At a recent online journalism convention in Washington, D.C., Len Downie, Editor of the Washington Post, talked about the importance of blogging to traditional print publications. Here are a few quotes from Mr. Downie:

“Everyone in our newsroom wants to be a blogger.”

Even blogs that are critical of his paper are not looked at in a negative way because they “keep the paper honest”.

“Blogs are not competitors and not problems… Instead we have a very interesting symbiotic relationship. Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge.”

Mr. Downie (pictured above) also suggested that, rather than print media taking the lead and providing fodder for bloggers, the future would see more bloggers breaking news.

By the way, we were not at this conference. Mr. Downie’s quotes were published in an article by Editor and Publisher, which we would not have read if it weren’t for our subscription to the threadwatch.org blog. I personally posted a link to this article on Editor and Publisher from Digg.com, thus ensuring that dozens or hundreds more people read about it. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.