Print world adjusts to online news

Tag : cooking paper

WHEN newspapers first migrated online, they still thought asnewspapers: even breaking news was saved for the next morning'sedition.
The simple reason was that as newspaper people they were hard-wiredto save it for the paper -- to sell the paper.
That concept has gone the way of linotype: these days, too manyreaders would experience deja vu reading yesterday's breaking newsin today's paper, because they have seen it on the net.
"Those days are long gone. I cannot think of any big-timenewspaper globally that does that," says Jack Matthews, chiefexecutive of Fairfax Digital.
"People want news and information as soon as it happens.
"Sport has been that way for ever: there is nothing thatunusual or different about business news in terms of people'sdesire to have it when it happens."
At the outset of their website careers, says Matthews, too manynewspapers thought simplistically that good quality copy went intoprint, and lesser quality copy went online.
"I think it took time for newspapers to work out that thevalue in breaking news was the speed and accuracy with which youcan break the news, and the value of analysis and interpretation isin its depth," he says.
"Obviously the online format suits the former.
"There is probably a better opportunity for a paper like theAFR to have deep and exclusive analysis of subjects, but equally,it does not make sense to save all of your offering in that areafor print."
The Economist's editor in chief John Micklethwait says he firstthought of the internet as a hurricane which had already hitnewspapers and was coming further ashore to savage magazines.
While some magazines have been hit badly, Micklethwait toldmediabistro.com that the internet "seems to be glancing"magazines, rather than hitting directly. The Economist has reactedby "putting so much more information out there".
"One thing we are doing is just increasing the amount of dailycontent (online), so that people can come back every day and findsomething worthwhile.
"And we have done a lot to make sure the content online is atthe same level as the content of the magazine."
The Economist has plenty of tips for its Australian peers toemulate.
Micklethwait says it has had big success in starting a weeklypodcast and offering a full audio version of the magazine online,read by BBC newsreaders.
"It is a way of getting people used to experiencing TheEconomist in different ways: people who are jogging, people who arein cars, people who are cooking, people who are at the gym,"he says.