Things newspapers--and online news blogs--need to learn from The Huffington Post

First, change up the site virtually constantly. Change the headlines, change the titles, change the stories, rotate them through. Give readers a reason to keep checking in. Keep it vital. Keep it informative. Heck, even keep it entertaining. Make it clear that each morning, afternoon, evening--virtually any free moment a person has--is reason to check in to the site and keep them coming back.

Newspapers were frozen in time. Staid. Static. But then, that's the way the world and world news was.

Newspapers and all the media should have learned from CNN, before The Huffington Post, that news is 24 hour, 7 days a week.

Now, any news website needs to be the same way and that, of course, is the way Huff Post is, of course, and all the good news sites.

It can end up more expensive, having 24 hour employees but isn't that the way a newspaper was, anyway?

There were people at the paper to write and edit it, mostly 9 to 5'ers, but then the rest of the crew had to print it--mostly at night--and then distribute it, in the middle of the night.

Now, the change is to virtually all computer people, all the time, writing the articles and managing the site so it's not that big a change, to begin with and secondly, it's a lot cleaner and, hopefully, more educated staff that's doing it, Third, finally, it's a lot greener a process. No more paper to print and then have thrown in the garbage, trash and dumps and no more cars and trucks running around the city to "throw the paper" and burn gas and pollute. Really, it's an improvement over the way things used to be on a few different levels.

But media people have to switch to this new system.

The ones that do will "win" and continue to exist.

The ones that don't will fail and fail fairly quickly.

Hear that Kansas City Star??