I’m looking for a young man or woman to help me do some web stuff at work. This would be a paid internship or part-time gig to start, but could turn into something more. I’m posting here because I do almost everything here first. And nobody knows me better than you who haunt the digital hallways of smays.com.

This person will be chained to an oar, deep in the bowels of our digital galley ship. I’m searching for someone to help me keep up with a whole bunch of websites (Learfield sites and client sites). Things like checking and updating links, processing images for use online (a little Photoshop savvy would be very helpful), and the like. Too numerous to list here.

If you know a little about blogging and flickr and YouTube and such… go to the head of the line. If your first questions are about hours and pay… never mind. You’d hate this job. The person I’m looking for spends more time online than off. They sometimes check their email before they brush their teeth in the morning. They watch TV while holding an open laptop.

This ain’t a resume kind of position. I’d much rather get a link to a blog or a “why-I’m-the-right-person-for- this-job” video on YouTube. Otherwise, tell me in an email (no attachments) why you would be good at this. 500 words or less. If the email isn’t good, you’ll never get an interview.

If you know someone like this, send them a link to this post.

A special shout out to Corey and Lauren K: You guys were great at this and I’d love to have you back. Or if you know someone half a good, send them my way.

The news division of our company is in the process of launching a new radio network called Living the Country Life. It’s part of a joint venture with Meredith Publishing, which created the magazine and TV show (of the same name).

We’re producing a series of daily radio features and our affiliate relations guys will attempt to get the new programs on as many stations as possible. Toward that end, we’ve produced demos, so radio stations can hear what the programs sound like. I’m getting to the point, hang on.

One of the producers popped in this morning and asked how quickly I could create a web page where they could post the demos (MP3 files) for stations to download/listen?

A few years ago, I would have parked the files on an FTP server or cobbled together something in FrontPage. A few more years ago, and we would have been mailing out CD’s (or cassette tapes!).

This morning it took about 15 minutes to pull together a nice little blog on Typepad. Our affiliate relations folks can now just email  a link to a prospective affiliate. Such a site could easily become a cornerstone of our affiliate clearance effort. Fast, inexpensive, and no programming skills necessary.

I found a similar application for one our clients.

Children’s Trust Fund of Missouri has a 10 minute video on Shaken Baby Syndrome. You can order the DVD (for free, I believe) from their website, but what can you do with it then? Show it to your club or organization, I suppose. But why not make it easy for anyone with a web browser to watch the video.

So I put it up on Google Video and embedded the Flash player on their website and a world-wide audience is now just a click away.

This kind of stuff was damned hard or impossible, just a few years ago. And now, anyone can do this stuff. This is the real power of the web.

In 1981 our company began distributing our (news and ag) programs to radio stations via satellite. It was a big deal at the time because we were the first of the smaller, regional networks to “go satellite.” Uplink hardware was damned expensive. Downlink hardware at the radio stations was pretty pricey, too. But much cheaper (in the long run) than all of those point-to-point land lines.

For many years, having a satellite distribution system was a competitive edge. You had to have some way of getting the programming to the radio stations (and their listeners). No FedEx in those days.

In a few weeks, football season will get underway and we’ll be distributing play-by-play audio to affiliates of 35 collegiate sports radio networks around the country. Most of those via satellite. But for the first time, we’ll use live web streaming to deliver audio to the affiliates of two of our networks (Maine and Montana State).

This is possible because of increased bandwidth; better audio encoding; and a growing acceptance of audio (and video) online. If all goes according to plan, listeners won’t even be aware of how the audio gets from the stadium to their radios (or computers).

We could sort of see this coming but it was/is difficult to imagine a time when satellite distribution of audio and video could be replaced by the Internet (or even some Super Internet of the future). But it’s getting easier.

So what’s it all mean? It seems unlikely your “competitive edge” will be distribution. That’s probably been true for some time now. Having the good content will always be important. But if you are not the only source for the content… or the best source for the content… (to be continued).