The "Printed Blog"

Found this article about print trying to stay in the game against the web: "Printed Blog" To Hit The Stands. An excerpt:

Who says print is dead?

A Chicago-based start up is hoping to both revitalize and revolutionize the newspaper by reprinting blogs in hyper-localized free papers that offer business the same kind of targeted - and cheap - ads found online.

The Printed Blog hits the streets of Chicago and San Francisco on Tuesday and will be launched in New York within the next month.

"What we're trying to do is apply some of the principals that have worked online in aggregators to the newspaper industry and see if it works," said founder Joshua Karp, who has a background in management consulting.

Print runs of just 1,000 issues will allow the paper to be tailored to specific neighborhoods - which Karp envisions could one day result in as many as 50 to 100 different editions in large cities - and users will be able to vote on what type of content they want.

The paper will be focused on "your physical social network as opposed to your online social network," Karp said.

"It's a different idea than the one size fits all you get with the (free daily) Red Eye or Chicago Tribune."

Click here to read the whole article.