I though I should share this related post:
Newspapers Missing the Benefits of Social media http://tinyurl.com/6yljzn (hope you don’t mind!)

Secondly, does there need to be a specific role?

I’m not asking to be flip. I think that the assumption that every creator fill a new and unique need is unnecessary. A Starbucks opening across the street from the local coffee shop tends to increase the awareness of both businesses and both generally see increases in sales.

The same goes for creating these types of networks. If you build a community around a topic, the net result is usually that all parties share and overlap audience. They grow together.

Sure these things tend to be self organizing, but if media businesses already ingrained in a community don’t build or at least actively participate these networks, they’re missing out.

Beyond that I don’t know what else to say about the matter.

I do think that editors and reporters should take ownership of their sites. They are the content creators and they should be the ones figuring out how they can get their information in front of the right people. To have marketers market the news to other sites, to me, sounds dirty.

@Tim – That’s the point. Blogs, and specifically blog networks, are Web native entities. Newspaper.coms are not. Web native groups will do what works best on the Web, because that’s the environment they came of age; Newspapers online have consistently tried to be just that–Newspapers online. The linked network is a better fit for the Web, I think.

You also somewhat implied that editors would market the web sites, which should really be left up to marketing. Let the editors’ main job be editing.

Otherwise, I like the idea of having features carve out their niche sites, work on them full time, then monitor traffic to see what can be developed for the brand site.

Most of the newspaper properties in Forum Communications are in towns well under 10,000 people. But sites like Northland Outdoors and Northland Ag (which aren’t necessarily the best implementations of the ideas I’ve outlined above, I know) work very well by benefiting the individual properties and the company as a whole.

The niche component may not be feasible for super small weeklies, but the blogging part certainly applies.

I’m not sure there’s anything the readership needs to understand, either. I think we sometimes don’t give individuals enough credit. Most people can discern the differences of a blog post from a matter of fact news story. We also shouldn’t expect the vast majority of people to compare notes across sites.

-WFL