The Blog Paper aims to take blogging to print

By Bob Toovey - 15 July 2009

A new UK based citizen Journalism website called 'The Blog Paper' is trying to break in to paper publishing by printing what is regarded as top news from their site. Kind of bringing the Internet to those who still want to read the printed word. An interesting way to spread citizen journalism to the non connected public.

I fired off some questions to one of the guys behind the site, Anton von Waldburg

What was the main reason behind the site/project?

Offer citizen journalists a platform to publish their work online and in print:

Our ultimate goal is to create a freesheet which we want to publish in London. It will contain a review of the best content that has been submitted to our online communtiy theblogpaper.co.uk. We believe that there are vast amounts of quality content online, which seem to be getting far too little attention. We want to offer cititzen journalists, bloggers and other "content creators" the possibilty to be published in print and possibly reach out to a new readership, increase thier profile and hopefully redirect attention (traffic) back to thier personal blogs.

Highest rated and most discussed articles are being promoted to print:

Another important thing about The Blog Paper, is that we implemented a rating system which allows the community to "decide" what content is worth printing and read by others through the printed version of the blog paper. The community therefore "becomes" the editor of the Blog Paper (printed version). We believe that could enhance the quality of the actual content of the newspaper, and deliver a higher reader experience for the readership of the blog paper.

Several advantages for readers, bloggers and advertisers:

We believe that publishing "the best content" (as voted and discussed by the community) could create a distinctive character for the Blog Paper. Readers get a quick summary (in form of a newspaper) of quality content, or at least content that has been declared "quality content" by a community rather that a few editors. On the other hand advertisers are going to associate the content of their adverts only with the best content of the "Internet world" which we hope could make advertising in our sheet interesting. (at least we hope:))

What is the current membership level?

about 400 members

How long have you been online?

Only three weeks thats why we don't have that many users yet. Obviously we need to generate a substantial amount of users until we publish the first issue of the Blog Paper (which we plan to print by the end of September 2009) to get quantity as well as quality content posted on our site.

Have you any financial backing to help with costs?

We have several advantages to traditional news organizations one being that we can cut our editorial costs due to our self - regulatory system. We are currently negotiating with several angels and investors who are very interested, but we won't accept any offers until we don't know how the blogging community responds to The Blog Paper. We don't want to waste any money and until we print our costs are minimal.

Thanks to Anton for answering my questions and I wish him the best of luck for the new site.

tadd said on 23 July 2010

thanks http://google.com [url=http://google.com] http://google.com [/url]

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