I'm in Orlando the rest of this week at the Society for News Design Workshop and Gamblefest. So I'll be taking the blogging proceedings over here. Stop by!

I'll be revamping and launching the SND Orlando blog in the next day or so (yeah, it's still got last year's stuff there). If you want to contribute, let me know.

And if you're documenting the event photographically, upload them to Flickr and tag them sndorlando. That way they'll show up in the photo feed on the blog's sidebar. Don't have a Flickr account? What is wrong with you?! Get one! It's free and will make you a better human being.

Everybody’s starting to salivate over the SND Foundation’s Casino Night on Thursday. And they’ve announced a bunch of prizes. Everything from a trip to SND Boston next year to an XBox 360 to a MacBook and iPods galore. So hone your poker faces.

And remember, if you look around the table and can’t spot the sucker, it’s you.

If your bad managing editor wouldn’t free up the funds for you to make it to SND Orlando and you’re in the upper Midwest or Northeast, design guru Ron Reason is offering a couple of day-long workshops this fall in Chicago (pdf flier) and New York (pdf flier). All for the low, low price of 95 bucks (Hurricanes not included. Probably.), all of which goes directly to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (for whom Ron is raising funds via training for the Chicago Marathon in October). What a deal!

I’m so happy to see that Ernesto is scheduled to arrive in Orlando not long before my flight from Houston. Anybody know how comfy the floor is at the Houston airport?

Kevin Wendt (right) former San Jose Mercury News news design director who has spent the last year as an assigning editor in business, will become the Merc's new executive news editor.

Kevin will oversee the newspaper three nights a week as the editor and have overall responsibility for the copy desks.

Kevin graduated from Northern Illinois University in 2000, and started at the Merc two days later. Kevin was our news design director, overseeing news, business and sports design for three years to much applause from the design community (the paper was judged a "World's Best-Designed Newspaper" by SND under his watch).

Kevin was also part of the Knight Ridder effort to help get the Biloxi Sun-Herald on the streets during Hurricane Katrina; that coverage won a Pulitzer Prize.

Also Wednesday, Emmet Smith of the Cleveland Plain Dealer was named the Merc's business design director.

In other recent(ish) personnel news I've been meaning to note, Bruce and Suzette Moyer of The Hartford Courant will join the St. Pete Times, and Rich Boudet of SportsDesigner.com and the Tacoma News-Tribune has moved to The Seattle Times, and Bryan Monroe, formerly assistant vice president for news at Knight Ridder, is the new vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines.

Congrats all around.

Denton pulls the plug. Cripes. That didn't last long. Adios, Sploid pals! Your great heds, tooltip caption humor and monkey pictures were often the best part of my day.

>Goodbye Forever [Sploid]

In a Nieman Watchdog commentary, Gilbert Cranberg, a former editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, decries visual "space snatchers" who are taking up all that precious word space in newspapers. (They're also probably out tramping around on his lawn. Damn kids.)

If people want a visual medium, they can turn on the TV set, which no newspaper can rival no matter how much is invested in graphics. Readers subscribe to newspapers for text, not for artwork. To the extent that newspapers substitute overly-generous graphics for news and opinion they shortchange readers and alienate them.

When I see splurging on graphics I wonder, "Where was the editor?" Space is an editor's prize possession, but editors who do not hesitate to trim inflated stories seem to put away their red pencils when art is involved. They should no more abdicate to artists than to reporters.

Meanwhile, Alan Jacobson has a piece on "How to sell more newspapers." He argues, among other things, that for all our talk of innovation, we're not doing much of it. And we need to.

Let's see what innovation looks like. At the top of each page I see "skybox" promos - just like almost every other paper in America. Beneath these promos I see nameplates that stretch across the width of the page – just like almost every other paper in America. In the middle of each page I see a "centerpiece" - a large color photo packaged with a newsfeature that was probably crafted days before.

If this is innovation, then we're really in trouble. (Oh yeah, that's right. We are in trouble.)

And Mr. Cranberg won't like this part:

6. Admit it. Shorter is better
Before you tar-and-feather me, let me be clear: I am not saying all stories should be short – publish 10,000 words on Pricess Diana and Anglophiles will read every column inch. But most newspaper stories should be much shorter than they are today.

Let me get this straight: It's OK if you decide to use artwork to "dress up" your hopelessly outdated text-laden Des Moines Register opinion page. But it's NOT OK for the New York Times -- or anyone else -- to use artwork to tell a story or to explain how something happened or to compare and contrast a bunch of eye-glazing numbers?

I'll have to tell you, Mr. Cranberg, it's your attitude -- your assumptions and preconceived notions of what's good and bad for the readers you so badly misunderstand -- that is more likely to shortchange and alienate them.

Yes, things are getting a little moldy around the edges here. Between vacations, preparing for SND Orlando, having a day job, blahblahblah, I have neglected you, my public. Sorry about that. Speaking of Orlando, I’ll be firing up the dedicated blog for the event. If you’re going and want to contribute, drop me a line. Here’s last year’s fun.