Jack D. Lail uses my “Atlas Mugged” article as a jumping off point to explore the future of blogs actually run by newpapers, including a great quote from this Gawker article:
Nearly all newspaper websites mistakenly segregate their blogs off with the other blogs. They’re organizing by form, not by content. (The Times does a better job, both promoting blog posts on the front page and integrating each blog’s content into existing sections.)
Readers just don’t come to a newspaper’s website looking for a messy passel of blogs. They come looking for sports, or fashion, no matter what “form” it’s in. Old newspaper editors may think blogs are some crazy different variety of publication; readers don’t.
Indeed. Here’s how to do it right, which, needless to say, has everything to do with the blog’s editor than the paper itself, though it would require some work to translate some of the blog’s elements to one that was devoted to more serious topics, such as a blog covering the police or fire beat, which would seem a natural for the medium.
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