Blogs vs. Newspapers

By raheem

I believe the blogs of today are becoming the newspapers of tomorrow. As a news addict I visit major news sites like nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com on a daily basis, atleast 5 times a day. I also read blogs and visit the blogs a few more times than newspapers each day.

Each time I visit one of the major blogs like techcrunch.com and gigaom.com, for the most part I get treated to new content. I dont have to waste time searching for the latest item, since its right there on top. But when I go to nytimes.com, the headline and image stays the same for most of the day. Unless I am searching for something specific or dig 2-3 links deeper I might not find anything of interest. I end up spending more time at a blog than a newspaper sites. So the blogs are winning as far as pulling in visitors and keeping them longer.

Now let’s take the cost factor. Some of the successful blogs post about 20 articles a day using a max of 10 writers. The average newspaper site publishes almost 100s of articles each day using 100s of writers. So from a cost perspective, the blogs are winning too. Add to this blogs dont have the publishing costs of a paper edition.

From the perspective of consumer trends, if you do a little analysis, its easy to see that attention spans are shorter, people are more busy, people like to do fun little things in short bursts of downtime (riding the train, drinking coffee in the morning, eating lunch at the desk, etc). Blogs fit in nicely with these lifestyle trends. Blog posts are usually short, which makes it easy to consume them. Since they put their latest posts on the top, you can easily read the latest items. From a life style and trends perspective, the blogs are winning as well.

The only area blogs are not winning is in the in-depth feature reporting arena. Newspapers and magazines still produce the great in-depth articles that win pulitzer prices and are often deeply satisfying reading materials.

But here is the thing – setting up a blog is quite easy – so its easy to fathom that current newspapers should easily be able to morph into blog. If not, they could easily end up buying the major blog sites of today.

PS. Dave Winer is helping nytimes.com become more like blogs by getting them to start using a blog like structure. Check out what he has done so far.

PPS. Dave Winer – the father of blogging does not have links to individual posts. I guess just because you are the father of something, does not mean you will always make the right decision