Catherine Bray, comissioning editor of 4Talent, talks on her blog about the old misconception that print is in competition with online. It’s a difficult mindset to change in those who honestly believe that by embracing digital they will destroy their print readership.
She also offers an interesting audio clip from her talk to the Regional Press Network highlighting the editorial decisions of 4Talent and demonstrating print and online can be very complementary.
It’s slightly different for newspapers as the turnaround for our print product is much faster, but I like the idea that print is the place for slightly less time-sensitive articles – in-depth analysis, comment, features, etc.
Making print less time-senstive, I think, increases its worth and makes people more likely to hold onto it for longer and read it more.
“Making print less time-senstive, I think, increases its worth and makes people more likely to hold onto it for longer and read it more.”
Totally agree, though obviously it’s easier for us at 4Talent as the magazine is printed twice yearly and is as thick as a book!
The flipside, I suppose, for online, is to remember that what you write for a newspaper online is up permanentely, so can both be more immediate, and yet still findable at the click of a button ten years on- both a potentially positive and negative thing…
Yeah, I don’t think that print-as-news-vehicle has much mileage any more. I’m a strong advocate of print become more analytical, giving depth to the stories breaking on the web.
Totally agree on making print more than a news vechile. One interesting point here though is how Schibsted, the Norwegian-based pan-European media company, decided very early on that if print should be cannibalised, Schibsted would be the cannibal: they openly admit that the company’s online suceess is slowly eroding print readership etc. All subsidiaries within the company are effectively competing against each other – that’s another way of doing things.
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