Can someone tell me the commercial, or even, potentially commercial value of MSM setting up in Second Life? Back in October last year Reuters opened a Second Life bureau staffed by reporter Adam Pasick.

Now, Journalism.co.uk reports, the Telegraph has moved in to build a recreation of the garden it sponsored at the Chelsea Flower Show. And  Sky News has built a version of its newsroom there. The BBC is to broadcast the Money Programme in Second Life.

It can’t be cheap to set up like this in Second Life with its six million registered residents, mostly absentee virtual home owners. And how many of these people are British? How many of those will be driven to do something which will earn the real world sponsors money, like buying the paper, taking out a Sky subscription or just seeing the paid-for ads on a website.

The whole thing looks like one of those "What about Second Life? We should so something there," ideas. Perhaps editors just want boast to their contemporaries: "I am bigger than you in Second Life."

Maybe I am missing something.

While newspaper website advertising in the US continues to rise, it is not enough to offset the fall in print advertising. The latest figures from the Newspaper Association of America that:

Advertising expenditures at newspapers and their Web sites totaled $10.6 billion for the first quarter of 2007, a 4.8 percent decrease from the same period a year earlier. Spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $9.8 billion, down 6.4 percent versus the same period a year earlier.

Website advertising has increased by 22.3% to $750 million and represented 7.1% of ad revenue. A variety of factors are, no doubt, at work including the difficulties of the US housing market, but an overall trend does seem to be emerging: when advertising migrates from print to the web it finds a much greater variety of places to advertise. (via Greenslade)

You can learn a lot from he state of anyone’s desk. Sophie Morris, at the Independent, has been finding out about the offices of editors.

Roger Alton of the Observer reveals a survival strategy: "One of my bosses once told me he didn’t like people putting pictures of their family on their desk because he found it much harder to sack them, so I have put a heap of pictures and personal things on my desk."

At the Express Peter Hill, we learn, makes his own tea and keeps a kettle in the office. Mark Hedges of Country Life has brought a grandfather clock and furniture editors have used for 110 years to the modern new offices near Tate Modern. He also has a scarecrow.

The Oldie has an open plan office but Richard Ingram admits to "a very untidy environment… it looks chaotic but I like to think I know my way around it." That I understand.

Siobhain Butterworth, the Guardian new readers’ editor (ombudsman) is to start a blog about issues for the paper and its readers, she tells us in Comment is free. This is great and should open up a conversation with readers which, at times, will undoubtedly be difficult.

That is probably why she carefully describes it as an "experiment" that will appear on Thursdays. Clearly she needs to think about what she writes but I wonder whether a fixed weekly date is sustainable in new media.

 Jeff Jarvis makes a compelling argument for a rethink of home pages on media websites. Fewer than one person in five now lands on the home page, most arriving directly at story pages through search or other links, he says.

Ironically, having read his column in the Guardian, the easiest way to find it on the web was to go to the Guardian Home page and do a search for "Jeff Jarvis". That is because is was not on the Media Guardian RSS feed and had not appeared on the Google News search.

The front page is deeply embedded in the way journalists think and it has been natural to transfer the concept to the web. Readers too are familiar with this structure and while I most frequently arrive at a story page I often click "home" to re-orientate myself. Often the serendipity that flows from the home page is rewarding, taking me to things I would never reach through search or the confines of my selection of newsreader feeds.

The home page is going to be with us for some time but Jarvis’s thinking makes sense. It is something every journalist should be thinking about.

Can separate regulation of the media (statutory Ofcom for for broadcast and the voluntary Press Complaints Commission for print) last in an age of converged media?

Peter Preston, in the Observer, today has no doubt which he prefers. He points out that while the PCC turns round judgments in five weeks, Ofcom has taken five months to produce a 66 page report on Big Brother and racism.

I haven’t been able to find a copy of the new-look Press Gazette yet, so no comment on that. The website has been spruced up too and looks good with clear navigation, but still lacking full content online.

Of course, with an audience that universally has access to the web they need to protect revenue. I have no objection to paying for the content behind a subscription wall, but the replica digital edition I do not want.

