Les carnets du Devoir

It appears that my favorite Montreal newspaper, «Le Devoir» has some sort of blog. I’m not quite sure how it works yet, but they have RSS feeds and everything a good blog should have.

They say they want to do it to improve communication with their readers.

As is often the case, however, their RSS feed has only a few words in each description… making it useless to me. If you want to force people to come to your blog, take into account that people’s time is precious and they can only visit so many sites daily. At least, it looks like the content is free.

There is actually something troubling about «Le Devoir» on-line edition. They’ve opted for a free content/no registration on half the news as long as you receive the journal (the rest of the news being totally free to all). Alas, you have to log on and so on, so I limit myself to the free content. One wonders whether they wouldn’t be better off opening up totally. The blogging goes in the right direction. Don’t hide your product.

Update (due to Zeke): According to Paul Wells from MacLeans, «Le Devoir» is one of the only journals in North American making a profit out of the on-line edition.