802 Online

From Mark Glaser at MediaShift:

Something about the juxtoposition of the words “newspaper blog” doesn’tring true. Newspapers and blogs don’t seem to fit together naturallyunless you’re thinking of a blogger who likes to rip apart the bias ofa local newspaper.

Yet, if you can set aside the early combative relationship betweenbloggers and newspaper folk (and other mainstream media types), you canfind some natural ways that blogs can fit into a newspaper’s website.Breaking news blogs . Or a blog that asks for readers to debate the issues of the day. Or a blog on the local college sports teams.

So I asked you what you thought about newspaper blogs, which onesyou liked and whether they were worth checking out. The response wasrather tepid, with a couple people saying they don’t like newspaperblogs at all.

Before I get to your responses, I also queried Jay Rosen, PressThink blogger and associate professor New York University’s Department of Journalism.

Read on to find out what Rosen thinks. Most interesting part:

Rosen has three theories on ways that blogs can work in a newspaper setting: 1) find the fanatics in the newsroom and let them write about topics the newspaper neverwrites about; 2) create blogs for reporters who can engage theiraudience to help in the reporting; and 3) recruit people from thecommunity with “drive and knowledge and moxy” to blog, similar to whatSilverman has accomplished at the Houston Chronicle.

Inexplicably, no one mentions newspaper blogs that compile local blogs and attempt to create and reflect a blogging community. What does that say about my little experiment here?