My initial goal with this blog is to craft short tips and positive lessons for online journalists and publishers. So I will leave you with this thought for the weekend:

Ya gotta love what you do.

Passion animates writing. It compels you to make that extra phone call, browse deeper into a database, or find one more source to complete a story. It lures you into thinking about how various facts and events fit together, even as you try to fall asleep at night. And it has been passion – not business plans or committee meetings – that has prompted the development of so many communication innovations online, from blogs to wikis to video mash-ups.

How can you expect readers to care about your story, or your website, if you don’t? Readers will sense your indifference, and click away.

Secure your future in online journalism by focusing on what you love. What topics do you want to learn more about? What do you wish you could spend more time doing? Interviews? Coding? Databases? Discussions? Design work?

Rich Gordon is right. There’s no better time to be a journalist. And the Internet is the best medium yet for exploring niche topics using specialized techniques. Focus on what you want to do, and do it. If you work for a large organization, and your bosses won’t let you innovate on their dime, find a cheap Web host someplace and experiment with new tools, designs and topics on your own Web server. Then see if you can win their support with a developed project. And if you can’t, don’t forget that you can make money doing journalism on your own, too.

It’s the weekend – recess for grown-ups. Go play.

The producers and editors at KnoxNews.com – the website for the Knoxville News Sentinel – decided to add an online-only section featuring “v-logs,” or video stories, about life in Knoxville.

RandomThis features short video stories that profile events or places around Knoxville, according to one of the web producers, Jigsha Desai.

“There are four producers and we all film random things and life in Knoxville,” Desai said. “Anything goes.”

The producers come up with their own ideas for what to film and then head out with a small digital camera to create the v-logs.

“It’s random videos with a cheap camera on the fly,” Desai said. “There are no fancy gimmicks. We’re showing life through our eyes.”

RandomThis posts video stories weekly. In addition to the videos by the web producers, RandomThis also accepts submissions from amateur v-loggers in the area.

“What we have on the site is community journalism done by citizen journalists,” Desai wrote in a follow-up e-mail. “If [the readers] find something important, we find it important too. And if they find it important to post videos of their children, pets or flowers, then we will do our best to give them the forum to do so.”

She also wrote: “In my personal opinion, the Hannah Belle’s Hootenannies is the best in terms of citizen journalism. It’s a glimpse into a newish part of American culture (the Red Hat Society), and shows in a simple way, activities pursued by the Red Hat ladies. Plus, the singing is great!”

Of her own videos, Desai’s favorite so far is a feature on the Time Warp Tea Room, a local tea house that offers drinks and food amid a display of antiques and motorcycle memorabilia. She said the video exposes a part of Knoxville that many residents may not know about.

Finding new and interesting aspects of Knoxville is a goal that Desai and the other web producers share. They want to show that news can be fun and exciting, not just dull and sad, she said.

The producers also hope to attract more submissions from viewers and broaden their video library.

“Anyone can do what we’re doing,” said Desai. “We’re just showing life through a camera lens.”

For Gil Asakawa, executive producer of the DenverPost.com, the decision to begin offering Post Podcasts was easy: “It seemed like a no-brainer,” he said, particularly since the Post has a “commitment to incorporate new technology” in order to bring the news to a wider audience.

Like many newspapers and media outlets, the Denver Post started podcasting to offer listeners who lack the time to read a newspaper the chance to download audio content and catch up on the latest news and features on their MP3 players.

But just because the jump to podcasting was a no-brainer doesn’t mean it has been easy. Compared to the podcasts of major news organizations like CNN and ABC, Asakawa said that the Post’s podcasts are still “rough.”

Denver Post’s “Pod Squad,” Ian Neligh, Noelle Leavitt and Armando Manzanares, wake up at 4 a.m. to select and record the top five stories from each section on the website, explained Asakawa. They then package and produce the podcasts at home using freeware on their personal home computers. They have the podcasts uploaded to the site by 7 a.m.

Podcasts include: Daily Top Headlines, Entertainment Beat, and Events & Features Podcasts. Features podcasts include brief descriptions and are sometimes accompanied by a video or a photo slideshow.

Offered exclusively online, the Post’s features podcasts give listeners an opportunity to experience major events and news through sound from interviews and background ambient sounds. Some examples include a visit to a Harry Potter book release party at a local bookstore, speaking with a Children’s Hospital volunteer and an interview with a photographer who volunteered to rescue animals in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Online editions for print journalism have been slow in taking a serious look at podcasting, Asakawa said. Many are only now seeing some of podcasting’s potential to reach new audiences.

Future plans for the Post’s podcasting, Asakawa said, include adding more Web-only available content such as the features podcasts; Scenester, which lists upcoming entertainment events; and weekly movie reviews by the Regular Guy movie critic.