Useful columnist-blogging

As newspapers begin to dip their toes into the blogging pool to test the waters, a number of columnists seem to be on their own in finding their place in blogging. Readers can easily see that some just don't get it while others take to it quickly. Some have preconceived notions of blogs, and their sites seem to accentuate some of the most negative stereotypes of blogs. Others occasionally nail the perfect synthesis between blogging and writing columns.

Of course, I'm just some schmuck with an internet connection, so I obviously wouldn't understand the publishing world at all. Just the same, I would recommend that columnist-bloggers look at this blog post at the Chicago Tribune. On Thursday, Eric Zorn wrote this column on the Danish cartoon controversy. On Friday, he used his Trib blog to give readers a deeper background than the space constraints of a column allowed. This is something many columnist-bloggers should be mixing into their blogging repertoire. It is a useful and interesting service to your reader, and it refers the reader back to something that appeared either in the paper or the online edition that the reader may have missed.

And since I'm being presumptuous and preaching to the pros, I have one more thing. Publishers, ad reps, and site managers, you really need to do a better job of getting ads on your columnists' blogs, and you should be charging a premium for those ads on your most popular blogs.