To get more people to read they paper, more people must be happy! (Is this why so many people bought copies of the Nov. 5 newspaper? They were happy about Barack Obama’s victory?) Have you tried offering Prozac with subscriptions?

The study appears in the December issue of Social Indicators Research.

It seems everybody’s writing about Twitter.
• USA Today wrote about it on July 21, and crashed Twitter.
• Unrelated, USA Today’s Pop Candy (Whitney Matheson), a long-time Twitter user, debuted a comic book at Comic-Con that was based on her Twitter feed.
• Just as Twitter went a little loopy and revised everyone’s number of followers, Get Satisfaction Boris introduced TwitterCounter. See how the number of followers has fluctuated in the last seven days. (The count is updated in the middle of the night … in Amsterdam.) Twitter’s follower count has been fixed, by the way.
• Twitter bought Summize — still the best way to search for something or someone on Twitter.
• CrowdStatus (still in alpha) is fun when it comes to breaking news or tracking the last post by a group of users. I created a crowd of newspapers (one account per paper) that have updated in the last week. Could also be useful if you’re paper has several Twitter accounts.
• We’ve known for awhile that when it comes to breaking news, you can usually find it first on Twitter. Last week’s California earthquake was no different. Seconds after the quake, tweets showed up. The first main-stream media alerts? About five to 10 minutes later. I know this has been true during the Illinois earthquakes, too. It’s another good reason why it’s smart to keep an eye on what people near you are Twittering about.

OK, let’s get down to business.

What we really want to know is how newspaper’s that Twitter are doing — let’s start with July’s 10 biggest winners and losers.

This is the first time we’ve had so many losers, so to speak, and there are more accounts that lost users. San Antonio’s @mysa_breaking picked up 15 new followers and still hasn’t posted anything. The Chicago Sun-Times is the only paper to have accounts on the winner and loser list.

Speaking of the Sun-Times, let’s talk about usernames real quick. On May 27, the Sun-Times created a clever little Twitter account, @thewire_cst. It had a few followers, but you can’t find it — it doesn’t exist anymore. The account didn’t follow the paper’s naming configuration: Take a look, all but two of the Sun-Times’s 15 Twitter accounts start with “cst_”. I have no problem with consistency, but that means columnist Jay Mariotti‘s account, found at @jaymariotti last month, has become @cst_mariotti this month. Mariotti is new to Twitter, but he has name recognition; I can’t help but think using his name, instead of the CST prefix, would be more useful. (Political columnist Lynn Sweet still uses her name without the CST prefix.)

The Sun-Times isn’t the only one to pull a switcheroo. The New York Times nearly gave me heart failure when I couldn’t find 14 of its accounts. They’d all been renamed, changing the “nyt_” prefix to “nytimes.” The former @nyt_food account was lost, though — I just found it renamed @nytimesdining with 754 followers (it had 602 followers last month) but TwitterCounter says that account didn’t exist on Aug. 1 and I certainly couldn’t find it, so it’s not included in the chart. (I’m not saying name changes should be cleared by me either, but it sure would be helpful!)

Here’s a closer look at the 303 newspaper Twitter accounts (28 more than last month). On average, each account as 131.85 followers — down slightly from last month. The “new to me” accounts are marked according to when I discovered them. Accounts that have not posted any updates are marked with an asterisk.

Do you know of a newspaper that is using Twitter but isn’t on the list? Tell me about it.

Take a look at numbers from June.

Twitter’s instability seems to be taking its toll: The number of followers for newspaper account didn’t grow as much this month as they have in the past and some even saw decreases:
• @telegraphsox: -10.71 percent
• @pdvoxpop: -4.46 percent
• @latimesent: -4.13 percent
• @the500: -3.03 percent
• @dispatchalerts: -2.70 percent
• @latimessports: -2.34 percent
• @themeparks: -1.10 percent
• @latimesfires: -1.04 percent
• @latimesworld: -0.87 percent

Of the top five accounts with the greatest increase of followers, the top three belong to the Miami Herald and were started on May 30:
• @mh_cuba: 2,300 percent
• @mh_dolphins: 1,300 percent
• @mh_hurricanes: 1,200 percent
• @mercnews: 330.43 percent
• @travellog: 300 percent

New accounts this month:
• Des Moines Register: @dmr_morain, @juice_joe
• Deseret News: @deseretnews, @desnewssports, @mormontimes
• The Hawk Eye: @thehawkeye
• Knoxville News Sentinel: @michaelsilence
• New York Times: @cityroom
• Northern Virginia Daily: @nvdaily
• Northwest Florida Daily News: @nwfdailynews
• Patriot-News: @pn_sports
• Press Herald: @pressherald
• Rocky Mountain News: @denverdnc
• San Jose Mercury News: @gmsv, @mercbiznews, @mercmostviewed, @mercolympics, @sanjosenews, @svcrime
• St. Petersburg Times: @bizarreflorida
• Tampa Tribune: @tbolive
• Washington Post: @postworldnews

There are several “new to me” accounts — they’re marked according to when I discovered them, and include my new favorite: @statesman. Web editor Robert Quigley actively updates the account throughout the day — no Twitterfeed here, and much more personality than the standard newspaper account.

