In a first for the newspaper industry, The New York Times Company recently announced that interactive media pioneer Michael Rogers has taken a one-year appointment as the Company's futurist-in-residence. Mr. Rogers will work as a consultant with the research and development unit in developing new strategies and innovations for Times's online and other products..

Mr. Rogers, former new media exec with Washington Post Co. and Newsweek.com general manager, founded his own consulting firm in 2004, and writes the Practical Futurist column for MSNBC.

In an interview with I Want Media, Mr. Rogers discussed why the Times chose to bring on a futurist, as well as some of his experiences with Newsweek.com and as a blogger. From the interview:

IWM: What will you be doing for the Times Co.?

Rogers: My role in R&D is in part market research seasoned with speculation: What are consumers doing today and what might the want to do tomorrow? What kind of technologies will be available and how likely is it that they will serve a wide audience?

I've also spent 20 years building and operating new media products, working across editorial, technology and business lines, so I hope to help shape product ideas to serve well in all three spheres.

Another part will be helping the R&D team communicate our work back to the business units. We're all intensely aware that even the smartest R&D is pointless if it fails to engage with the people who actually run the businesses. . .

IWM: What lessons did you learn from your experiences with Newsweek.com and the new-media division of the Washington Post Co.?

Rogers: It's trite but true: The fundamentals still apply. It all begins with writers, reporters and editors who can recognize and tell a good story. If you don't have those folks on your side, it doesn’t make any difference how good the widgets are. That's a big part of what attracted me to the Times.

IWM: The Practical Futurist originated with a column and a blog for Newsweek. What do you see as the future of blogs produced by magazines or newspapers?

Rogers: The "blog" has become intertwined with the notion of self-publishing, but I think it's important to see the blog itself as one of the first truly original forms of Internet journalism. The blog energized static text with two unique Web elements -- outbound linking and close audience interaction, creating a form that by its nature can't be duplicated in print.

The blog and its successors will continue to be useful journalistic forms on the Web, whether self- or professionally published. Print can't do blogs, but they will become staples on print properties' Web sites in years to come.

If there's a problem with blogs, it's that done right they're a great deal of work; it's a daily column on steroids, and it takes a lot of energy and endurance to keep one going.

(via Cyberjournalist.net)

Search giant Google, Inc. announced that it has added 200 years' worth of newspaper archives to its Google News search feature. The Google News Archives Search feature takes keywords as well as dates and creates "a timeline of stories on a particular subject over the years."

Thus, if one searches for "1969" and "moon launch" Archives will generate a page that lists a full range of stories from major news publications pertaining to the July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission. Regarding advertising, another important aspect of Google, Inc, at this point there are no plans to place advertising links alongside archive search results, but sites that feature historical news may feature advertising alongside articles or choose to charge a fee for content.

What Google suggests is a great new tool for both history buffs and academic researchers, Terry Heaton calls "a major effort by the company to organize the world's information." The move not only positions Google as the prime search engine for historical information, but also "gives them the ability to make money off other people's content." Terry also sees how Google's innovation should be a lesson for local newspapers and broadcasters: "Don't get me wrong. Mainstream media companies have no choice but to make these deals (with the devil?), but we need to be learning at the same time that Google's mission is our mission -- especially at the local level -- and that the creation of local databases ought to be our first priority."

This is not the only new inroad Google is creating. Mark Ramsey finds a Google advertisment radio sales execs. The ad may say "radio" but Ramsey sees it as a reach into a broader range of audio broadcasting: "It's worth noting that while the ad emphasizes "radio" the true nature of the effort is guaranteed to cross distribution channel boundaries - to be truly "audio": Online, satellite, radio, you name it."