And more....
| Print Subscribers Cry Foul Over WP's Online-Only Story |
| from the wonder-how-they-feel-about-online-coupons dept. |
| posted by timothy on Monday June 22, @17:24 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/22/2119228 |
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[0]Hugh Pickens writes "The decision by the Washington Post to publish an
article exclusively online has [1]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.
[2]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.'"

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/06/22/2119228

Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/media/22post.html
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102510.html