Accounts that have never updated are marked by an asterisk. BostonNOW stopped publishing in April, but has gained 10 users. The Denver Posts’s Al Lewis announced 10 days ago he was leaving the paper to write a column for Dow Jones Newswires.

I’m tracking 275 accounts (102 more than last month); on average, each account has 146.71 followers.

Note: I have added newspapers to the list as I discover they’re on Twitter. Usually, that’s soon after they join. Sometimes it’s later. Know of a paper using Twitter that isn’t on the list? Tell me about it.

Take a look at numbers from May.

Update: July numbers are also posted!

When did you realize you were on a sinking ship?

Looking back, I think it was around 2002. I was a news page designer at The Times of Northwest Indiana and the paper’s higher-ups announced that the folks who came by each week to water and care for the plants would not be coming back. The paper has a large, sun-filled atrium — it used to be full of plants. Many of them ended up going home with employees, and were replaced by silk versions. (Those fake green plants did come in handy for a project a few years later, though.)

But at the time I remember thinking, “We can’t afford to water the plants?”

Since then, of course, I’ve learned that there are a lot of things we can’t afford. (And sometimes I’m surprised by the things that company leaders, somehow, convince themselves they can afford.)

Now newspapers are laying off employees by the dozens — even the hundreds. Journalists at the San Jose Mercury News — which has already taken a couple of big hits from buyouts and layoffs — were callously told today that nine more of them would be laid off. They were given 24 hours to volunteer, or watch as nine of their co-workers were escorted from the building Friday.

The current rate of inflation is 4.18 percent; I know better than to expect a 4 percent raise this year. But the Boston Globe has proposed a 10 percent pay cut to its employees.

There comes a point when you must decide to jump or stay on the ship. Would you volunteer volunteer for a buyout? What about a layoff? Or a 10 percent cut in salary? Take an “extra” unpaid day off each month?

When did you realize you were on a sinking ship? When did you grab a life jacket? When do you jump?

The Pendleton, pictured above, sank in 1952.

The San Jose Mercury News announced on Wednesday afternoon that they will be laying off nine employees. Newsroom leaders said they are looking for volunteers by 5 p.m. Thursday, and employees will be laid off on Friday.

Paper Cuts was updated with news of nearly 500 layoffs/buyouts today. Ugh.

For some time I’ve expected one of the larger newspaper companies to begin consolidating design and/or copy desks, but I thought McClatchy or Tribune or Gannett or Lee — or who ever — would turn over duties from one paper to another that was nearby. That could still happen. But for a month, The Orange County Register will turn over its copy editing and design to Mindworks Global Media. Mindworks’ headquarters is in New Dehli, India.

It took designers a long time to prove our place in the newsroom. We succeeded in proving that design was essential to today’s newspapers. Now how do we make sure we stay in the newsroom?

The U.S. postal system was founded in 1775; the Post Office Act of 1792 established the Post Office Department. Mail was delivered by stagecoach and Pony Express started in 1860, and ended a year and a half later. Mail from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento (and vice versa) took only 10 days. (The fastest was 7 days, 17 hours — President Lincoln’s inaugural address.) In 1861, the transcontinental telegraph line was completed and operated for eight years until it was replaced by a multi-line telegraph that ran along the Transcontinental Railroad. Telegraphs were quicker, but hardly effective for long correspondence.

The postal service began using trains in 1832 in Pennsylvania. As train service expanded, so did the postal service’s use, peaking in 1930. Cars began to replace horses and stagecoaches in 1899, although they weren’t commonly used for another 10 years. Scheduled airmail began in 1918, which, of course, cost more. The first transcontinental flight took place a year later.

Telephone technology also was developing. The first manual switchboard was introduced in 1878. By 1904, there were more than 3 million telephones in use, but subscribers of different phone companies could not call each other until 1913. The first dial telephone was introduced in 1919, which helped industry growth through the ’20s.

Experiments with radio began in 1893; early uses were Morse code and military communication. The first radio news program was broadcast in 1920.

In 1926, the postal service began contracting commercial flights to transport mail. The use of railway post offices rapidly declined with the Highway Act of 1958, and ceased in 1971. Trains were — and still are — used to transport mail, but highways went to more places and airplanes were faster for great distances.

Televisions have been available since the late 1930s. The ’70s brought video recordings, leading to VHS, VCRs and DVDs. Telephone service also continued to evolve and prices decreased. The first fiber optic cable was installed in 1977, and cell phones took off in the 1990s.

And, of course, there’s the Internet. E-mail, instant messaging, Twitter, blogs, social networks and many other forms of communicating.

From 1910 through 1914, all of the correspondence my great-grandmother saved were postcards. From 1916 to 1935, that changed to letters — most from my great-grandfather before they got married, others, especially after they married, from her brother, parents or friends. From the ’40s, I have letters my grandmother sent to her parents. Today, I write to my mother and grandfather via e-mail and they call from their cell phones. My grandfather has a Web site. My mother sends me text messages and reads blogs.

How communication is relayed has changed, to be sure. But if everyday people, spanning generations, can do it, why is it so difficult for newspapers to embrace change? Why is an editor proud when he announces he never reads blogs — “only news stories”? Radio and television have the advantage of immediacy; newspapers have, basically, been printing the same way for hundreds of years. So where are we really headed? Is there any way to ensure newspaper’s survival?