The Statesman Discovers Blogs

Link: Blogging it with Xlent.

David E. Hollingsworth left a comment in another thread pointing out that the local monopoly daily newspaper has started up a blog. There is only one posting there, but already things are looking pretty bleak.

Let me count the ways.

1. No recognition that there even exists a blogging scene in Austin. In fact, Austin is blessed with multiple vibrant scenes. I'm thinking: Austin Bloggers, Austin Journal Writers, the bizarrely arbitrary Koax list, the Live Journal alternate reality. That's a few that come to mind. Yeah, Statesman, here's a big fat sloppy thank you for discovering weblogging and introducing it to Austin. Jeesh, now I know how the Indians must have felt when Columbus "discovered" America.
2. For their example of weblogs, they trot out a small list of the old hoary warblogs we all know and ignore. You probably can guess the list even without visiting the article.
3. No permalinks. Sorry Chuckles, that's not a weblog. It's just a periodically updated web page.
4. And the clincher: no comments. This is so very wrong. Man, talk about dead tree media not getting it. Journalist blogs can have comments, you know.

Guys, this is not a blog. This isn't even a bad doppelganger of a blog. It's like, "Woo hoo! We discovered the Interweb!"

Nonetheless, there is hope. All blogs suck, at first. The problems I listed can be fixed. The question is, are the authors of the Statesman's blog willing to change and adapt to what works and what people want? I suspect that may be one of the greatest difficulties of business blogs. Have the authors been empowered to make the changes necessary for the blog to work and thrive?

As fun as it is to slag the Statesman, I'd prefer to see this work. In the aforementioned thread, I was expressing my frustration with the paper's local news coverage. This blog could be a solution to that problem. For instance, let the Business/Tech section remain the Chamber of Commerce mouthpiece that it is, and use the blog to cover some of the interesting developments that matter to the local community.

So let's all welcome our local monopoly daily newspaper to the (cringe) blogosphere. And let's pray they never post an article that actually uses the term "blogosphere".