Newspapers may be a threatened species, but I have seen all the signs of them surviving, albeit around a whole new business model.
So I tip my hat to The Arizona Republic, whose online self AZCentral.com is a fine blend of print and online. They have begun to print readers comments, a section called 'photos by you,' a thumbnail of a video with the keyword (for searching), and a quote culled from a blogger at AZCentral.com. All this appears in the Saturday paper.
It goes beyond just displaying these. The headline of a section featuring 10 comments about a map for a soon to be implemented Light Rail sums up the comments with the headline "Light-rail map rated mostly a thumbs-up." There were actually 43 comments by Saturday, online. The thumbs up reference refers to the icon beside the comments that allow readers to approve or disapprove of the comment.
I've always been optimistic that newsprint will not go away, in spite of our love affair with digital delivery of content. In Europe several newspapers have embraced this print and online mashup, with some even printing commuter editions using reader contributions.
As the Newspaper Association of America puts it, "The revolution will be downloaded." And printed for us!
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