There’s been a lot of talk about CNN’s planned wire service, which will compete against the Associated Press in the syndicated news market.

CNN sees an opportunity, because the more newspapers cut staff, the more they need to rely on outside sources to fill their pages. On the surface, it sounds like a good deal for papers. But it’s not, especially for a paper that wants to have a strong online presence.

Why? Three words: search engine optimization.

For you newspaper execs who are just hearing the term for the first time, SEO is the practice of using strong keywords and story descriptions to get your content high rankings on Google and other search engines and drive more traffic to your Web site. (You should try it sometime. Really, it’s great.)

But SEO has a lot of tricks and rules that can undermine your efforts if you’re not careful. One of those is the “duplicate content” rule. Under this rule, if a story you post is too similar to a story someone else has posted, both stories will plummet in the search engine rankings.

That’s where using a wire service comes in. If you’re one of 100 (or even 10) papers that runs the same wire story in your online edition, nobody will ever find your specific page on Google. There’s just too much competition.

You’re better off, as Jeff Jarvis says, creating “an infrastructure to share and link to original journalism.” Spending money on this new CNN wire, or any syndicated content, isn’t a smart investment these days.

Another media organization is capitalizing on Obamamania.

The Poynter Institute is preparing to sell the catchily titled “President Obama Election 2008: A Collection of Newspaper Front Pages Selected by The Poynter Institute,” according to Editor and Publisher. The book will reprint Nov. 5 front pages from several major U.S. metropolitan newspapers, as well as some international papers (The Jakarta Post and The Daily Nation of Nairobi) and even Yale’s student pub, the Daily News.

At $14.99 (paperback) and $24.99 (hardcover), seems like a good, cheap Christmas holiday gift for the newspaper lover in your life.

Bill Wyman, former arts editor for National Public Radio and Salon.com, agrees with Swimmin’ Hole! that Roger Ebert is wrong about the demise of movie reviews in newspapers. Wyman writes on his blog, Hitsville:

Today, if I’m interested in critical takes on, say, Australia, in a click or two I have at hand the writings of Manohla Dargis, Ebert himself, Ken Turan, Ella Taylor and Todd McCarthy on that film. A click or two more and I have at my disposal the collective wisdom of the internets’ collective film writing, the intellectual equivalent of that sandworm in Dune, majestic and slightly nauseating at the same time.

What in the world is wrong with this picture?

For virtually everyone interested in film criticism, today’s state of affairs is great.

Ebert’s vista is the too-narrow one of daily newspapers. That’s an artificial construct that has no resonance to anyone with a computer.

Sure, Wyman uses words like “vista,” “resonance” and “artificial construct,” but at least Swimmin’ Hole! knows that “Internet” is capitalized.

When Roger Ebert was young, he used to walk to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways, and when he got there, he’d open the newspaper and read 5,000-word film reviews before class started. And he never complained.

Until now.

That’s because the lengthy, in-depth newspaper film review is dead, replaced by syndicated columnists and “news” about what A-Rodonna had for Thanksgiving dinner. So, like every other old school journalist who’s having trouble adapting to the 21st Century, Ebert is whining about it in a Chicago Sun-Times column:

The Eagle-Tribune makes it 2-for-2 thanks to this comment from “JeromeHoward08,” who weighed in on a story about Sammy Sosa donating $15,000 to a charter school:

When they opened the envelope did little cork pellets fall out?

I can just see it now: “And the winner of this year’s Sammy Sosa Cork Pellet Scholarship is …”

The Washington Post today has a story today about layoffs at the Newseum, where 19 employees accepted buyouts and two retired, resulting in a 10% workforce reduction.

Hmm, now where have you heard that before?

Oh, that’s right.

Right here on Swimmin’ Hole!

FIVE DAYS AGO.

Sure, we just picked up the story from FishbowlDC, who had the real scoop. But hey, we still had it before the Post, whose offices are only two miles away from the Newseum. So take that, Post. You suck.

Boston is a notoriously tough town for athletes to play in, and the media plays a huge part in that. Some athletes thrive under the proverbial microscope, while others are driven to the brink of insanity.

Mostly, the obsessive media coverage stems from the fans’ own obsessions with their hometown players and teams. But with so many outlets covering every team’s every move, it can be tough for any one writer to stick out. And so occasionally we get things like Bill Burt’s column in today’s Eagle-Tribune, the provocatively — and obnoxiously — titled “Brady Who?“

Sure, Patriots backup quarterback Matt Cassel is exceeding everyone’s expectations as he fills in for Tom Brady. He gets better every week, he’s putting up ridiculous numbers, and his teammates are looking to him for leadership. And the fact that, before this season, he hadn’t started a game since high school, makes his feats even more impressive.

But the fact is the Patriots are still 7-4 and in second place. Will they make the playoffs? Likely. Will they win the Super Bowl? Highly doubtful. And will Cassell start dating a Brazilian supermodel? Nuh uh. So to call his emergence “one of the greatest stories in NFL history,” as Burt does, is pure hyperbole.

Brady came off the bench seven years ago to lead the Pats to three Super Bowl wins. Now THAT is one of the greatest stories in NFL history. Cassell’s just the latest in a long line of athletes who have taken advantage of special opportunities.

And “Brady Who?” is just the latest in a long line of columns that give the Boston sports media such a bad image.

One of the great things about reading newspapers online is the comments section, where crazy people with nothing better to do leave their opinions — sometimes about the story they just read, sometimes about whatever happens to be floating through their nutty little minds.

Swimmin’ Hole! will commemorate these last bastions of journalistic excellence with this weekly “comment of the week” section. Our first winner comes from a story in The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass., about a child rapist captured in the Dominican Republic. The comment is by “Laiza,” who writes:

he should definately be locked up for life and i hope he gets a big horny cellmate to teach him a little lesson..

I am totally naming my next fantasy football team the Big Horny Cellmates.

The election may not have helped the evening news at all, but it’s giving a boost to some major newspapers.

“Really? People are buying more papers and driving more ad sales?” No, stupid. That’s crazy talk. These papers are making money through moichandising: selling posters, T-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with their post-Election Day front pages.

The Los Angeles Times says it’s sold $686,000 of its “It’s Obama” souvenirs. The New York Times is hawking reprints, photos and even a special book, and the Chicago Sun-Times is auctioning off 44 prints of its Nov. 5 front page on eBay. Hell, even The Onion is selling prints of its “Black man given nation’s worst job” front page (which will soon be hanging in the Swimmin’ Hole! offices).

Obviously this phenomenon isn’t something newspapers can bank on for future success. Nobody’s gonna want a framed print of a typical front page. And, sorry CNN, the only people who’d wear a “Spacewalker loses tool bag” T-shirt are tool bags.

But if more newspapers can start thinking creatively like this — and spend less time treating their employees like crap — they may have a future after all.