The Printed Blog

An interesting concept out of Chicago - the printed blog - a free daily newspaper that publishes posts from a wide variety of blogs.

Amid the din of naysayers who insist that newspapers are on the verge of death, a new company wants to start dozens of new ones — with a twist. Volunteers working for The Printed Blog on their personal laptops. About 300 blogs have given the paper permission to publish their work, saving the company the cost of paying reporters. The Printed Blog, a Chicago start-up, plans to reprint blog posts on regular paper, surrounded by local ads, and distribute the publications free in big cities. The first issues of this Internet-era penny-saver will appear in Chicago and San Francisco on Tuesday. They will start as weeklies, but Joshua Karp, the founder and publisher, hopes eventually to publish free neighborhood editions of The Printed Blog twice a day in many cities around the country. “We are trying to be the first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content,” he said. “There were so many techniques that I’ve seen working online that maybe I could apply to the print industry.”

Bloggers are giving the paper permission to run their posts in exchange for a tiny cut of the ad revenue. I usually take the daily freebies handed out in my subway station and if this concept were to come to NYC, I'd probably take the blog-paper first.