in by collecting ideas globally for free at or low cost.

At Nokia Beta Labs, the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they help make the mobile Internet more useful.

At Nokia Trends Lab, creative thinkers push the boundaries of how to use mobile technology as part of the creative process through film, music, photography and design. Thousands attend collaborative events and independent experiments around the world, all designed make Nokia devices and products more valuable to them.

At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. Over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones.

At its public Research Center, Nokia posted a mobile phone application called Sports Tracker designed to let runners and cyclists take advantage of the global positioning capability included in some Nokia models. Users can record workout data such as speed and distance, and can plot routes. More than 1 million people downloaded the widget and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding.

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Check out the News Cube on the redesigned Washington Times site. Click the arrows on the left or right and the Cube flips to the top stories of day, presented magazine-style with strong photos, headlines and links. Click the bottom and the Cube delivers related stories or “Dig Deeper” choices. Click the “Dig Deeper” logo and you get themes related to the story, a more graphic and appealing version of Amazon’s “if you liked this book, then you’ll ….” technique of mass customization.

The site was designed for The Times by Roger Black Studio and DaniloBlack with consultation by the SEVEN26group. It is a visually-striking approach to news that is packed with content: pathways to 400,000 story topics, say Times editors. An impressive marriage of design and content, the site is notable for allowing users to control their experience and choose levels of engagement. A companion redesign of the newspaper relates it to its website and extends the “themes” approach.”

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A lot of people have emailed me about my remarks, considered provocative by some, at the Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas. Here’s what I said:

“We trust people to drive moving vehicles at high speeds on our highways. We arm them and ask them to fight wars in the name of democracy. We put life and death decisions in their hands as juries deciding the fate of their fellow citizens. But we don’t trust them to participate in the news and information that impacts their lives? What’s up with that?”

Then I told attendees, mostly managers of news web sites, that “putting a wall between you and your audience is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

In our “debate,” my old friend Arizona Daily Star publisher John Humenik generally supported the idea of “user-generated content,” but had grave concerns. “UGC on our site is essential — but not if it threatens the credibility of the environment it is built on,” he said. “Don’t allow your news brand to be somebody else’s graffiti wall.”

Why do newspaper publishers always seem to frame the debate over participatory media in terms of isolated bad behavior on their online forums — a problem that is easily managed these days?

Publishers can only discover opportunities that are as good for business as they are for democracy when they change the environments they’ve built and begin to respect their audiences.

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No need to fret over those troubling layoffs, sinking revenues, tanking valuations, migrating audiences, declining influence, or even that pesky Internet. Newspapers are a growth business. So proclaims World Association of Newspapers CEO Timothy Balding. Inky execs apparently like Tim’s story. They turned out in record numbers for WAN’s annual meet-up in Gothenburg, Sweden. Our man Andrew is checking out the story, conspicuously, amid the grey suits and tall blondes.

The stages of grief: Denial, Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

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