"Readers take our Web sites more seriously than the newspapers themselves"

Rob Curley, director of new media and convergence at LJWorld.com in Lawrence, Kan., at a recent Media Center session at API:

I think a newspaper right now is a brand — a brand of institution and trust that isn’t ink on dead wood. It’s everything. It’s how — it’s the Web site, it’s e-mail reminders, it’s breaking news e-mail, it’s cell phone alerts, it’s podcasts, it’s putting content on PSPs. And what stresses me out about that is, the rest of the world already gets this. The readers already understand this. The readers are already converged. I mean, they have no problems reading the newspaper, downloading a song on their computer, and watching ESPN. I mean they’re multitasking — but the newspapers seem to be afraid and they shouldn’t be. I mean, no one is more poised to take — to be able to do something special than us, but we’ve been very reluctant to try to do that and you know, I believe in my heart that readers take our Web sites more seriously than the institutions — the newspapers themselves.

... What I think the institution of the newspaper needs to understand is that they're more about the brand and they need to become media agnostic—and to quit worrying about how we deliver the message and just worry about getting our news out and making our advertisers cash registers ring, because, we reach the people.