Ernesto Burden, of The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., was a guest speaker at the Maine Press Association spring conference today. Ernesto is widely considered to be a top Web expert in New England; he is the current president of the New England Associated Press News Executives Association.

He said a lot of things about newspaper Web sites that I thought I'd share. His job is different from mine. He is equally responsible for ad revenue and news content. As the editor, I am responsible for news content — in the papers, and online. Our Web manager (Ben Sturtevant) and Advertising Director (Cindy Stevens) are responsible for ad results.

Here's what Ernesto recommended:

1. All new Web ventures be debated and launched with two equal factors in mind: revenue and readership.

2. Be open to purely commercial plays. He said an Ad rep in Nashua thought they should do a "virtual job fair" as an entry into their online help wanted ads. It's been a big success.

3. Be careful how much time you put into "long form" videos that take hours to produce and get low page-view numbers and no sponsors.

4. Be "merciless" with Web efforts that don't work, and jettison them. Having said that, he added that you don't really know for about 18 months whether something will succeed.

5. Also, be careful about copying what other news sites are doing — if those sites just started. Too many news Web sites follow the "me-too impulse," he said, and waste valuable resources by copying someone else's neat idea — an idea that doesn't take off.