Print Subscribers Cry Foul Over WP's Online-Only Story 96
Hugh Pickens writes "The decision by the Washington Post to publish an article exclusively online has angered many readers who still pay for the print edition of the newspaper and highlighted the thorny issues newspaper editors still face in serving both print and online audiences. The 7,000 word story about the slaying in 2006 of Robert Wone, a young lawyer who was found stabbed to death in a luxurious townhouse in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington where a 'polyamorous family' of three men lived, is the sort of long-form reporting that newspaper editors say still justifies print in the digital age and many editors agree that print is still the place to publish deep investigative reporting, in part to give certain readers a reason to keep paying for news. 'If you're doing long form, you should do it in print,' said newspaper consultant Mark Potts. 'This just felt like a nice two-part series that they didn't have the room to put in the paper, so they just threw it on the Web.' Editors at The Post say they considered publishing the article in print, but they concluded it was too long at a time when the paper, like most others, was in dire financial straits and trying to scale back newsprint costs. 'Newspapers are going broke in part because news can be read, free of charge, on the Internet,' wrote one reader in a letter to the editor. 'As a nearly lifelong reader of The Post, I could not read this article in the paper I pay for and subscribe to; instead I came on it accidentally while scrolling online for business reasons.'"
Re:long-form reporting...deep investigative report (Score:4, Insightful)
I stare at Excel just about all damn day.
The last thing that I want to do when I get home is stare at a screen for the 40 minute it takes to read an article that is as long as this one. As a matter of fact, I'd probably print that article out if it weren't in the paper that's delivered to my house.
Say what you will about vinyl, but there is a huge difference in the experience of reading on a computer screen that sits a foot in front of you and a paper you can hold in your lap while kicking back on the couch.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Backwards? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not new (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:long-form reporting...deep investigative report (Score:3, Insightful)
there's nothing special about bits of paper when it comes to conveying information.
No, but there is something special about the difference between the people who read the bits of paper and those who don't. The people who read the paper want the news in a longer format that takes more time. They want to read the news enough that they pay for it. When you put something on the web, it's usually accompanied by a place to put comments, many of which will cheapen the experience and provide a very shallow or biased viewpoint on the article. It's like saying that there's nothing special about the china cabinet when it comes to storing priceless antiques: you're correct in one sense, but mistaken in another.
I used to like the Washington Post online.... (Score:4, Insightful)
... but last week they fired Daniel Froomkin who was one of the more fearless critics of the power that be. He was pretty merciless to the Bush administration across a range of issues including torture. Then to show he is a class act he was starting to be a pretty merciless critic of the Obama administration too. I think he was having some kind of spat with the Post's resident right wingnut ... Krauthammer but I would be interested if anyone knows the dirt on why exactly he was fired. To fire Froomkin and keep Krauthammer has dramatically diminished my opinion of the Post and I am not reading it at all lately.
Even prior to firing Froomkin my impression is the quality of their editorials, and original news reporting in general, has been in steep decline lately.
Re:Headline: (Score:3, Insightful)
Having said that, I doubt there is anywhere in the paper that says that ALL content online will also be in the printed format.