Regardless of your politics you might be interested to take a look at how they are handling the news at The Des Moines Register. They are doing original work and they have the comments open to the public. I think that this type of hybrid blog/news is the future of the newspaper. I’ve always said that good newspaper people have nothing to fear from blogging, they are well trained to be the best of the bloggers – they just have to get the nerve to try and pull the sword from the stone. I have no doubt, as soon as they grab hold, they’ll know they are on to something big.
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4 replies on “Des Moines Register Gets It”
Just an FYI on this. Des Moines Register is owned by Gannett who owns about 250+ small newspapers across the US. They all use a common batch of servers and programming to publish their sites. Ergo, this forum integration exists on all of their newspapers like The Burlington Free Press, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Evening Times. I have never agreed with how they structured their information as it is very confusing but the talk back is a great implementation of social networking.
Interesting… I wonder how Gannett is faring compared to other players.
They better be glad they are doing just that. In my city the newspaper refuses to adapt to the new media and therefore is losing subscribers. 3 weeks ago they had to lay off a large portion of their workforce who would have otherwise been still employed had they taken online news seriously.
No surprise there, those that don’t make the switch will be seeing more layoffs as the paper side continues to fade…