Some glitches are to be expected — and forgiven — but hopes that the blurb below the new top navigation bar, would deliver what it promised ("Editors explain the relaunch of Press Gazette") were dashed. It linked to Martin Stabe, the online editor, writing about the website relaunch. Stabe is always worth reading but it was not what was promised.

Ian Reeves’s video report on the state of video in British newspapers and magazines gets a strong plug at the top of the web front page. The video was a fairly superficial gallop through how video is being adopted which left the impression that most of it is pretty boring, which it is.

I am not sure that the talking head with relatively short clips was the right approach. And why no links to the mentioned blogs to allow further examination? That is one of the things web video can do which broadcast TV cannot.

Actually, you would do better to look at the vlogs on Reeves blog to get a view of newspaper and magazine use of video. He does provide links to the sites mentioned. Good stuff, but I wish he would keep his head a little stiller and not let his eyes dart around as though he was looking for an escape route. But he is a whole lot better than the reincarnation of Ananova at the Eastern Daily Press shown in his Press Gazette video.

Later: Thanks to Martin Stabe (comment below) I have the link to the article about the redesign (I clearly did not scroll down the home page far enough to find it). 

In the redesign we are seeing the strategy of the new owners, Wilmington Media, to extend the audience to all journalists, rather than the much narrower one of  newspaper people.  The editor, Dominic Ponsford, writes:

The new look, masterminded by designer Michael Crozier, sees a new logo in place which places greater emphasis on the word "press" and incorporates our new slogan: "For all journalists".

This underlines the fact that "press" in our case is meant in the broadest sense of the word, encompassing all journalists wherever they work.Beyond that they are aiming at, "all those interested in the fascinating machinations of the fourth estate".

Nitpick: As the British Journalism Review said in a centenary article on the Daily Mirror in 2003: "The use of the word ‘first’ is as dangerous in newspaper history as in any other." Press Gazette heads an article: "Fleet Street’s first female editor Lori Miles on her move to customer mags." The first female Fleet Street editor was Mary Howarth, the first editor of the Daily Mirror, who lasted just a year before being replaced by a man.

The most exciting news in journalism eduction for a long time comes from the Medill j-school at Northwestern University which has got $600,000 from the Knight Foundation for scholarships to attract people with computer programming and development skills.

"Putting the geek into journalism" is how Alfred Hermida neatly put its. He writes:

The idea came from Professor Rich Gordon, who recognises that journalism in a digital age needs people who understand both journalism and technology. This does not necessarily means that every journalist needs to be able to code in Perl or some other computer language. But the industry needs people with an understanding of emerging technologies to develop new forms of journalism.

There will be full scholarships and cash stipends for MA students who will complete the same academic programme as other students on the MA programme. The school says:

The first academic quarter is spent learning reporting and storytelling skills in multiple media. At least one other quarter is spent in Medill’s Chicago newsroom, covering a beat and creating multimedia stories. As part of the program, all of the scholarship recipients will also be enrolled in one of Medill’s innovation projects, in which scholarship winners will have the opportunity to apply their technology skills. They also will be able to choose among a variety of elective courses.

Recently I have been working with some computer undergraduates at the University of Westminster who elected to take part in a very basic introduction to journalism module. The results have been enough to convince me we need a programme like the Medill one on this side of the Atlantic.

 The danger for some newspapers in crafting video strategy is that to produce video they are rushing to replicate a TV model of production and in some cases presentation: Video plus legacy…. Newspapers need to start thinking like entreprenuers, Kevin Anderson writes.

The blogs editor of the Guardian is commenting on CBS’s acquisition of the Wallstrip video blog.

Hear! Hear! to all he says.

I am giving a introductory talk on blogging at the Suffolk Mac Users Group in Ipswich next Wednesday (May 30) and I am getting a little nervous about how to engage an audience which will include people ranging from those who want to promote their businesses to those who want to keep in touch with grandchildren in Australia. Advice from anyone who has given similar talks would be welcome.

All are welcome (there is a small admission charge) and the time and place is on the group’s website. There is also Talking About Blogging which will eventually have notes on the talk.