1. Is aggregation/editing not valuable? Presumably so, or we wouldn't need something like Chicagosphere. I think you are trying to do for blogs something similar to TPB model or Windy Citizen, with a slightly different approach.

2. If people will use smart phones rather than print, how come virtually everyone headed onto a train grabs a copy of the Red Eye? Clearly, they found something where people do want the print even though the content is online.

I think of the TPB concept as a Chicagosphere meets RedEye idea, which seems intuitively plausible, but they had a number of issues around it, which I discussed elsewhere. It doesn't seem inherently doomed to failure, however.

I think it would have done better to print blog posts about a multitude of topics - entertainment and sports, but also hard news, commentary, etc., such as we see on ChicagoNow. In any case, TPB had potential, but tried to achieve its lofty goals too soon.

You're an urbanist like me, so try this analogy too. Many cities in the 1980s looked at places like Minneapolis with a system of aerial walkways connecting downtown as the wave of the future. However Minneapolis has punishing winters--hence the success of the walkways--and some cities that built walkways don't. In those cities, the walkways failed because no one needed them--they didn't function in the way they had originally been intended. In like mind, a blog post is intended to be a part of an organic, ongoing debate, not fixed in amber with no method of interaction. Until now, Red Eye wasn't truly written for the web in the first instance. Blogs are.

Alex, I'd be interested to learn the ratio of bloggers who turned down TPB versus bloggers who said yes to their pitch. They asked me to give them the copyrighted content of my personal blog, Chicago Carless, more than once--even after a very specifically worded email letting them know not to use my content sent directly to their marketing team. I've also heard tell from anonymous but reliable sources that they blithely--or blindly?--approached bloggers writing blogs for big content networks seeking to repackage that corporately associated (and in some cases, fully owned) content in TPB. That sounds less like a potentially workable idea than desperation to me, but as with all things, I could be wrong.

So question. What IF ChicagoNow reverse-published the content produced on this site into a newspaper? What would make readers pick up that paper each day or each week?

That said, some people think TPB failed for lack of focus, not a wrong idea. They're saying content would need to be hyper-local and relevant--which is a no-brainer. And obviously ChicagoNow has that content.

But a blog remains a blog--some posts are evergreen, some are not. That's the problem. Evergreen posts tend to be so generic they would never give a paper a sense of timeliness. Timely posts may very well be out of date by the time they reach the printed page. For me, therein lies the problem. Who wants to read a paper that isn't covering timely issues?

Or yesterday's paper, for that matter? If anything, a print edition should be a teaser, like an RSS feed with summaries, but not the whole farm given away. IMHO you just can't replicate a blog in print. The aim of the two media are just not the same.

Why waste my time and energy when Karp has decided to go a route so parsimonious of words himself? So I'll save myself the effort and share a single word with Karp, too.

Coward.

I think we need to have a panel about blogging in Chicago some time soon, don't you agree, Mike?

Ten minutes ago, a Twitter follower of mine wrote the following:

"@chicagocarless I'm surprised that @jkarp, with a publication about blogs, never commented on the @windycitizen or @chicagonow threads."
(@urbanophile, 7/9/09)

Or as I discovered this morning, even the thread under his own interview in Crain's.

Personally, I'd like people at C-BOM who already know how to use the Internet.

I apologize for calling you an a**hole on Facebook. The fact is, there are a bunch of people who have been critical of The Printed Blog, from day one all the way up to the very end. Your comments are no better or worse, no more right or wrong, than others I've read.

The reason I singled you out is that you are a part of an aggregation of blogs supported by a traditional media company. It really bothered me that a blogger, supported at the very least in promotion, by a media company that earns its living from printed newspapers, would take such a vitriolic stance; and I had a strong reaction - not to mention that we were a Chicago-based startup.

Thousands and thousands of people talk about where the future of print journalism will go, but very, very few of us actually have the courage to put their money and time into making a vision of the future come true. We weren't successful, and I'm disappointed. But we actually did it.

The Tribune and its peers are in real trouble. Why representatives like you attack people like me who are trying to find a way to success is baffling.

Joshua Karp
Founder and Publisher
The Printed Blog

Joshua, I accept your apology and I understand where you're coming from. I cannot recant my opinion that the idea to put blogs in print isn't an appropriate one. As a blogger, I do believe that.

