Charles on… anything that comes along

John Naughton has put up the transcript of an email interview he gave to a journalist from New Zealand. It starts somewhat abruptly with the question from the NZ hack:

Q: Blogs are constantly being talked of as being “on the verge” on mainstream influence. Yet, outside a few cases in the United States (Dan Rather’s “memogate” etc), they don’t seem to have lived up to their promise. Is 2007 the year of the blog, or the year the blog boom finally busted?

A: Silly question — typical of old-media journalism.

Ow! Read the whole thing, though, because he’s on the money.

But does point to Alan Rusbridger’s point that for a paper to succeed online, it needs to be not “on the web” but of the web. (Wonder where the interview will appear once written up?)

Which you certainly need when you have gloomy stuff like this from Greenslade:

On the sales, audited by ABC, note first these telling results for the month of November compared to November last year: daily popular papers down 4.95%; daily mid-market papers down 2.18%; daily qualities down 2.74%. So the total daily market is down 3.72% (and I can tell you, without fussing about the exact details of discounted sales and foreigns and bulks, it’s far worse once you take account of those as well).

Ooh, is that a plate of polonium? I do feel peckish…

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Newspapers' resistance to change 'borders on pathological' (17 March 2005; score: 39.07%)
• The Independent has a blog. Or blogs. You hadn't noticed? (12 January 2007; score: 31.78%)
• Journalism or "churnalism"? Nick Davies of the Gdn weighs in.. (31 January 2008; score: 30.65%)