Yes, Community Bloggers Could Save Local Papers

Local bloggers are similar to community correspondents. You know, the correspondents that used to write about who visited who during the week and how Aunt Bea's knee was feeling. During the 1990s, when paper prices increased, many community newspapers ditched those community correspondents.

Turns out, that was probably a mistake.

And now community newspapers are saying they can't keep up with local bloggers and online content that are stealing away readers.

I've been saying and writing for over four years about the disappearance of community correspondents from weekly newspapers (read column here). Bloggers have taken the place of elderly community correspondents and it seems to me that a strategic partnership between weekly newspapers and bloggers in their community could be good for business while also reaching new readers and opening up some column inches in the local newspaper.

Perhaps the best of those blog enteries could be printed in the newspaper on the opinion page.

What do you think?