Overwhelmed about how to navigate the ever-changing online world? Take a spin through this list, compiled by Ken Sands, online publisher of SpokesmanReview.com. Your head may still be spinning after you do, but you'll know a lot more about where our industry is headed.

1. Use RSS. If you don't know what it is, get someone to show you. It's a very simple way for you to monitor lots of Web sites without having to spend a lot of time surfing – the news comes to you. Very handy. Here's Wikipedia's very thorough explanation of RSS: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss.

Other examples:

www.bloglines.com
www.feedreader.com

2. Once you have RSS, you can subscribe to at least the top two media sources:

• Poynter's E-Media Tidbits
www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31
RSS: www.poynterextra.org/rss/tidbits.xml
E-mail: www.poynter.org/profile/subscribe_info.asp

Cyberjournalist.net
www.cyberjournalist.net
RSS: feeds.feedburner.com/cyberjournalist

Other sources:

First Draft by Tim Porter
www.timporter.com/firstdraft
RSS: http://www.timporter.com/firstdraft/index.rdf

Rebuilding Media
www.corante.com/rebuildingmedia
RSS: www.corante.com/rebuildingmedia/index.xml

Interactive Narratives
www.interactivenarratives.org
RSS: www.professordevigal.org/blog_in/index.rdf

Morph
mediacenter.blogs.com/morph/
RSS: mediacenter.blogs.com/morph/index.rdf

Press Think
journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/
RSS: http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/index.rdf

BuzzMachine
www.buzzmachine.com
RSS: www.buzzmachine.com/index.xml

SnarkMarket
snarkmarket.com/blog
RSS: feeds.feedburner.com/snarkmarket

3. Attend a conference. APME's annual conference in New Orleans, Oct. 25-28, 2006, is the best place to learn about how print and online newsrooms are merging. To learn more about the online world, attend the Online News Association conference, Oct. 5-7, 2006, in Washington, D.C. Both conferences are extraordinary values. Other conferences worth attending, if you have the time and money: NAA's Connections, Feb. 19-22, 2006, in Orlando and the E&P's Interactive Conference, May 17-19, 2006, in Las Vegas.

4. Experiment with alternative story forms.

Examples of blogging:

www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.php (list of J-blogs)
www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs (one newspaper's catalog)
blogs.thenewstribune.com/seahawks (sports)
blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft (business)
blog.news-record.com/staff/bargainblog (consumer)

Examples of Podcasts:

www.lawrence.com/podcasts
www.nbc5.com/podcast/index.html
feeds.feedburner.com/onthemedia

Examples of Multimedia:

blogs.roanoke.com/vlog (Informal, fun, video newscast)
www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060106/NEWS11/60106016 (Polished, TV-quality newscast)
www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/archive.asp?postID=72 (Video mini-documentary)
www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/archive.asp?postID=70 (Audio story behind a photograph)
www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/archive.asp?postID=31 (Audio slideshow story)

5. Get involved with citizen media. As of this writing, there are 67 citizen media initiatives listed at CyberJournalist.net. Check out the list and try an experiment of your own.

6. Think about creating an ongoing method of conversation with readers, such as John Robinson's column in Greensboro or the Transparent Newsroom in Spokane.

7. Exploit the power of database utility.

Some examples:

projects.washingtonpost.com/congress
www.chicagocrime.org
www.spokesmanreview.com/hoopfest/2005/cover.asp
www.spokesmanreview.com/bloomsday/2004

8. Try to get a grip on the power of social networking. Would you be surprised to find out, for example, how many Xanga bloggers there are in your metro area? Would you believe 14,853 in Des Moines as of Jan. 7, 2005? And how many Notre Dame fans are talking about football at any given moment on one fan bulletin board on a Saturday morning in January? (http://mb20.scout.com/fnotredamefrm1) Would you believe 460? How many business people in your city are among the 4.4 million in the LinkedIn network? Do you know about MySpace? How about Facebook? If not, you should.

9. Keep an eye on the future. Make a point of hiring someone young and smart and web-savvy for a key position. Decide to let go of something traditionally considered "important." Make a commitment to innovate. Understand that this entire list will be horribly out of date by the end of 2006.

10. Finally, give readers what they want a little more often and vow to have a little fun every now and then:

For example:

www.spokesmanreview.com/media/audio/082805_biway.mp3
www.spokesmanreview.com/media/audio/112405_flings.mp3