newspapers - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

Through TechDirt, I stumbled upon an interesting debate that questions whether the concept of "community" as it relates to newspapers is a major part of the industry's woes - and a potential part of the solution to those woes.

Ad revenues for US newspaper websites grew 21.1% in Q2, according to new stats that will give Rupert Murdoch some more ammunition in his bid to make the Wall Street Journal offer its online content for free.

The data, from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), shows ad spending on newspaper publishers’ online properties jumped 21.1% year-on-year in Q3 to $773m.

The move, following trials of the system with a limited number of advertisers and publishers, will see Google brokering space in more than 225 newspapers.

Yahoo has signed a deal with US newspaper groups in which they will share online advertising, content and technology.

In return for Yahoo publishing local classified ads on its network of sites, the newspapers will supply local news content. This deal should boost Yahoo’s local reach while providing local papers with national exposure for their classifieds.

If you’ve been reading the national media press recently you may well have read more than an article or two by established journalists which attack the rise of blogging. Principally, they criticise the lack of quality (fact checking, grammar, sources, regulatory compliance etc.) exhibited by many bloggers.

But are they really just annoyed that bloggers are threatening their status? Are journalists asking themselves similarly tough questions about how their readers perceive them?