In this post, I will consider the July 10th Register. It’s issue number 17 of their 152nd year.
It’s a holiday issue with pictures from the Independence Day parade and weekend.
On occasions like this, the Register would be better off with an online edition. It could post hundreds of pictures rather than just a few.
Some papers have made the jump to online publishing, and the Wisconsin State Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Janesville Gazette among them.
What about small weeklies like the Register? Shopper advertisers probably have a brighter future than conventional weeklies.
When I see photos in print in the Register, I wonder what would keep them from the Web? The easiest guess is a readership that is less amenable to the new, online medium.
That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? Stay a print publication, and slowly shrivel. Jump to an electronic version, and you’ll survive, but with a different set of expectations.
There are blogs in towns across Wisconsin, but there are few electronic versions of a newspaper other than those from true newspaper companies.
The blogger carves a niche regardless of print or online newspapers. The competition comes between online and print newspapers.
It’s a measure of how slow to react that the Register and Southern Lakes have been that a small online version of a newspaper has appeared in town.
It’s not a true newspaper, with true standards of journalism, but it is a competitor for the same boosterism that the Register offers.
It’s the Register‘s fault that they did not establish an online presence first. They likely have the means to take that attention back, and dominate an online news space, but there is no evidence that they have the will to try.
Regardless, blogs offering commentary are here to stay, in Whitewater, Wisconsin, and across America.