JaySmall.com/old

Two posts caught my eye for their discussions of print-online relationships:

Mark Van Patten of the Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News, writing at MediaShift, describes "How the Focus on Print Hurts Our Newspaper Site":

"It's definitely no tangled bureaucracy, but even within this simple system you find conflicts holding the website back. The problem is that the different people in that system just have different priorities. As general manager, I want to see both a strong online presence and continued healthy print circulation. In contrast, the managing editor doesn't want to 'hurt' the print edition by making the online edition too strong, fearing that it could tempt subscribers to abandon print."

Read down through the comments to see Tim Windsor's reply, which describes how his online team at The Sun in Baltimore had, if not authority to influence sweeping collaboration between print and online staffs, at least a veto power regarding Web content.

Another post, on Online Journalism Review, comes from my old colleague Curt Cavin at The Indianapolis Star. He has covered auto racing for the paper and its Web site (still my proudest start-up) as long as I can remember. He describes the evolution of his online work from a crude weekly "ask the expert" format we set up in the mid-1990s to a very active blog today:

In the height of racing season, I receive about 150 questions a day and answer about 10, almost all before 9 a.m. ... I haven't kept track, but it's safe to say that I have received questions from all 50 states and two dozen countries. Many of them have followed me to a weekly radio show that began in 2007.

Here's a newspaper writer who builds steam for all his efforts, print and online, from the interaction with racing enthusiasts on his blog. In the process, he builds a personal brand as racing expert that complements the newspaper's brand as local information provider. Way to go, Curt!