Yeah, you’re right, this blogging thing is just a fad. It doesn’t have any legs.
I guess the question needs to be asked: Why blogs at top 10 newspapers have grown so much? At the moment, I don’t have time to study up on that. Maybe more later.
4 thoughts on “Newspaper blogs gain in popularity”
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Without dismissing the thousands of brilliant non-journalist bloggers out there, I think the popularity of blogs written by professional journos is down to their consistent quality.
The benefits of blogging (spontaneity, commenting etc) paired with the laws and conventions of traditional journalism tends to make newspaper blogs a very good read.
It’s a great thing. A lot of the newspaper blogs I see are written by “readers”. Of course, these readers are usually former journalists or, as int he case of the Arizona Republic, almost exlusively working in the PR industry now. Odd.
At the mo, I can’t think of why newspaper blogs are on the rise. But just being able to comment right back helps. Of course, as I’ve told many, even the lowly Zwire newspaper site template allowed comments in the late 90s. That part’s not new.
Blogs, though I really want to avoid that word if possible will be a part of the newspaper Web site I’m creating.
– Temple
I think the popularity of blogs written by professional journos is down to their consistent quality.
Dave, I couldn’t disagree more. Journalistic blogs vary as much in quality as do non-journalistic ones. I suspect that much of the popularity is due to the same things that have made blogs so popular in other spaces, coupled with the enormous promotional and financial resources of the top 10 news web sites.
Of course nowadays, news operations are much more willing to break news on a blog instead of using a standard online story format or just holding it for the print edition. I’m sure this is at least one of the important factors in their growth.