Slashdot Mirror
Weblogs and Local News?
DrydenMaker asks: "I am the 'computer guy' for a local paper. We are looking into a revamp of our site, and, being a /. observer for many years, I see the slashdot format as useful for active, up-to-date local content as well. With the word getting arround about the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and USC's Annenberg School for Communication offering blogging classes I have some justification. I was looking for input on examples and justification. Do you, as Slashdot users, think a local Slashdot style newspaper would be successfull?"
I am the 'computer guy' for a local paper.
Since you're THE computer guy and not A computer guy, I take it you're in a smaller market (under 75K Sunday?).
We are looking into a revamp of our site,
Before you even think about online discussion groups, make sure your core web site is solid. I am an avid newspaper reader but can't stand most newspaper web sites. (Including my own to a large extent.)
Do you, as Slashdot users, think a local Slashdot style newspaper would be successfull?"
Maybe, but you haven't really give us enough information. How many of your readers use the internet? How large is your existing web audience? Do you get lots of letters to the editor? Do you have a huge out-of-town audience?
Let me give you a little background.
I'm a Senior Unix Sys Admin in the Editorial Systems Support group of my newspaper (265K daily / 385K Sunday -- and growing!). Before entering the technology end of the business, I was studied photojournalism and was Managing Editor of my college paper. I have more than 12 years in the industry pretty evenly split between content and support.
On top of that, my paper is very aggressive when it comes to multiple mediums. We have the paper as well as online (of course) but we also have a 24-hour cable station and will probably buy a radio station as soon as the FCC gets off our back. (We also are telephone interactive for horoscopes, news, sports, etc., have a branded sign company, weekly shopper and a direct marketing group. We cover all the bases but these are smaller parts of a very big whole.) Because of the high level of integration between our three primary formats, we have been a model for other newspapers.
So, we're a fairly forward-thinking newspaper with a huge corporate footprint backing us up. Which brings us to Slashdot style web logs... they aren't even on the radar screen.
When I ask about them I hear that they are too resource intensive. Unless you are prepared to have them run totally unmoderated (not an option for most 'family' newspapers), they require staff to approve every post. And, what is the upside, really? They only tend to draw the most rabid readers -- readers we already have in our back pocket. So, there is a support burden but no net gain in readership.
Web logs are great when you want to sell ad impressions and don't mind links to http://goatse.cx/ on a regular basis. Banner ads ain't what they used to be and goatse.cx in unacceptable. There isn't money to be made here.
I won't say that the web log is a bad idea since letters to the editor, Dear Abby and the gripe line are fairly popular, but I also wouldn't put my job on the line for that functionality. Get your core site working and then see if you have enough traffic and participation to see if the web log is going to be workable.
InitZero