Here's a hot topic that was brought to me today by an editor in Indiana, who asked why should his newspaper offer an RSS feed (or news feed), when it could then be used by other newspapers?

For those unfamiliar with RSS feeds, it is a syndication feed on some websites that allows the content of the site to be read in news readers or other websites. This site uses such a news feed in both ways: The content of the site can be read in a news reader and we have content from other sites fed into this site in the middle navigation bar to your right.

RSS feeds serve a very specific purpose and are used to a great extent by many people who use the web. In no way does it make it easier for people to steal content from your site. In most cases, someone who uses an RSS feed on their site can actually help the site who supplies the information with traffic and ad revenue.

If someone were to just take your content without giving credit or linking to your site, they can do it very easily by copying and pasting.

And I believe the RSS feeds can actually help newspapers in both readership and advertising revenue.

One of the biggest concerns that newspapers new to the web have is advertising rates. For so long they have been honing their print advertising rates, that they have become experts in the field. When it comes to the web, though, confusion ensues.

Being web savvy, most people understand that websites have statistic programs that show website owners all sorts of information about their site: number of visitors, where they come from, how they found the site, how long they were there, etc. etc.

Statistics are great. But like anything else, they should not be overdone when it comes to deciding your web advertising rates. The old saying, just because your can, doesn't mean you should comes to play here.

Yes, you can probably figure out which advertiser is getting the most hits from your website. You can probably find out how many clicks that advertiser is getting per day. But this should not be used when marketing your site to advertisers.

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Your newspaper has been brought into one of the fiercest turf battles out there. It is under attack from multiple angles. Your readership is falling; along with it, your advertisers are dropping like flies.

Is this the end of the newspaper industry as you know it? Will print editions succumb to the web? Is there nothing to be done about it?

Before you hammer in the last nail to that coffin, here are ways your newspaper can embrace the web. Use it, profit from it and expand your readership and advertising revenue further than you ever thought possible.

The problems that newspapers throughout the United States are facing are very real, but not lost battles unless you go about the issue from a "print only" point of view. If publishers and editors face the problem of declining readership, loss of ad revenue and turf wars on the Internet head on by embracing the new medium, they can accomplish bigger circulations and ad revenue than ever thought possible right within their own markets.