Blogging as a medium

The link in the headline goes to a blogging post by Lex Alexander of the Greensboro (NC) News & Record (N&R), long the leading newspaper in the Piedmont Triad area. In the Greensboro community there's been a lot written and discussed lately about the N&R's initiative to dramatically change the online newspaper into a type of participatory journalism exercise. No, wait a minute: it's not so much an "exercise"; it's really happening. (Reading the post by Alexander will take you a few minutes, but( believe me, it's worth it.)

And it makes perfect sense. As newspapers everywhere decline in circulation, they continue to lose relevancy. Once the medium of the masses, they remain popular only among older generations, and their readership declines even among those readers. Taking the local paper online years ago was an act of repurposing content intended for print without any real business model. But now, as online advertising revenues are increasing - dramatically - "repurposing" print content online is seen as the stale activity it always was.

The N&R's daring idea is truly a game-changer: make blogging the primary activity for the online edition, allow posts and comments (some might say, "posts and ripostes") to carry the news. Blogging is a community activity, and John Robinson, the N&R's editor, and Lex Alexander seem to be saying that the online N&R will be an act of community newspapering, or, perhaps more appropriately, newspapering by community.

But one of the frustrations of blogging is the old tree falling in the forest idea: if no one comments, is anyone reading? And if no one's reading, what's the use of blogging? My friend Gordon Dalgleish and I are both trying to come to terms with this: both of our blogs have a dearth of comments from readers. (Check out Gordon's blog on golf travel at http://gordondalgleish.blogspot.com/) We both need to do more to promote our postings. I'm still falling into the "monthly" newsletter trap, though my postings have lately been - and will continue to be - considerably more frequent. Will readers turn away from reading blogs as they increase in number so significantly?

I can't answer that for certain, though I think the novelty will wear off. But blogging does one thing for us that is unmistakable: it gives us all a chance to weigh in, either by doing our own or commenting on others' blogs. I can think of no more democratic activity than that.

(By the way, FORTUNE magazine recently listed blogging as the #1 tech trend to watch in 2005. Here's the link: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1011763,00.html. Plus, there's another piece from David Kirkpatrick from November. You'll find that here: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,767537,00.html)