When the pace gets too fast, only online coverage will do

What is the goal for news organizations and blogs? It should look something like John Cook’s Venture blog the past few weeks.

Two of the hottest technology stories in the past month were centered in Seattle (especially if you live around here): Redfin’s “coming out” party on “60 Minutes” followed by legal action from the national association of realtors and Avvo’s launch which has already brought one lawsuit. (See John’s coverage of Redfin here and Avvo here.

In both cases, John owned the story from the start and the conversation played out on his blog, not Techcrunch or CNET. The players in the story contributed comments to John’s blog posts, too, which added to the vitality of the discussion.

Technically, John is a business reporter for the Seatle Post-Intelligencer. But his blog is the heart of what he does. That’s because he’s committed himself to competing in an extremely difficult space - blogs about technology - and he’s thriving.

The typical newspaper is so far out of the loop with technology coverage that it took several days before most ran a story last month from the Associated Press about Digg’s decision to remove a link from its site that someone had submitted that included codes for some illegal hacking. This industry moves so fast that only through a vibrant online presence can the news organization remain relevant to ongoing coverage and discussion.