Should papers be more like blogs?

Following its report into the extent to which US news­pa­pers have adopted Web 2.0 approaches, such as blogs and podcasts, The Bivings Report offered a list of ten pieces of advice to help the papers avoid their pre­dicted demise:

1. Start using tags.
2. Provide full text RSS feeds.
3. Work with external “social” websites.
4. Link to relevant blog entries.
5. Get rid of all registration.
6. Partner with local bloggers.
7. Offer altern­ative views of your content.
8. Modernize your site’s graphic design.
9. Learn from Craigslist.
10. Make your content work on cell phones and PDAs.

Reader response to the post has now prompted a further list col­lating their comments:

1. Allow Readers to Comment on Every Story
2. Improve Search Features
3. Use Better HTML
4. Focus on Local and Regional News
5. Open Up Your Archives
6. Provide Multilingual Versions
7. Offer Supplemental Content
8. Open Up the Letter to the Editor Process

One way to sum­marise a lot of these pieces of advice is ‘be a bit more like a blog and a bit less like a news­paper’. Make it easy to get to par­tic­ular stories; dis­tribute your content freely; be a part of the blogosphere.

On the face of it, it makes sense. Blogs are suc­cessful, right? So why not follow their pattern. I genu­inely believe that a lot of these sug­ges­tions would improve news­pa­pers’ online services. On the other hand, though, I’m not sure many of them are really addressing the fun­da­mental problems faced by papers.

Not that many blogs make big money, and even those that do retain very few staff. Editorial costs on news­pa­pers, though, remain massive, online or offline. The reason for this is that it takes a long time and lots of resources to produce news stories. Bloggers don’t face this issue because comment, as they say, is free. And the papers can’t skimp too much on these costs. If news­pa­pers don’t remain the best source for news, become just another site, then they lose more readers and advert­isers. The rest of the blo­go­sphere has suddenly got nothing to write about but itself and their cats.

Stories pre­dicting the imminent death of news­pa­pers may be somewhat over-​​exaggerated, though — there’s news this morning from MediaPost that:

NEWSPAPERS’ ONLINE AD REVENUE TOPPED $667 million in the second quarter, marking a 33 percent increase from last year’s $501 million, according to industry organ­iz­a­tion the Newspaper Association of America.

But the Web’s con­tri­bu­tion to pub­lishers’ bottom line was dwarfed by con­trac­tions in the print ad market. Print revenues dropped .2 percent to $11.7 billion, and combined revenues were almost flat, growing just 1.1 percent to end at $12.4 billion.

Just the $12.4bn, eh. Poor lambs.

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• The Late Final
• The ROI of Business Blogs
• The Daily Bundle