Power Bloggers Tie Up with The New York Times As Paper Goes Deep

http://www.beet.tv/2008/09/power-bloggers.html

GigaOM, VentureBeat and ReadWriteWeb will be part of expanded technology coverage at the NYTimes.com, the paper announced today. The announcement is part of a redesign of business pages along with a major increase in coverage in a number of sectors including "green" tech and economic issues. The redesigned page goes live today.

Yesterday I interviewed Vindu Goel, deputy technology editor at The Times about the expanded coverage including the arrangement with the power bloggers and the hiring of new staff reporters.

He said that the content from the blogs will start to surface on the paper's pages in October. He said that the blogs will send a feed of selected posts, five of which will be posted at a time. The posts will reside on The Times and will have button back to the blog's home page.

This development is similar to the Washington Post's syndication deal with paidContent and TechCrunch. Both blogs have a prominent location on the paper's tech page.

Last night I reached Matt Marshall, the editor and CEO of VentureBeat. He sent me this statement.

"The deal with the Times is just great for VentureBeat. It’s an endorsement of something we’ve been working hard to achieve, which is to publish content that is credible, edited, engaging and informative. It brings us potentially millions of more readers, and brings the companies we write about tons of more exposure."

Here's what Richard MacManus of RWW told us.

"This is great news for us, because it brings our brand of web technology news, reviews and analysis to a much wider audience. It also means that the innovative and often little known startups we write about daily get a chance to be seen in a mainstream publication. The New York Times has a reputation for quality and in-depth journalism, attributes that we strive for on ReadWriteWeb - so we're excited about this partnership. This is also further vindication that blogs are increasingly being accepted as mainstream news and analysis providers."

Here's Om's post. Here's Vindu's.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Disclosure: Beet Media has done video production services for The New York Times Company.