Article on Newspapers and the Risk of Going Digital

For many in the Internet industry, we have our opinions on print newspapers and why they struggle versus their online counterparts and competition. It’s easy for us to say why. But most of us (including myself) are not in the industry. We don’t understand the ideals, complexities, and even internal friction between the print and Web newspaper departments.

I’ve given my 2 cents from time to time. I love the idea of user-generated content in online newspapers, and I hate spammy contextual advertising within compelling news articles.

The Tribune in Greeley, Colorado just put out an blog article regarding risk-adverse newspapers and the hesitancy to go digital. It’s the best article regarding this I have read in a long time.

It’s not a subjective article on what newspapers need to do. It’s not a subjective article on why online and search leaves newspapers behind. It’s an article from an Internet division publisher on the trials, tribulations, risks, opportunities, and costs on bringing news to multiple portals.

If we aren’t ready to compete fully in this digital game, then to punt might be the way to go. I doubt, however, that we’ll get very far by stabbing Google in the leg.

I like this quote because so many online news publishers have protested, and even sued Google for crawling news content. We pound our chest about just including a “no index, no follow” tag (meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”), but there are cakes + forks involved.

There are about five other quotes I wanted to post, but it’s probably better just to give the whole article another link. It’s worth the read, twice.

I’m going to try and email the author to see if he has some additional input.

Update: Sweet. Now it looks like we get to register with the Greeley Tribune to read the article… which is one thing I can’t stand about some online newspapers. Too bad. It’s a great article that many won’t read because of it.