I wrote about the Printed Blog, which is intended to be a twice-daily newspaper aggregating blog posts from user-generated votes, a little while back. I even questioned whether it was real.
Here is an interview with Printed Blog founder Joshua Karp. He seems dead serious to me.
“I think there are principles in the online world that work really well and can be applied to the offline world,” he said. “If we look at a newspaper from the early 20th century compared to one published yesterday they look largely the same. One size fits all, quarter page ads, the half page ads are really expensive. The content is selected by a bunch of editors and journalists that cover beats. Their model hasn’t changed, and my position is that the print newspaper doesn’t need to go away simply because it’s on paper. The problem with the print newspaper business…[is] that nobody has taken a hard look [at] how newspapers are pulled together and laid out and published, and how the power of community tools that we have now can enhance this.”
Basically, by removing editors, Karp believes he can change the face of newspaper publishing. I’ve seen dumber things work.
“I’ve seen dumber things work.”
In the sample issue up right now, they seem to be pretty heavy on the sex. Also, they are going to have to get people with a bit more reputation writing their content if they want people to pay for it. Who gives a rip what Joe Blogger thinks?