I do not know Wayne PacPhail, but I'd like to have a beer with him one day way up there in Canada to talk about this article he wrote. It's about the days now past when newspapers mattered and still could have made a difference to the community if they embraced the new media technologies. Like Mr. MacPhail, I once worked at a newspaper, too.

This article he's written is in my opinion one of the finest, most insightful, best written, most personal and touching obituaries for print journalism and newspapers I've ever read. I hope you will take a minute to read it, even if you're not particularly interested in newspapers and their fate. Why? Because much of what happened to newspapers was and is still rooted in their attitude toward the Internet and the related new technologies for social media. What happened to newspapers can happen to any industry or institution that pushes back against the new; that forgets what its mission is really all about. Newspapers forgot they were about helping to get stories told… they were about covering newsprint in ink.

You know, you read Mr. MacPhail's article and you feel sorry for the fate of print journalism. But you somehow feel worse for the living, for the friends of print journalism like Mr. MacPhail, who miss the passing of something that meant a great deal to them and yet died needlessly, senselessly and way before its time.

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The Pew Internet & American Life Project has a new report you should scan if you still think marketing the old fashioned way to the new and next generation is going to work. It's about the use of social media among teenagers in America, with a focus on how boys' and girls' online preferences differ in some ways. But for me, that's the side story. Of more importance I think is that television, radio and newspapers aren't even mentioned in the report (not totally surprising since this is Internet research), and that the numbers are staggering.

For example, see if this doesn't give you reason for pause:

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation… There is a subset of teens who are super-communicators — teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls…

There's an old saying where I come from. It is "Fish where the fish are." To that, I would append the phrase, "…and use good bait." Want to reach the online generation? Go online, and stop thinking that your static website full of polished, vetted phrases rises to the definition of social media. It isn't going to attract or compel the new supercommunicators.

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SMO? Type that into Wikipedia and you get this list of things represented by the acronym SMO. But it is the fourth one down that's auditioning here today: Social Media Optimization, which I worry could be confused with SCHMO, which everyone knows stands for the Stupidly Creative Hodgepodges of Marketing Opportunists, right?  Follow the Wikipedia link to Social Media Optimization (SMO) and it takes you here and gives you this definitional SMOrgasboard:

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine marketing.

Now does that smow job really rise to the level of deserving its own acronym? I happen to think it is an example of Creating Ridiculous Alphabetic Patterns to achieve a whole new level of Bad Use of Letters for Leverage. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for social media, but can we stop the madness (STM) now.

SEO, SMO… and did you know there's a CRO now, too. That's for Conversion Rate Optimization or… never mind!

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