Welcome to the blogosphere, NYT!

In a staff memo, Deputy Managing Editor of the New York Times, John Landman, announced the start of his paper's dive into the blogosphere. The first blog off the block, columnist David Carr's "Carpetbagger," part of the new movie-awards-season feature from the Times.

To add to their new "blogospheric" nature, NYT will be adding more blogs soon, including a real estate blog.

in the memo, Landman admits that the Times is behind the times in launching a blog so late in the game but points out that the move was important enough to make the front page, the first time ever that blogs were mentioned on A1 of the Gray Lady.

Landman highlights certain aspects of blogs such as the linking capabilities and reader responses but says that "our new blogs are more than running commentary." In fact, the NYT blogs will have editors and blog authors will "observe our normal standards of fairness and care."

As so far as reader participation, Landman says the paper has the "hopes to start a lively conversation. Nothing is more important to the future of our web ambitions than to engage our sophisticated readers." Still, reader comments will be edited to ensure that "the conversation is civil".

The end of the memo, however, shows the paper's hesitation in launching blogs. "There are costs; David Carr and Damon Darlin (the soon-to-be real estate blogger) will be spending time they could be using to write newspaper articles."

Source: Cyberjournalist