TechCrunch reports today that The Printed Blog has gone under. The company, founded by former MediaNews Group staffer Joshua Karp, attempted to put out a daily print paper made up of news and opinion that was plucked from the blogosphere.

Editorially, this came with some issues (no pun intended), such as putting something in print that was written for the Web. Publishing cycles, writing style and context vary greatly between the two media as we wrote after the site’s launch.

The real benefit of Karp’s model was the economics — a newspaper model that was very light on its feet and built for today’s realities. This included decentralized printing, locally targeted news and ads, and low editorial overhead (see aforementioned post). Newspaper models as we know them, by comparison, were built on the realities of decades ago.

But this wasn’t enough to entice investors, which is the biggest reason for the company’s demise. We could see other iterations of this idea in the near future or when the economy rebounds.

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