And he should know.

Montgomery, who is also news design editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, launched Visual Editors in 2004 as a forum for newspaper designers to liaise and wax analytical about everything from overbearing editors to new trends in design.

But as with many things on the Web, what started as something simple didn’t end up that way.

“It’s incredible,” Montgomery said. “It feels like we just launched (Visual Editors) and we’re already getting more than 1 million page views a month.”

In addition to an “amazingly lively” job section, and the ability for members to upload their designs and receive instant feedback, VizEd has also recently embraced what Montgomery says so many mainstream newspapers have balked at: podcasting.

With the help of a few great guests – including Deborah Douglas of Fluff magazine and Matt Mansfield of the San Jose Mercury News – VizEd’s podcasts were downloaded more than 26,000 times in the first 30 days alone.

All that traffic necessitated a move to a larger, and much more costly, server.

And this constant evolution, Mongomery said, is the only way for a Web site to get – and stay – ahead.

“I’m always tinkering with my own limits. It’s about always changing, always getting better. It’s about thinking: How can I make the site more intuitive – more informative? I had to learn a whole new set of skills just to get these podcasts to play.”

Of course, it wasn’t enough to simply get the podcasts up and running; Visual Editors offers five different ways for members to play them.

“Why shouldn’t we offer our members every available format?” he asked. “Why make it hard on people? People just don’t want to wait around while newspapers figure all this technology out.”

But despite being willing to grapple with the bells and whistles, Montgomery is ultimately about the basics: “In the end, we want an open and honest discussion about newspaper design.”

The day-long event will gather leading media analysts to discuss the Internet’s effects on mass collaboration, including lectures on citizen journalism, activism and democracy, the business of collaboration, and media watching.

Hosted by the Associated Press at its world headquarters, the symposium will also feature speakers Craig Newmark of craigslist.org; CBS Digital Media President Larry Kramer; and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

The Media Center is a non-profit think tank affiliated with the American Press Institute.

The Silicon Valley-based company, which has made billions of dollars selling short text-based ads online, has befuddled advertisers and publishers alike by purchasing ad space in PC Magazine and Maximum PC and then selling spots to smaller companies.

According to the NYTimes, this move resembles ad brokering, a practice shunned by many major publishers.

At a time when most print advertisers are looking to move online, the jump from the Internet to the printed page “‘really is back to the future,’” said Standard & Poor’s analyst Scott Kessler to the Los Angeles Times.

Jason Young, president of Internet publishing for Ziff Davis Media Inc., told the LATimes Google’s new program gives print advertisers some much needed encouragement.

“‘It’s a leading entity in the online world saying that print is really an important solution for marketers,’” Young said.

Not everyone is thrilled with the news, however. Some publishers that have traditionally sold ads directly to their clients are wary of Google becoming an all-too-powerful middleman.

Google would not elaborate on its motives except to say the program was a test, according to the NYTimes. The NYTimes also reported that Google executives have said in the past that they “see their rapidly growing online advertising business extending to other media forms.”

In order to streamline operations and boost revenue, Quebecor will consolidate the tabloid Toronto Sun, the free daily newspaper 24 Hours, Sun TV and Internet portal canoe.ca. The consolidation, set to cost the company $110 million, will also result in the loss of 120 jobs.

Quebecor Inc. CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said he hopes for the same success in Ontario that Quebecor has had in Montreal, where the company also converged its media properties.

Luc Lavoie, Quebecor’s executive vice-president of corporate affairs, said he envisions a central news desk that will employ its personnel “in all four pillars of the operation.”

Lavoie’s vision includes Sun columnists producing blogs and appearing on Sun TV in debate-type shows like CNN’s Crossfire, according to Yahoo News.

“‘People under 40 don’t look for news in the same way people of my age, in their 50s, do or used to,’” Lavoie said. “‘They go to the Internet, they go to the TV . . . You have to catch them where they are.’”

Ryerson University journalism program chair Paul Knox was skeptical about the convergence model, stating that it has yielded mixed results in both Canada and the U.S.

Knox added that writing a print article requires different skills than writing a script for broadcast.

“‘It all depends how much they are willing to invest in human resources and skills in the talent that you would need to pull this off,’” Knox said.

Playboy Chief Executive Christie Hefner – daughter of founder Hugh Hefner – said the company was responding to two conspicuous trends. “‘One is more and more consumers are getting information and entertainment online, and the other is more and more advertising dollars are going online.’”

Beginning September 13, curious readers will be able to download an electronic version of the print edition for the same price they would pay at the newsstand.

Over the weekend, several blogs beseeched their readers to vote multiple times in online opinion polls regarding anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.

Both The Reporter and The Times-Herald said that by posting instructions on how to bypass the one-vote-per-person system, the bloggers distorted the results of the polls.

As a result of the blogging frenzy, thereporter.com – which normally receives just 12,000 hits a day – garnered more than 93,000 votes.

While many see the voting hijinks as victimless, others are concerned that the incident highlights the increasing power of blogs to sway politics and the mainstream media.

Ultimately, the impetus for moving news content online has been the almighty greenback: Last year alone, online advertising grew by a third.

But with many challenges remaining – mostly technological and financial in nature – the transition has been smoother for some news outlets than for others. Sports news, with its short highlight clips, is particularly well-suited for the Web, according to Canadian Television Network sports chief Mike Day.

“If you want to watch football segments, you don’t have to sit through hockey,” Day said.

However, Robert Niles, Online Journalism Review editor in chief, said the potential for some media outlets to avoid the Internet remains, but they will have to seriously consider their market.

“Some companies will survive, but they’ll become more of a niche outfit – you’re still going to have an audience, but it’ll be a smaller audience,” Niles said.