Cleveland's Clifton Ends Weblog

By: Joe Strupp Eight months after launching his own Weblog, Doug Clifton of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland has called it quits. The veteran editor admitted that the online effort took more time than he expected and drew less interest than he?d hoped.

"I'm about to say farewell," Clifton told E&P Monday, although he has not written for the Net column since June. "The audience isn?t anywhere big enough and I have too many other things that stand in the way."

Clifton drew industry-wide attention when he launched the blog on Jan. 15, representing for some a crossover that many believe traditional print media will have to make into the Web world in order to reach younger readers.

Initially, Clifton wrote in the blog nearly everyday, opining on issues related to the newspaper's coverage. Early writings ranged from a reminder to readers that reporters do not write headlines to how the paper selects local students to honor in its "Standout Seniors" project.

"My goal was to write at least several times a week," Clifton said. "Take what would be an editor?s column and explain things to the bloggers, and it worked reasonably well."

He eventually got into more controversial topics, such as the way reporters follow rumors, coverage of Ronald Reagan's career published following his death, and how Clifton's own Vietnam service affected his view of the current Kerry and Bush Vietnam controversies.

But, by June, the blog entries had slowed and, when he went on vacation after writing his last entry June 15, the blog effectively went dry. "When I came back, I just didn?t crank it up again," Clifton said. "I think it was worthwhile because it gave me some insight into what the medium was."

Clifton added that the Web traffic for his writings was not great, sparking only "a few hundred page views" for each entry. "I began to question the utility of it," he told E&P. "I had done it as an experiment and there was some initial interest, but for me it wasn't effective."

The editor writes occasional print columns in his paper, and said he wanted to use Web space for his views instead of tying up valuable op-ed page columns in the print paper. So will the end of the blog mean more Clifton print columns? "Probably so," he said.