The New York Post is one of those papers that you should only read with a grain of salt. It’s pretty much a place where frat boys with a communications degree go to make ridiculous puns and silly headlines. It’s the kind of pick me up, like a GIF ridden Tumblr blog, you can turn to when you want to have a chuckle and get a lesson in how not to report the news.

That’s why it’s no surprise that they made a Photoshop composite on their cover this week. You should just assume that they all are. It’s the News Corp way.

But doesn’t it sort of make you feel good about what you do?

Show and Tell

Unless you’re job is to be funny, like the Post or Gawker, making composites for your homepage photo is not a practice you should partake in. The only thing you should be doing with photo editing software is adjusting levels or image sizes. Even the most innocent offenses, like getting rid of a fly away hair or removing something distracting from the background, can lead you down a dark and uneasy road. If the picture needs work, you need to go out and retake it. Or find another one to use.

The same rule applies when it comes to video. The FOX CT debacle of too much cleavage  in a Women’s History Month segment could easily happen online, too. We’re all busy, but take the time to edit and review content. What’s ‘funny’ to bored overnight editors amongst themselves will hardly be as well received in the real world. Just because we live in an onslaught of media doesn’t mean things can slip through the cracks.

Clicks and Engagement

Some have said that the new layout for the New York Times isn’t any good. Too much focus on making it readable, when other newspapers like The Daily Mail have been surviving with their completely unreadable homepage.

That’s because the Mail is a tabloid. Their strategy is to get clicks, and the more you have to click to get to the photos of someone doing something bad, the more “money” they make. Clicks and SEO are important. It’s all ingrained in our consciousness when we publish, but it should be left out of the planning and writing phase. The new layout for the Times is simply good strategy. As mobile and news pubs evolve, a focus on being readable should be at the heart of any good strategy, because that’s the business of news. Don’t get caught up in the hype. If the content is good, and accessible, they will come. You don’t need bad puns to get them. A good pun? That’s an entirely different story.

Have you spotted any other good fails on the web this week?

I am exhausted from following the explosion of opinion about how much freelance journalists should be paid after writer Nate Thayer took on The Atlantic for offering to publish his work, for free.

It used to be that freelance meant you were a free-agent. Now, it just means you work for free, or scraps.

Read more

Sometime’s all it takes is a change of attitude. Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, announced a bold move in the way the organization will identify itself yesterday. In an email to staff, posted in full on The Guardian, Barber has outlined a shift from a news agency to a digital platform.

Of course, this means cutting up to 35 positions and the addition of 10 new digital journalists. Before we start huffing and puffing about what “digital journalist” even means (aren’t we all digital journalists?), there are a few reasons to champion this move.

1. Specialization Makes It Easy

The Financial Times has been eyed by Bloomberg News and Thompson Reuters recently. Streamlining the organization now creates more value. While the paper has always looked pretty in pink, 25% of its revenues are now coming from digital advertising. Barber noted in his letter that they have survived the past years, 125 of them in print, by being “pioneers” in their agility to move from print to online. Their specialization in financial news and their short stories that never jump to the inside sections make it easy to to move to an all-digital platform. Anyone running a niche publication — be it music, sports, or stamp collecting — should start thinking about using digital platform to describe itself. Any new magazine or journal needs to be called a digital platform to succeed. Read more

After hiring a new digital editor, New York Daily News is planning to expand its online presence, reports Capital New York. Ted Young, who was the former editor of the Daily Mail’s website, was hired to oversee a new digital business strategy, which plans to expand into a national news site called Daily News America.

The Daily News has had much success in the digital arena lately. It has the third highest digital circulation in the country (after only The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal), and is beating its rival New York Post in terms of digital presence—in April, the Daily News had 10.2 million unique visitors, compared to the Post’s 6.6 million. The Post recently hired Remy Stern as a digital consultant, hoping to give more attention to its digital strategy, while the Daily News hopes to keep its lead in the digital realm with its click friendly slideshows and celebrity gossip headlines.

Cosmopolitan, the Hearst-owned “Fun Fearless Female” lady mag, told Ad Age today that they reached a significant milestone: to date, the publication has scored 100,000 paid digital subscriptions, a number that’s quite encouraging to other struggling print magazines. So how’d they do it? Check out some of the learnings from Cosmo’s strategy below.

• Charging more for digital subscriptions than for print: Cosmo offers print-only subscriptions for $15/year, while its digital subscriptions on Zinio and iPad are $19.99/year.
• Offering digital subscriptions on a host of different devices: Cosmo has been sure to not put all its eggs in one basket. According to Ad Age, they’ve been on Zinio since 2005, but also offer their title in other marketplaces, such as iTunes, Kindle and Nook.
• No free digital subscription with print subscription: Many magazines offer a free digital subscription if you buy a print subscription. Cosmo has steered away from this strategy, charging customers separately for both.
• Capitalizing on newsstand success: Cosmo has extremely successful newsstand circulation, reportedly selling 1.5 million copies from newsstands in the last half of 2011 alone. This exposure helps to more easily market their digital strategy.

What do you think of Cosmo‘s digital strategy?