Not only a blogger, but one who was approached by TPB to offer my content for republication (see this subsequent comment for more information). If I had felt a compelling reason to have done so, I would have. My greatest hesitation was that the pitch tried to sell me on "seeing my name in print", which does a lot less for anyone's brand platform than seeing their blog subscribed to, re-tweeted, Dugg, or referenced on another blog.

For a TPB idea to work, Edgar's point is important. The posts must be very carefully chosen, the blogs must be locally relevant, and the paper must find a way to offer bloggers a chance to build online community through appearing in print. (Again, as per Edgar's suggestions, and my own from this post.)

Find that way, pitch it well, focus your curation, and maybe TPB could work after all.

Finally, I've said this to ChicagoNow management and I'll say it to you, Joshua. Get a major local blogger on your core planning team for your effort (or several.) It's much easier to address the concerns of bloggers, gain buy-in from them, and offer them appropriate tools when you know what their concerns are from the beginning, not mid-stream.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with next--including a new iteration of TPB if that is what you decide to do.

Had we been able to continue, we would have (soon actually) provided the ability for people to vote on the blogs they wished to receive in their local version. Different versions of The Printed Blog were produced for different neighborhoods... we had a different version of TPB for local universities, the Gold Coast, Lakeview, and Wicker Park.

Depending on the version of the paper that you picked up, you could vote on the blogs that were relevant to you and your community. Certainly, the topics interesting to Hyde Park would be different than Highland Park. We nearly completed a button that bloggers could place on their blog, encouraging people to vote for them to be included in a particular version (or multiple ones).

In terms of benefits to a blogger, we were approached by many bloggers who simply were interested in seeing their blogs in print. More than 2,000 in total. They included Adam Hearch (Mashable), the American Express OPEN Forum, TheBloggess, Dead Spin, Mark Cuban, and the list goes on and on. It was great to have so many people involved.

In addition, we were getting ready to start paying bloggers for each time a post appeared in any edition... depending on the amount of advertising that appeared on the same page as their post (photographers, too). If we hit our target for ad sales (which was less than 100%), a blogger would have received $8.36 each time their post appeared. When we closed the paper, we were producing 7 different issues.

If your blog was voted, by your readers, into three different issues, for example, you would earn $25.00 - for that one post, for that one day. Many bloggers, even the popular ones, would not earn $25.00 for a single post. And - being in The Printed Blog was non-exclusive - you could still do whatever you wanted with your post, including sell ads against it.

Josh

Mike, with respect, because I think you do good work, my biggest issue with this post was that you had previous encounters with TPB --- you say that they asked you on a few occasions to include content from your blog but you declined.

This is important information, IMO, and I feel you should have put a disclaimer somewhere in the post rather in the comments -- that you had pre-conceived notions of some kind as a blogger and previous issues with TPB. It was a surprise to read that and I don't think it's fair to trash Joshua's work -- and attempt at finding a new media business model -- without noting these previous encounters.

Don't mean to add more fuel to the fire, just wanted to throw in my two cents and add some different perspective. As a founder of an organization myself (Breaking Tweets), pouring a ridiculous amount of hours per week, I can relate with Joshua and empathize with him when his exciting idea, which garnered so much attention, ran out of resources. Certainly any criticism right now is salt to the wound, and instead we should be thanking Joshua for giving this a try and encouraging him to use his new media mind to try something new.

Craig, that's a good point. Having never entered into an agreement with TPB, I did not feel it necessary to note that I had been contacted. As Joshua notes, they spoke with more than 2,000 bloggers. I think it's safe to say if you were a noted blogger in Chicago, you were contacted by TPB, but Joshua could answer that better than I.

Moreover, it can also be assumed that many bloggers in Chicago know each other. So if you're looking for that kind of disclaimer, then let it be said here and know, I know many bloggers in Chicago. Unless I have a professional, working, paid, or otherwise quid-pro-quo relationship with any of them them, those relationships aren't usually germane to the story.

As far as "trashing" Joshua's work, I cannot help that I am not among the writers who believe TPB to have been a good idea. In fact, I think it was a pretty awful idea. I cannot change or soften my opinion just because it's a differing one. I stand behind my criticism. Your mileage is welcome to vary.

