Josh,

I am not so sure, but maybe not in the way you might suggest. If consumer generated media is becoming so important in today's world, and the best way to connect with your audience is by connecting with your audience through a blog. To me it is a dollar issue, if a traditional media company fails to connect with its audience through blogging. That media organization does not have the same standing in the consumer generated media world as another traditional media company that does, or blogging media companies like weblogs, Inc.

I am not suggesting that you blog just to sell advertising, i.e. lots of posts about products. That's silly, you have to develop a content strategy that will develop content that your audience will find valuable, and otherwise they will leave.

Everyone has to pay the bills, but how you do that will be different for every newspaper or blog.

John

Perhaps to clarify, if your primary motives are revenue or page views then you're approaching the project from the wrong perspective.

I think that if page views and revenue aren't in the top 3, you've got problems! I say that sort of tongue-in-cheek, but the problem with so many dot-com collapses was a lack of a viable business model. If your primary motives are not revenue (and/or page views), then you need an alternative plan for revenue generation like Wikipedia's approach: relying on philanthropy. There's nothing wrong with altruism, certainly, but it doesn't seem to work for all.