Andrew Grant-Adamson has 5 tests for a newspaper blog

  1. Does it do anything which cannot better be done in another section of the site?
  2. Does it develop the paper’s interaction with the readers?
  3. Does it gain a valuable audience? (A particular niche, readers who are new to the paper etc)
  4. Can you give the blogger sufficient time to blog successfully?
  5. Have you chosen a writer or writers who have the aptitude to blog successfully?

As he says “By no means exhaustive”, but it raises some interesting questions.