Does Chicago Now = The Future?

As an addendum to the post about Chicago Now... the ideal goal for newspaper web sites going forward is to be the go-to place for people to learn about and discuss news and issues going on in their communities. It's also to be the go-to place for local companies to connect with consumers. This goes above and beyond just being the number one local news site in their respective markets (which most are already). It's about leveraging that dominance to be the hub of everything local. Whether the content is produced in-house, by individual bloggers, or by third-party companies, it should be monetized by a newspaper company. We'll see if Chicago Now succeeds at this.

While we're on the topic, let's get our terminology straight here. The definition of a newspaper is no longer just the printed product that gets ink on your fingers. A newspaper is the collective work of a primarily words-on-the-page-based news organization (both in print and on the web). Print and web refer to the medium in which those words are delivered but, in the case of most articles, the words stay the same regardless of medium. Arbitrary divisions between the print and web in the newsroom don't make much sense. Let's agree that "newspaper," "newspaper web site" and "news organization" mean essentially the same thing.