The New York Times and other papers are facing a conundrum. On the one hand, people are canceling their paper subscriptions left and right. That's largely because they can get the news online for free. And when papers like the Times try to charge people for access to web content many readers just look elsewhere for their news.

Enter the brave new world of online advertising. Newspapers generally aren't making the kind of money from online ads as they did from print ads and subscriptions. But advertising revenue is going up. And if the Times can build the kind of brand loyalty online using Web 2.0 techniques as it did offline using Print 1.0, the company could be rolling in dough. Or at least it could stay afloat.

Earlier this year, the New York Times announced plans to open up its archives and make available articles that had previously only been available to paying customers. The company also embraced search engine optimization techniques, pushing its web traffic way up (even though the same move now means that Google will often return a 15 year old newspaper article as a top search result even when it's not the most relevant article by a long shot).

Now it looks like the paper is taking a major step to engage users by putting reader comments on the front page of the paper. Right under the photo of the day's top stories. Is this act alone going to save the newspaper industry? Probably not. But it shows that the mainstream media are learning a few tricks from blogs. It's only fair. Every now and again bloggers actually learn a thing or two from mainstream media, like how to cover the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a good news story.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]