The No. 1 thing newspapers have botched in the last 15 years is technology.

They have been slow to adapt, slow to embrace and slow to realize they are making themselves obsolete. Many newspapers continue to act like they exist in the pre-Web days, and journalists opening long for the past.

Why?

The Web will make journalism better, will inform more people and allow people to connect better with their communities. Despite this obvious realization, newspapers have done everything in their power to make themselves irrelevant.

Howard Owens has an interesting piece that I recommend everyone check out: Newspapers major mistakes with the Web

Owens writes about the eight historical mistakes he believes the newspaper industry made. It’s a good read for anyone who wants to understand what went wrong and what can be done to turn things around.

It goes over the major points that newspapers need to accept: a new classified model needs to be built (it has to be free online), user interaction needs to be embraced, a continuous news cycle is key, investment is a must and searchability cannot be overlooked.

If there is one point I disagree with, it’s his first on the importance of blogging. He overstates it. Newspapers need to be careful with blogging.

They need to add blogs that add value and are journalistically sound. He encourages a wide swath of newsroom bloggers, which probably would be a catastrophic mistake.

First, blogs have to be on topic. Often newsroom bloggers blog about random topics and get themselves in trouble by revealing biases.

Blogging is a technology. Bloggers are people. Users connect with good bloggers, not the technology.

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