January 10, 2006

It's a Conversation

I've been so busy lately, that I didn't notice until today that the Nashville City Paper has added a blog to its online offerings. The blog is set up to feature postings by various City Paper writers, and does accept comments - just as the paper's online articles allow readers to post comments. Good for them, though Will Williams might consider using the blog to say something rather than just query readers.

The next step for the City Paper should be to train its reporters to integrate the blog with their reporting - use it to post additional information that fit into a story's printed version, post story updates, and gather additional information and commentary from readers, and link to what area bloggers are saying about the day's news. Make Nashville City Paper Blogs a conversation with readers about the news of the day, as well as an outlet for extra content that didn't make it into the paper. (And that slogan - "Read What's On Our Minds" - is atrocious. If you treat your blog like just another way for the media to tell the people what it thinks, they'll ignore it. Better slogan: "Read What's On Your Mind."

The good news, City Paper, is that you're the only daily newspaper in Nashville that is doing anything with blogs right now. You have the lead. Build on it.