Among the great benefits – yes, benefits – of the internet for newspapers are opportunities to find new efficiencies. Do what you do best and link to the rest is one. Share is another. Newspapers have always been bad at sharing. That’s why they never managed to start a consortium to work together online (RIP NCN). That’s why they each spent a fortune buying custom computer systems even though they all did the same thing – because they thought they were special.
Now they’re learning to share because they have to. The AP has a roundup of what they’re doing with a sidebar I hadn’t seen before listing their efforts so far (to which I’d add the New York area newspaper consortium): There are content-sharing networks in Ohio among eight papers, Maine among five, Florida among four, Texas among two, the Washington area among to, in addition to the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times sharing a capital bureau and Mcclatchy and the Christian Science Monitor sharing international bureau stories.
