Philadelphia Newspapers are blogging, will be podcasting in next two months

The Philadelphia Daily News will be podcasting weekly beginning next month, and the Inquirer will follow in July, according to Fred Mann, general manager of Knight-Ridder's philly.com. Mann was a panelist this morning at a program on blogging sponsored by the Philadelphia bureau of BusinessWire held at Ikon Office Products conference center in Malvern, PA.

Mann said the Daily News podcast will involve a podcaster "chasing after" sports writers and music reviewers for interviews about what's happening that week.

Also on the program, Russell Glitman, online editor of the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, PA. The Call's online site is mcall.com. Glitman says the newspaper is very wary about protecting its brand by keeping a separation between news content and reader-provided content like blogs and wikis. He says they are very interested in the "portal" model of web design exemplified by Delawareonline.com, where the Wilmington News-Journal's newspaper content is kept separate in a newspaper channel, and readers post their comments to a separate channel called "Community."

A separate feature of the Morning Call's offering is an entertainment web portal called MergeDigital.com.

Also on the panel was Will Bunch, senior writer for the Daily News, who has been serving up his own weblog, Attytood, since February, with what Bunch suggested was a liberal political view. He lists conservative blogs in his blogroll under the heading "If you must."