That most newspapers fail to use the web to its full potential is hardly a riveting insight, but I particularly liked two quotes from Washingtonpost.com editor James Brady's talk to the Associated Press Managing Editors conference in New Orleans this week (report via Editor and Publisher). The first really highlights the mindset that prevents many papers from grasping Web 2.0: “In far too many cases, newspapers are still using sites for the basic task of reprinting the paper,” said Brady. In other words, it is the kind of mindset that sees new media as digitalised old media, and fail to grasp the interactive element of Web 2.0.

Brady also told the conference how his site has drawn traffic by posting links to bloggers who have commented on individual stories. Those links, he said, spark return links. "Bloggers can drive 100,000 page views to us if the link to us."

Washingtonpost.com came second in a recent survey of the best blogging newspapers in the US and is one of very few newspaper, as far as I'm aware, that provide links to stories on the same subject in competing newspapers.