Anyone with an interest in in the future of newspapers should give Shane Richmond's blog a read. A recent post on how newspapers should use their brands and resources (reporters, etc.) to seed conversation within the blogosphere is a rare example of someone within Old Journalism totally getting how to position traditional media for the Web. Richmond, a news editor with Telegraph.co.uk, argues many bloggers are commenting on content produced by news organizations such as newspapers. This is a positive news. Why? One, it suggests newspapers are still relevant within a Web World of Google News/Digg/Techmeme world; and two, it should, in theory, drive more traffic to newspaper Web sites as people search for news producers in addition to content commentators. This, in theory, should make newspaper Web sites more attractive to advertisers looking for strong, well-branded, credible destinations in a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to sort through the moutains of content being created.
  As a journalist increasingly aware of the impact of the Web on the newspaper business, the last two paragraphs of Richmond's post are encouraging:

Update: Slate's Jack Shafer piles into the newspapers are dying conversation with a doom and gloom story about shrinking newsroom and disappearing sections. He suggests, however, while newspapers are dying, there is plenty of demand for information, which ties into Shane Richmond's argument. Shafer suggests newspapers need to change their stripes and look at other platforms (cell phones, free tabloids, Web sites, etc.) to expand their audience. Here's an interesting paragraph:

Shafer highlights what is becoming an increasingly obvious - but very difficult - strategic challenge for newspaper publishers, which need to start moving towards different platforms aggressively and with more urgency. Whether it's the Web, RSS, blogs, podcasts or cell phones, newspapers need jump into the digital information world - and not by launching Web sites that simply repurposed newspapers. Forget about online subscriptions, walled gardens or blogs that don't link out to other sources of information, the information world is changing. If newspapers don't adopt, they'll die.

With Blogware upgrading its anti-spam technology recently, the amount of comment spam on my blog has tumbled dramatically In its place, however, is trackback spam. Every day, I've got to manually prune dozens of items, which means some legitimate trackbacks probably get caught up in the process. Is there anything that can be done to combat the scourge of trackback spam?