OPEN

This from Press Gazette caught my eye – the latest scores on the doors for blogging hacks on UK newspapers:

Andrew Grant-Adamson is rightly puzzled by the proliferation of blogs on newspapers’ web sites. Apparently bored during yesterday’s grey weather, he counted 40 blogs at Times, 32 at the Telegraph, 12 at Guardian, 10 at the Sun, five at the Mail. The Mirror and Indy, it seems, aren’t blogging.

Those of you in brand-land might think of blogs to newspapers as Second Life is to brands ;-)

I subscribe to about five newspaper blogs, but these are industry watching blogs like Organ Grinder for media at the Guardian.

The FT recently innovated with its approach to a blog-like service, Alphaville, but otherwise perhaps some are guilty of "bandwagonism".

* * Update:

Shane Richmond at the Telegraph has an thoughtful and insightful response. Among other things he says:

…blogs are niche offerings. Everything in the print edition of the paper
has to work for as many people as possible but that isn’t the case with
blogs. Take Stewart Jackson’s blog for example. Most of the football
coverage in the newspaper is devoted to the Premier League because
that’s what most readers want. Once their needs have been satisfied,
there isn’t a lot of space for in-depth, day-to-day coverage of the
Championship, so Stewart supplements the print offerings on his blog.