National Public Radio aired a segment exploring the question that newspapers are being threatened by blogs...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=13873047

The people talking in the segment seemed to conclude that, yes, newspapers are in danger of going out of business because of blogs. Specifically, blogs are not limited to a local audience, they can reach everywhere on the Earth. Whereas newspapers are stuck with readers in a small geographic locale.

Moreover, they attempted to extract tears from their liberal audience that minority-owned newspapers, specifically "black newspapers" are going to be hardest hit. I'm not sure why they would be harder hit than opposed to "white newspapers", but that's liberal banter for you.

Now for my take...

It's not the blogs that are threatening to put newspapers out of business, it's the newspapers themselves.

There are already several newspapers that publish blogs of their own columnists, and even editors. Several also operate discussion forums, where the general public talk freely. Some newspapers even allow the general public to post comments on their web articles.

There's no reason why a newspaper can't reproduce what a "Joe Blow" American can do with a blog.

But the biggest crock of sh** is NPR saying that black-owned newspapers are specifically going to suffer because of blogs. Is that not an attempt at crass-liberalism? Is that not playing the "victim" card again?

Bottom line is that anyone can publish a blog, that goes for newspapers, corporate America, and black-owned entrepreneurs.

So if I could speak out to all the liberals there, what should the federal government do about this? Impose a "blog tax"? Force bloggers to get a license and register each blog? Or should it do nothing about it?  

Labels: Blog Publishing Business