Thursday, February 17, 2005

Yelvington: The enemy of newspapers is apathy

While commenting on what he calls the recent "bonehead blunder" by the Tulsa World, Steve Yelvington made an important point about why newspaper companies should embrace bloggers:


The real enemy of newspapers is apathy. Newspapers need people to care about what they cover. Blogs can help with that. Newspapers should be working with blogs, not trying to silence them.

Unfortunately, newspaper executives would have to be willing to take a risk to pursue this strategy, something most corporate execs are surprisingly unwilling to do. As I've said before, some newspapers are getting the message. My fear is that this could be the exception that proves the rule.