Guardian vs. ruk

A lot of people have been thinking this, Peter, the trick is to have your foot in the door and then to make it pay somehow.

I can imagine a day when print newspapers no longer exist. When that happens it will likely be due to the proliferation of easy information sources on the net. At that point people will be happier to pony up some cash, either directly or indirectly through advertising, for credible information services than they may now be.

At that point it would be a huge advantage to be the defacto People’s Managing Editor — a 1000 unique visitors a day would put you in the running.

This will probably happen for a more mundane reason than you think. Look at the help wanted section of The Guardian - they can’t find people to deliver the paper. Either they’ll have to pay a hefty price for distribution or they’ll have to go online.
The only problem is that a lot of people still don’t have computers or internet connections (or just have dial up).
Interesting question.

It would seem that getting rid of the dead tree edition and being more ‘bloggy’ (if that’s not a word, I hereby lay claim to it) are part of Transcontinental’s long-term plan. They have reved up the publicity of late regarding their digital replica edition of the Guardian, targeting it to snowbirds who may want to keep in touch while in warmer climes. This edition is exactly like the Guardian, ads and all, in a PDF format which uses the Zinio reader.
Even more intresting is that the other Transcontinental-owned PEI daily, the Journal-Pioneer have recently introduced the capability of commenting on (some of) their online stories. You have to provide your first-name, email address, and province, and they have a captcha to cut down on spam. You must agree to a lengthy terms of use document http://www.journalpioneer.com/index.cfm?pid=1680 before submitting.
I haven’t seen this feature in the Guardian yet, so I assume it is a pilot.
So, while blogs are getting closer to being primary news sources, the local newspapers are getting more blog-like and interactive.

I was intrigued by the comments feature in the Globe and Mail until I started actually reading the comments. Man, they were depressing. I suppose, as a chronic blog commenter, I should watch what I say. But really, there are a lot of people in the world with very strange ideas and enormous axes the grind.

Oh, and I forgot one other “bloggy” feature - the local papers are starting to realize that news happens more than once a day. Par exemple, the Journal has two stories today, under the masthead “Latest News”, published long after the dead tree edition came out. The Guardian does the same thing, but less so - their stories are usually just the bare facts, with a teaser to pick up tomorrow’s paper edition for the rest of the story. The Journal’s stories are longer, and don’t have the teaser.
I am not sure whether this will result in more subscriptions to the paper edition, but perhaps it will add some ‘stickiness’ and keep their readership intact, rather than going to other less traditional news sources. They can also realize some revenue from the Google Adsense ads on the page.

Yes - it’s only a matter of time

If we aggregated 20 good bloggers on PEI we would have the Guardian beat in terms of circulation and I think relevancy.

All it would take is some thought and bit of time

All it would take is for someone to say ” I will be the lead”
Peter if that person was you…….
Rob

As a followup to Peter’s comment, there is one other big barrier to a co-operative online newspaper: bloggers’ posts aren’t news. While blog posts can be interesting, especially if you have shared interests with the writer, they would belong more in the Lifestyles section of a newspaper. You don’t often see bloggers giving factual information about court cases, political events (remember the word *factual* earlier in this sentence…) and the like.

Latest News: The Guardian has just added the same “Latest News” and user comments on stories features as the Journal-Pioneer.

I totally agree with Peter’s comments that there is still a need for an organized newspaper. The medium may change from paper to electrons, but the basic framework of a newspaper still has advantages over aggregators and blogs. Peter may be making a little bit of money from his blog, but the vast majority are not, and there is no substitute for a salary (and an editor) to ensure that someone is there on a daily basis to provide information. Blogs provide some of the op-ed info that it in traditional newspapers, and aggregators may do some of the job of providing the news of the day, but having the structure inherent in a newspaper makes for a much more consistent product. It is great to see that newspapers right here on PEI are venturing into the online world, incorporating user comments, RSS syndication, blogs (they have the RSS link there for them already, so I assume some are in the works), digital replica editions, and updates as the news occurs, rather than once a day. The newspaper has stood the test of time, and is certainly capable of adapting to the new technology.

My last newspaper and magazine subscriptions ended in 1998. It has not made me a less informed person. I do see a day when we rely on institutions like the CBC of very local papers (weeklies/monthlies) like “The Buzz” in Charlottetown or “FastForward” in Calgary for updates on events and community issues. I am an admirer of journalists like Bob Woodward who dig up stories that change the world but I don’t get this feeling from most newspapers. Blogs can fill this function to a certain extent but don’t have the same everyone is on the same page feeling. This can be counteracted by the fact that blogs give a more personal response. A final point on the dailies - too many of the traditional papers are charging people to even read their stories - they collectively just don’t get it.

Hate to burst your bubble, but 1,000 unique visitors a day isn’t 30,000 unique visitors a month. What if the same 1,000 visited your site every day? That’s 1,000 unique a day, 1,000 unique a month.

I only point this out because I have set up a lot of web metrics and always have to explain to non-techies why you can add something like hits or bandwidth, but not visitors or IPs unless you are comparing them across the whole month, not daily.

More likely you are somewhere between 1,000 and 30,000 — which deserves kudos anyway ;-)

Wow… I totally retract that. Upon rereading, I see that you were very plainly suggesting quite the opposite. Sorry about that. Too early in the morning for me to have been commenting :-/