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Gordon Borrell says local online advertising outperformed his Borrell Associates forecast by a fair piece:

"We may have been far too conservative earlier this year when we projected that local online advertising would grow 8% in 2009. At the end of the first quarter, the increase looked closer to 11%. When we finish collecting our second-quarter data in the next few weeks, I'm certain the number will be quite a bit higher."

He says some companies even indicate "triple-digit growth" in local ad sales, but notes not all players can be winners:

After wrapping up his 10-part series on what local newspapers should do to survive (he rolled up all the recommendations in one post), John Temple posted a wise reply to questions I asked him by e-mail last week.

My questions, in a nutshell: What about photojournalism? Can it be considered a strategic asset for local newspapers?

John wrote me back, but then expanded on his reply in the blog post. Good advice abounds these days on his blog, as the post exemplifies:

Charles Apple, one of the primo bloggers at Visual Editors, picked up the discussion about the future of design at newspapers and the troubled Society for News Design, in particular. In Apple's post, he channels Dean Lockwood of the San Antonio Express-News:

While I joined my son yesterday on a college campus visit (yes, he's that old, meaning yes, I'm that old), our gang at Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group rolled out the second site in our latest cycle of user experience upgrades: redding.com, site of the Redding Record-Searchlight in northern California.

As with Site 1, courierpress.com of Evansville, Ind., redding.com demonstrates Scripps' latest thinking about news Web sites, in form and function:

• Flexibility to showcase news of the day.

(Update [1:25 p.m. EDT, June 26, 2009]: Clear customer service just sent a note to members answering my questions and more. I added it in full at the bottom of this post.)

Greg Sterling noted the end of Clear, the program that let travelers pay to register with biometrics in exchange for swifter passage through security at several major airports.

As a Clear card carrier for roughly two years now, I got word of the shutdown last night. My first concerns, as I posted to Greg in comments on his post, are:

1. Do I have any prayer of a refund for unused months on my membership?

I am reposting here, with only a few edits for style, comments I posted in a heated thread about the recent resignations of the president and executive director of the Society for News Design. As background, my own long history with SND includes several years on its board of directors, putting on its 1996 annual workshop in Indianapolis, rebuilding and managing its Web site, and providing first-ever live Web reports from the annual competition judging at Syracuse.

These days, I serve no official role, but remain keenly interested in the society's future, as my comments describe:

Friends,