Gawker
This week, motorcycle enthusiast Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, said that his department is starting a new blog, "The Board." It'll join the paper's 14 other Opinion section blogs, including the Opinionator, which discusses the op-ed pages of other newspapers and will benefit from being freed from the Times now-dead paywall, TimesSelect. The Times looks to be the newspaper blog leader—they have 40 active blogs, not counting seasonal blogs like David Carr's movie awards season craziness, beating the Guardian with 18, the New York Daily News with 22, the Wall Street Journal with 16 active blogs, the Los Angeles Times with 27, the San Francisco Chronicle with 26, the Miami Herald with 31, and the Chicago Tribune with 33, for a random sampling. But. Do you read any of these blogs?
Nearly all newspaper websites mistakenly segregate their blogs off with the other blogs. They're organizing by form, not by content. (The Times does a better job, both promoting blog posts on the front page and integrating each blog's content into existing sections.)
Readers just don't come to a newspaper's website looking for a messy passel of blogs. They come looking for sports, or fashion, no matter what "form" it's in. Old newspaper editors may think blogs are some crazy different variety of publication; readers don't.
The result of this bias at newspapers is the unbelievably horrible web organization of their websites. (Or! It may be a result of their already horrible web organization. They've shoehorned a place for blogs into their existing designs, doing themselves no favors.) This means that most of the blog writers end up screaming into the void. Take internet critic Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune; how will his long piece on internet gossip trash ever get seen? It's total traffic-bait—and it has nary a comment. No entity on the internet has even linked to it, as of 4 p.m. EST today.
The haphazard and anti-blog organization of newspaper websites gives us things like the Washington Post's weird pop-up listing of blogs and columns:
And the LA Times' list of recent blog posts:
Mini-Britneys! Schools! John Edwards! Soy Sauce! Ack! Would any section of any publication be organized like this?
The good news about newspaper blogs is that this is all apparently so crazy and new that they'll basically try anything. And you totally get a sense that the top editors at most places aren't paying attention. The Daily News goes super-ultra local: there's the Bath Beach blog, concerning a neighborhood in Brooklyn that no one is quite sure where it stops or starts. Anyway there we learn that Brooklyn is getting a new IHOP but not in Bath Beach!
The Chicago Tribune's animal blog, mostly pictures of dogs up for adoption, has a hard time getting updated, to the frustration of its reader. But it is about animals which is cute! Living green in London? Have a blog! There's one for anyone. Overly hip Bay Area parents? Exercise and fitness in South Florida? Most of these seem to have astoundingly small readerships—because the paper won't support them or treat them as part of the paper. What nearly always does well is sports blogs—their readership is there for the taking, and they're also usually more urgent in tone and more consistent, like Dan Steinberg's awesome D.C. sports blog.
But pity all the arts critics who get forced out of the paper to run their own blogs. Don't give a rave to a singer-songwriter? The super-fan commenters will suggest that "I suppose you were being subjective." Ya think? So maybe there is something to be said for keeping an old-fashioned newspaper column with no intrusion from the dirty sort of folks who think they own the internet.
Comments
Oh well this is just great. First Doree sneaks out, then Balk, now Choire is actually using the site to apply for a job at the Times.
Ha! The mosaic newspaper medium gets out-mosaicked! Ha!
@Conbon:
I just made a wee wee in my pants.
You mean newspapers should stop acting like they have an "illegitimate but profitable" newsbin?
Diner's Journal at the Times is a great concept--get 3x as much Big Gay Bruni for the same price. But I don't think anyone reads any of the others.
@Conbon: I know, it's a bunch of shenanigans isn't it?
Poor Steve Johnson, linked by Gawker, and still no comments.
I read the blogs on NYT and SF Chronicle all the time. I don't like the way it's done on NYT because I would prefer it if the links were easier to find.
I used to enjoy the blog on SF Chronicle from the TV critic until the day I disagreed with his review about Californica and said that I thought the woman at NYT had a better perspective (that was a mistake) on the show. The TV critic lost his mind and called me stupid and said he can't have discussions with anyone who has the intellect of a third grader and I'm not smart enough to understand his reviews. I thought it was very rude for a professional critic to insult a reader that way. So I don't go there anymore.
This post is missing a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!
@newtojezebel: there's something about you that reminds me of this old commercial where a special person says, "i sort glass. it's my job. don't take it away."
@newtojezebel: I agree - why go back to a place where you get insulted like that! Totally crazy.
@newtojezebel:
Why do I think your actually Balk, yanking our chains...?
@gonzosmom:
That would be you're (as in you are)
@newtojezebel: I will be in San Francisco November 8-10. Which day would you like to get married?
@newtojezebel:
You must get that quite a bit.
Aw, I'm kind of fond of newtojezebel. Her writing style reminds me of my mother, who titles all her emails "FROM MOM" and writes stream-of-conciousness style with nuggets like "Dad and I just got off the phone with the painters. They will be coming to the house next Monday to do the front hall closet door. I have to go see what the dogs are barking at. Love, MOM"
Wow! Fish/barrel.
@the_mayoress: I couldn't believe it. I have a right to my opinion but I probably shouldn't have mentioned the woman who is a critic at NYT because it might have made him defensive or something.
But I told him that insulting me only made him seem insecure and I'm not intimidated by him.
Was looking for the big exciting Larry Craig court ruling in Minneapolis that never happened yesterday, so figured the Star Tribune might be a good place for that, and I found a sort of pre-story on a random Strib blog (pre cum?), AND THEN I COULD NEVER FIND THAT BLOG AGAIN because the Strib has about 200 blogs all thrown together on a single useless page just like Choire said.
PS TO CHOIRE: So which paper pays more for bloggers, the LAT or the NYT? We still don't have to go to an office, right?
@gonzosmom: You figured it out!
I will leaving here soon to go work for popsugar as their Executive Editor in charge of product development for multi media focusing on finding a fragrance that smells "fruity yet fresh" and deodorant that doesn't leave those yucky white stains on clothes.
It's been fun here!
Balk
@Phyllis Nefler: Your mother has a lot more on the ball.
@Phyllis Nefler: It does have a 'conversation in her head' feel. Like she's practicing for when real peeps are trapped next to her.
@Phyllis Nefler: my mother does the exact same thing! emails always say "MESSAGE FROM MOM" in the subject line. she suddenly forgets punctuation. and never presses the return key. emails look like this:
"Hi
It's mom work is busy today getting car inspected so leaving work early grandpa is getting better oh, you got a delia's catalog want it?
BYE LOVE
MOM"
@Conbon: I'm a little bit in love with you right now.
@newtojezebel: I don't know what the truth is about you, but I can guarantee you this: whatever it is, I won't believe it.
BTW, Steve Johnson's piece was in last Sunday's Trib Arts section, which nobody but me read (they mentioned Defamer, but not Gawker, so fuck it), and I don't have any comment about that, either.
. . . they are on newspaper sites. I’ve come to argue that newspapers should not be big brands but big collections of brands. If I develop a relationship with a blog, I don’t go searching for it through the many layers of an adventure game that is newspaper-site navigation.
Yeah, Steve Johnson's blog doesn't get a lot of comments, but Eric Zorn's & Mo Ryan's do.
But they both have actual print columns in the Trib which also promote the blogs. Johnson gets in the paper only once or twice a week.
@newtojezebel: If you're real, I don't get it. If you're a prank....I still don't get it.
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