There has been a great deal of commentary in weblogs and elsewhere on John Battelle’s original post on saving the WSJ and others from irrelevance.
You can track the full response here:
bq. WSJ Responds to John Battelle’s “Joining the Conversation”
Here’s where I think Battelle makes his most salient point. The importance of the conversation is paramount and rss, trackback and ping services are providing the flow.
bq. “Sure, you want your readers to read your stuff, and you want your site to be well visited. But if that’s your main goal, you’re missing the – er – point. Editors should not be worried about whether their content can “bring people to our site” – that’s simply not a realistic approach anymore. The goal is to make content that is worth pointing to. If you’re feeding the conversation, as I said in my post, the rest will then follow.”