Wise Words - Newspapers Ready for Change

clipped from recoveringjournalist.typepad.com Don't miss this terrific post by Douglas McLennan about why newspapers need to take the Web more seriously. What? You say they already take the Web seriously? Yeah, right. McLennan demolishes that illusion with spot-on points like this: • Newspapers have declined to innovate as eBay, Craigslist, Monster.com, Google and myriad ad networks have sprouted, thrived and stolen away customers. • Social networking has changed the way young people interact, yet newspapers have failed to meaningfully take the plunge. • Pretty much every online initiative in the traditional news industry has been me-too-ism rather than bold invention. • Many papers still bizarrely consider their online and paper versions separate operations. • Most web operations are seriously understaffed and technically deficient, making what should be even basic tasks difficult to impossible.