Unfazed by the closure of the London paper and London Lite, a new freesheet has emerged on the streets of London. Called The Blogpaper, it’s a printed version of blog postings culled from the internet, and its first monthly edition hit the streets on a small scale on 20 November. Issue two is due on 18 December.
It’s not entirely a new idea. In the US the Chicago-based Printed Blog lasted 16 issues before closing in July, while in Argentina a title called Oblogo has reached issue number 26 with a circulation of around 15,000. But the Blogpaper’s USP, according to its founders, is that it will not have an editor.
Instead, the blog postings that make it into the magazine will be voted into place by the readers and contributors to its web site. According to its marketing pitch:
“Members of theblogpaper write, rate and discuss the news and therefore “make the news”. One major cornerstone of theblogpaper’s the concept is that many people are in control of what people are going to receive (by promoting content to print). Instead of a few people controlling the majority of what is being published and therefore read, theblogpaper aims to put the majority in charge.”
An interesting concept, but surely fatally flawed. Newsrooms, and the newspapers that they produce, simply are not democracies. For 300 years the world’s most successful ones have had strong figures leading the line. Stead, Christiansen, Evans, McKenzie, Dacre – to name but a few – were and are titans because they had an unswerving vision of what their newspapers stood for and a vice-like grip on the content they allowed into them. Yes, they had an instinctive understanding of what their readers demanded of them – but that is not the same as allowing those readers to make editorial decisions. Editing by committee simply doesn’t work. (A point, incidentally that our student editors, once they are announced, would do well to note for the newspaper news day on 18 December).
There’s another flaw too. By their nature, blogs don’t tend to break much news, or even do a significant amount of original fact-finding – which means that what you really end up with is a publication almost entirely filled with comment. A quick flick through the digital version of issue 1 of the the Blogpaper confirms this to be the case. It doesn’t make for compellling reading. And that’s one reason, I suspect, that the Printed Blog didn’t make it. (A designer who understood that the printed medium is fundamentally different to the screen might also have helped).
Likewise the best blogs succeed because of the interactivity they encourage with their readers. The comments are often just as insightful, often more so, than the original posting – an element which the printed version cannot hope to match.
Perhaps I’m wrong. But would you read an issue of the Daily Mail filled entirely with readers’ letters.
