Print Subscribers Cry Foul Over WP's Online-Only Story

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

[fiannaFailMan]

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.

I hold my computer on my lap as a kick back on the couch - they call them laptops.

I know, but there's something about the feel of a physical paper that's so much more pleasant than a bloody screen. I hate not being able to see the whole page in one view without having to scroll. It's like when I worked in a drawing office as a CAD draughtsman. Sure we'd long ago dispensed with the drawing boards and all the design work was done on screen, but when it came to reviewing drawings and looking for potential problems, checking calculations etc. it was time to run a plot and pore over the thing flat out on the desk. There'll always be a role for paper.

See also, from The Atlantic [theatlantic.com] (which I happen to buy in print form) on why The Economist newspaper is doing so well. The Economist uses long form reporting, doesn't charge for online content (except for the archives) and is still growing strongly.

Re:Sucks, but what are you going to do?

[Qzukk]

what are you going to do?

Easy: If you're short on space and have to choose between something your readers can read for free online anywhere (newswire, syndicated columns, etc), and something they can only get from you (local news, investigative reporting), go with what makes your paper unique and adds value not available elsewhere.

You don't pay for the paper

[mdf356]

Even with a subscription you're not paying for the paper. The nominal cost of the subscription or the news stand price covers approximately the cost of the physical paper (roughly; more or less depending on paper size and price). The reporters, staff, printing press, etc., etc., are all paid for by advertising, which is a much larger cost than $1.00 or so per day.

The only difference with the online version is that no one has managed to get the advertising revenue to match costs yet. And in fact, this is becoming more of a problem with the print version, as the ad revenue falls due to falling circulation.

But the point is, even folks who "pay for the paper" aren't doing so; it's a specious argument.

Re:long form better online!

[TheViewFromTheGround]

Long form is way better online these days. I'm working in this field, and I'd expand on your reasons greatly:

• Long form journalism doesn't sell papers -- the sports pages do. As advertising dollars erode, this kind of journalism WILL go to other venues, be it regional or highly local papers or the web.
• The audience for long-form investigative journalism is almost certainly mainly well educated and mainly online.
• The physical constraints of the format and the distribution mechanism of newspapers means is outdated: You can create much richer context around a story -- using multimedia, 3rd party resources, etc -- using good old hyperlinks.
• Layout and design still matters -- you still have to produce online pieces. But it doesn't require a genius to do this -- certainly not the many layers of bureaucracy I hear about from reporters at the Post and the Chicago Tribune in getting their work online.
• If you want a printable version (perhaps of a culmative project), provide it as a PDF.
• Online resources are far easier to track, note, and share with tools like Google Reader or Zotero.
• The Internet is at least as great a venue of influence as printed material these days -- big, big stories have debuted online in recent years. If part of the point of long-form journalism is to influence discourse, policy, and decision-making, then you need to go where you have leverage.

• That quote -- 'If you're doing long form, you should do it in print' -- is pure, unadulterated dogma, unmoored from any reality. If you're doing long form, you aren't doing it for the dailies or the alternative weeklies anymore, most likely. Some, if not all, of your professional life will be online or bump up against Internet technologies. If you need a printed product, you have options (get your audience to help; print high quality single page magazine-covers-without-the-magazine with story snippets and your URL...), you can do events, but your primary channel of distribution is very likely going to be the Internet.

  People who are whining that a story whose primary audience is probably 99% online didn't make it into a format that is hemhoraging money are out of their damn minds, and probably will soon be out of business, too.