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YOU can tell when a print journalist has lost his full-time job because of the digital markings that suddenly appear, like the tail of a fading comet. First, he joins Facebook. A Gmail address is promptly obtained. The Twitter account comes next, followed by the inevitable blog. Throw in a LinkedIn profile for good measure. This online coming-out is the first step in a daunting, and economically discouraging, transformation: from a member of a large institution to a would-be Internet “brand.”

As the news business continues to confront fundamental economic challenges, a report, released on Oct. 19, 2009 by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, proposes new steps for maintaining a vibrant, independent press, with special emphasis on local "accountability journalism" that is essential to civic life. The report, "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," was written by Leonard Downie, Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, a Journalism School professor.

in the current digital news ecosystem, having “week” in your title is anachronistic in the extreme, what an investor would call negative equity.

in a publishing landscape filled with the lame and infirm, weeklies are the most profoundly challenged. A weekly schedule, with its tight turnarounds and frenzied production, is costly as a matter of course. Monthlies can still do step-backs for readers who don’t expect to see what happened five minutes ago, and daily newspapers have co-opted the newsweekly formula to build in real-time analysis.

It is axiomatic that in the current epoch, it is much less cost-intensive to build out a new brand than to try to walk back the cat on a legacy business.

As The Times and its Sunday sibling challenge the Internet orthodoxy that readers will refuse to pay for general news online, some of the conventions of newspaper Web design are already tumbling. Freed from the imperative to generate clicks and to lure search engines, The Times and Sunday Times have taken a novel, reader-focused approach that minimizes distractions.

advertisers are most interested in audiences who actually care about what they read or watch, rather than the casual Web surfers.

The new Sunday Times site is particularly striking visually, with a heavy emphasis on photography. Clicking on an article brings it up in a separate box, with everything else on the page shrouded in a dark gray screen that makes for easier reading.

"People are way more hungry for news at their local level than even we imagined," said Brian Farnham, editor in chief of Patch. "There's a lot of good sources for news existing at the national level and beyond, but at the local level the cohesive experience is missing."

Top staffers get a salary of about $40,000 a year, and rookies get less, Tucker said. His wife, personal finance writer Jane Bryant Quinn, serves as editorial director and coaches journalists on writing skills and headline writing. Twenty newsroom employees produce content for the 10 sites. The stories focus on local people, and the company currently does not rely on user-generated content. "News gathering is a real profession," Tucker said. "Citizen journalism is a completely false rabbit. It's simply not going to succeed."

Patch, by contrast, solicits citizen contributions for news tips, feedback and announcements and calendars.

Verizon Communications announced May 13 it would sell about 4.8 million access lines to Frontier Communications Corp., including those in West Virginia, in a move that could lead to expanded broadband Internet access throughout the state.

A relatively large percentage of West Virginia doesn’t have access to broadband Internet services compared to many other states. State officials have pushed for greater broadband access for the state’s rural areas, and the economic stimulus package recently passed by Congress includes $7.2 billion for expanding broadband throughout the country.

$2.7 million grant to provide universal access to broadband for a seven county region in central West Virginia

proposes to bring a wireless broadband system to Braxton, Gilmer, Lewis, Upshur, Randolph, Tucker, and Barbour counties.

“The Zone was created to forge a link between counties and higher education to provide tax incentives and advantages in locating the infrastructure needed to deploy wireless broadband,”

U.S. publishers come in for withering criticism in a report this month from the German Newspaper Publishers’ Association.

While daily newspaper circulation in the United States fell 27 percent from 1998 through 2008, it slipped 19 percent in Germany. While fewer than half of Americans read newspapers, more than 70 percent of Germans do. While newspapers’ revenues have plunged in the United States, they have held steady in Germany since 2004.

Most German newspapers are owned by family concerns or other small companies with local roots,