This is not the first time I was vocal about TPB. I noted in my Twitter feed the second email I received from TPB. And for additional disclosure, here is my email trail with TPB for the past six months. In fact, I was approached by TPB only after I emailed them to let them know not to utilize my content:

From: mike (at) chicagocarless (dot) com
To: content (at) theprintedblog (dot) com
Subject: Denial of authorization to use content from www.chicagocarless.com
Date: January 26, 2009

This email serves as notice that absolutely no content from the blog CHICAGO CARLESS, (URL www.chicagocarless.com) is authorized to appear in the pages of or in any way be used by The Printed Blog. All CHICAGO CARLESS content is copyrighted to me, Mike Doyle, and may not be used without my express permission. No such permission is granted.

Should any content from CHICAGO CARLESS appear in The Printed Blog without my express permission, whether selected by an editor or submitted by a third party, I will defend my copyright via any and all available legal means.

Mike Doyle
Editor and Publisher
CHICAGO CARLESS

__________

From: emily_schleier (at) yahoo (dot) com
To: mike (at) chicagocarless (dot) com
Subject: The Printed Blog
Date: March 30, 2009

Hello!

My name is Emily Schleier and I'm the Assistant Editor for a new media start-up publication titled The Printed Blog. You can download our latest issues at www.theprintedblog.com.

The Printed Blog is exactly that – a printed news publication with 100% of its content pulled from blogs and other user generated content. We are a new model of print publication based out of Chicago that has taken on the challenge of reviving the newspaper industry and turning in to a more community-based, interactive and user-generated medium.

There are many advantages to our approach at forming a new type of newspaper. First and foremost, all of our content is taken from the internet and then put through an editorial process so that we're sure our readers are only getting the best of the best when it comes to blogs, photos, music, events, etc.

With this being said, we think that your blog falls under the "best of the best" category and would feel extremely privileged if we were able to take articles from it to include in our publication. High profile blogs such as, Mashable, Daily Kos, The Bloggess, American Express and Bastard Life are all on The Printed Blog team!

All of the content that we use from the web is also completely accredited to the author and blog that it originated from, so this would be a great way to gain some exposure and bring traffic to your site.

The Printed Blog has been the point of discussion amongst many journalists and media representatives from all around the WORLD. We have been featured in many of the world's leading publications such as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Business Week, Wired magazine, as well as publications in France, Spain, Brazil, Egypt and many more!

We are currently working on our tenth issue that is set to be distributed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago on Thursday, April 9th.

We'd love to add you to our list of blogs to pull content from in hopes to print one of your posts in an upcoming issue. Do we have your permission? We would also like to have the option of printing the images that accompany your blog posts- do you have the rights to these images? I look forward to hearing back from you and please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions. You can follow our progress on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter!

All the best,

Emily Schleier
Assistant Editor
The Printed Blog

__________

From: mike (at) chicagocarless (dot) com
To: emily_schleier (at) yahoo (dot) com
Subject: RE: The Printed Blog
Date: March 30, 2009

Thank you. You're right, my blog is among the best in Chicago. Now keep your hands off.

As I notified The Printed Blog as per my attached email of January 26, 2009, be advised that absolutely no content from the blog CHICAGO CARLESS, (URL www.chicagocarless.com) is authorized to appear in the pages of or in any way be used by The Printed Blog. All CHICAGO CARLESS content is copyrighted to me, Mike Doyle, and may not be used without my express permission. No such permission is granted. Should any content from CHICAGO CARLESS appear in The Printed Blog without my express permission, whether selected by an editor or submitted by a third party, I will defend my copyright via any and all available legal means.

Thank you.

Mike Doyle

__________

From: emily_schleier (at) yahoo (dot) com
To: mike (at) chicagocarless (dot) com
Subject: RE: The Printed Blog
Date: March 30, 2009

You got it Mike- thanks for letting us know. Best of luck to you and Chicago Careless.

Emily Schleier
The Printed Blog

__________

Except, of course, I already had.

"We didn't hire a graphic designer to lay the paper out because we didn't want it to look too professional."

After that comment, I knew it was just a matter of time before it when belly up.