Steve Rubel highlights some recent data on the rise in newspaper blog readership. Like Steve says this is a good thing from a blog adoption standpoint but I want to highlight another important thing related to newspaper blogs, cost.
Many major newspapers are using the traditional blog tools to publish their blogs. In Orlando the Sentinel uses TypePad, so does USAToday. Other papers are using WordPress or MovableType, or in CNN's case, Blogger. These are all very low cost solutions. Compare that to the content management systems that run the rest of the paper (both print and online).
What you have is a platform that accounts for 13% of readership and costs anywhere from free (Blogger/WP) to maybe $100/month (TypePad's business class). While I don't have the numbers on what the total costs of publishing the rest of the paper online are, it's considerably more than the blog tools and I guarantee that from a $/pageviews ratio it doesn't come close.
I should note that I'm not considering salaries of reporters or technical staff in here since they would be the same regardless of the publishing platform used.
Visitor Comments
One issue we have had at Orlando Sentinel with Typepad is what happens when Typepad is down. It happened one night while we were using the Write Stuff space blog to cover the shuttle launch.
We switched over to a story file in our content management system while waiting for Typepad to return -- maybe 30 minutes. I know that kind of thing can and does happens with (almost?) everything related to computers. I only note as an observation, since as newspaper web sites like us build more readership with blogs, we put a portion of the site maintenance in the hands of a third-party.
Only other thing about Typepad -- besides that some don't like the interface -- is that posts we link to from home page don't show up on our mobile web site. Not a Typepad issue, but it has proved frustrating when we use blog for a fun/timely/newsy item and the growing number of mobile users can't see it.
Now, when you and I get our iPhones, we won't care, since sounds as if we'll be seeing the actual site.
JC
PS: In interest of disclosure, Josh worked with us -- and me personally -- on our blog initiative.
Posted by: John A. Cutter | January 17, 2007 9:04 PM
The cost of software has some impact on the total operating cost of running a newspaper website, but I doubt if running free versus spending a few thousand makes that much difference for large operations.
Posted by: Fritz | January 19, 2007 3:44 PM