Should online always be first?
August 17, 2008 by grzegorz.piechota
A short memo sent by an editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer to his staff has provoked a backlash from online-media advocates. Are they right?
Memo: hold stories online until they’re in print
In a memo published by Romenesko blog, the US Philadephia Inquirer managing editor Mike Leary tells his staff:
“Beginning today, we are adopting an Inquirer first policy for our signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews of all sorts. What that means is that we won’t post those stories online until they’re in print. [...] This does not mean that we will put the brakes on the immediate posting of breaking news that puts us first in a competitive Web marketplace. On the contrary.”
Against: if the future is online, this policy is a suicide
Jeff Jarvis, author of the Buzz Machine blog, attacked fiercely:
“You are killing the paper. You might as well just burn the place down. You’re setting a match to it. This is insane. Even the slowest, most curmudgeonly, most backward in your dying, suffering industry would not be this stupid anymore. They know that the internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future. It is suicide. It is murder. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Steve Outing, a journalist, consultant and entrepreneur, followed:
“It’s disheartening to see a major newspaper go backward. [...] What’s long held back the newspaper industry and gotten it in the current mess has been holding back online innovation that might impact the legacy product (print). The kind of serious innovation that might have avoided the turmoil we’re now seeing among newspapers (especially larger metros like the Inquirer) could only take place with an attitude of “Let’s completely forget about the print edition and just try to build the best damn online service possible.” But the industry didn’t do that, for the most part, instead settling for incremental innovation that wouldn’t upset things too much on the legacy side.”
David Carr, the New York Times media columnist, added:
“The Inquirer seems to be making a mistake. If the future of our business is online, then why set up a firewall, delaying the best content to protect a legacy product? And more adept reporters are beginning to realize that the Web is not just a way to broadcast news, it is a great way to assemble it as well.”
Roy Greenslade, the UK Guardian’s blogger and the (London) Evening Standard columnist:
“What Leary is trying to do is convince his paper’s audience that the web is only good for one kind of content, breaking news, and that print is the proper place for all other editorial material. That strikes me as completely reactionary. He is playing Canute, trying to turn back the waves of people in societies across the globe who read everything on their computers, whether it be news, comment, analysis or sports results. They watch video clips, they participate and they communicate via their lap-tops. They live on them. It is the medium of now and the medium of the future.
They are not going to change their habits at the behest of a maverick managing editor.”
For: differentiation of products and better serving audiences’ needs
Chris Krewson, the managing editor of the Inquirer, responded to these critics in two interviews with Ryan Sholin and Poynter’s Amy Gahran:
“This policy shift is part of a strategy to create complementary differentiation between the roles of the print and online operations.”
“Let me clarify by saying this will be print-Web simultaneous publishing, never really print first.
We’re honestly mostly talking about features stories, restaurant reviews, big-name critics – but (this is an important change) NOT movie reviews, day-after-the-concert movie reviews or things of that nature.
Also, there’s an argument to be made that a major investigative piece will have a much larger potential audience at 6 am — combined with a strong print push — than if that same long, narrative-driven story is posted at 11 pm the previous night.
Since I arrived here in November ‘07, we’ve tried hard to figure out how people actually use the paper and the Web site. obviously, that’s for different reasons. And we’re just trying to make sure we’re careful about what we do — roughly 75 percent of that will not change.
The other 25 will be us taking more care, making case-by-case decisions, armed by whatever information we have about how people use our products.”
Howard Owens who is blogging on newspapers online asked:
“Why is it wrong now to say “let print be print” and “let online be online”?
Your online product should focus on:
1) Frequency. Plenty of updates. Web-first publishing. Tell me what is happening in my town right now.
2) When there is a big story, hammer it. Own it. Frequent updates, a flood of information, video, blogs, forums, public documents, databases, maps, graphics.
On a pure news basis, those two approaches are proven audience growth winners.
Reproducing the print edition online, not so much.Even better, make sure your kickass print reporters know how to write for the web, which means more of a blog style, more of a conversational style, maybe even a little opinion, when doing those web-first updates.
There are a ton of other web-centric things newspapers can and should do with their web sites, but none of them include publishing first online enterprise and investigative pieces, columnist, lengthy features, trend stories and even analysis pieces.”
Join the debate
What’s your opinion on the Inquirer’s policy change? What’s the policy in your newspaper or news organisation? Please make a comment below.
Tagged: blogs, business model, Case studies, debate, investigative journalism, online
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[...] In short: the memo says the editors should hold some stories before they apper in print. I reported the controversy about this memo here. [...]