While the press around the world is scrambling to integrate their newsrooms to adapt to the digital age, entrepreneur Joshua Karp is aiming to do just the opposite. In an adventurous new media venture, he has started The Printed Blog, a twice-daily free printed newspaper which will publish content from blogs online.

With the first issue scheduled for release on the 27th of January, the local paper will be handed out at three CTA stations in Chicago and San Francisco. Chris Snyder, of Wired.com, reported this week that a New York edition is due shortly as well.

The hyper local paper aims to "take the best content and bring it offline", according to Karp, who also wondered why no one has done that yet. "...newsprint is still going to be a main mechanism for information for years to come," said Karp, who believes that print is not dead yet. The paper will have cheap advertising (less than $25) with classified ads and will feature "compelling content from the web in a variety of areas".

With a staff of unpaid interns and confident of not spending more than 15 thousand dollars for the production and distribution of the first issue, Karp admits that The Printed Blog is an experiment for now, but remains optimistic about the future.

The idea, though, had made news before. Dan Pacheco, Senior Editor of The Bakersfield Californian, recently won the Knight News Challenge from the Knight Foundation, for his "Printcasting" idea, which enables anyone to print their own newspaper, magazine or newsletter by taking content off the web and creating printable pdf templates.

Sources: wired.com