Comments on: 10 blogs your newspaper needs to rip off

By: Mike Carney, USAT

Mike Carney, USAT — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:40:04 +0000

Thanks for the kind words, Ryan.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:54:00 +0000

@Tom – The breaking news blog is really what I’m interested in – but where can I find it on the signonsandiego.com homepage?

By: Tom Mallory

Tom Mallory — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:25:54 +0000

We have a growing little family of newsblogs on our site. Great tools for speedy news reporting, from the field or anywhere. (Actually, I'm often editing them from my commuter train.) These are edited (gasp!) blogs. We'll be starting another family of more personal single-author blogs. Tom newsblog– Our breaking news blog. Everyone on staff except for Opinion editors and writers can contribute. Sportsblog– Sports staff U-T Chargersblog – U-T Padresblog UU-T Polblog – Politics & local government teams U-T Trafficblog – Breaking News team, with help from Metro Out There – Stories we had to share. Everyone on staff can contribute.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:49:58 +0000

One I found in the last 24 hours: cbs5.com eye on blogs. Brittney Gilbert is curating this local Bay Area linkblog for a local TV station. See also the rail of links to local blogs on the right. Major bonus points for that.

By: Dwight Silverman

Dwight Silverman — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:34:41 +0000

Ryan,

Thanks for your kind words!

By: Brian Cubbison

Brian Cubbison — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:54:09 +0000

Here’s a somewhat unpolished effort to aggregate local bloggers, but it might suggest some ideas that local newspapers can try. Outside blogging groups had done things like this in various places, but not too many newspapers have gone this way.

http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2008/02/upstate_blog_network.html

And here’s a newsy links blog with a somewhat different purpose.

http://blog.syracuse.com/indepth/

By: Digidave

Digidave — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:41:07 +0000

Zac Echola brings up an interesting pivot in his second comment about Fark and Slashdot.

To me, those aren’t blogs – they are niche aggregators – and those play an important role in today’s “link journalism” as Scott Karp calls it.

What are some niche aggregators (or social news sites as I call them) people should be watching?

The key word here is Niche (so Reddit, Digg, Propeller don’t count).

NewsTrust.net
Pub2.0
Hugg.com

More examples here.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:30:22 +0000

Awesome stuff.

Dave – Your blog is a great example. Mostly links, topical, sending folks away so they come back for more.

I’m not trying to address newspaper blogs as a whole here (tried writing that master’s thesis, in the process of abandoning it quietly by the side of the road).

What I’m looking for, ideally, are general news/link blogs. The NYT Lede might be the best example – all-purpose links about the news of the day.

By: Dave Brooks

Dave Brooks — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:20:37 +0000

How about a small, very focused blog? Smaller papers might do better to try those rather than a sweeping “blog about politics”. So here is mine:

http://www.granitegeek.org – GraniteGeek “Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire.”
(how do you make hot links in these comments?)

It’s an offshoot of my weekly science column, more of a story tracker than a commentary blog. I’m happy when daily page views hit 200, so even after a year it’s dinky – but it brought in a few hundred bucks from GoogleAdwords last year. And it’s fun.

By: Zac Echola

Zac Echola — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:54:58 +0000

Slashdot and Fark are perfect examples. Plus they have the added benefit of commenting to build communities around linked content.