New Media and the Print Mentality

In a critique of U.S. News & World Report‘s new PDF-based subscription-only weekly product, U.S. News Weekly, Portfolio.com’s Felix Salmon asserted some ideas about new media that I’d like to distill here.

His analysis of U.S. News‘ new product aside, Salmon highlights what I like to call the print mentality. Salmon asserts:

…[A]rtificial once-a-week publishing schedules were never going to work online. If a story is written and ready to go, neither its author nor its readers have any interest in sitting and twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the calendar to tick over to whatever day the publisher thinks that the article should appear. This kind of thing just seems funny nowadays….

Salmon nails it by expanding on the concept of news that many journalist share. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary defines news as, “newly received or noteworthy information about recent events.” Recent events.

Though I admire his work, I’ve got to distance myself from Salmon for a bit. His analysis of U.S. News Weekly treats the product as if it is new media. I don’t make the same assumption. To me, U.S. News Weekly is a PDF that happens to be hosted online. That makes it no different from scanning a yard-sale flyer and put it on a website, in my opinion.

No, proper new media is progressive. It takes advantage of the latest trends in media distribution to reach its audience. New media doesn’t have to utilize the latest technology, just the latest trends in technology. Go where the audience is or where you think they’ll soon be; don’t try to make the audience go to where your organization would like them to be.

(By the way the tardiness of U.S. News‘ PDF stem from its production-related turn-around time. At it’s heart, U.S. News Weekly is a print product that hosted online. So I’d rather concentrate on self-imposed web embargoes.)

Self-imposed embargoes

There is no utility gained by sitting on content, whether it be for an hour or for a day. A story waiting at the desk can’t gather CPM or generate page-views. And with the advent of popular search engines like Dogpile (Is there anything else?), no one news outlet holds a monopoly on information.  So for every story one organization holds, Google News will surface a dozen spawns. That’s opportunity lost.

The days of building up an archive of evergreen stories for rainy days are over. That said, online publishing schedules are only appropriate in two circumstances:

1. Embargoed content
2. Bloggers who program content out so that they can go on vacation

Using it anywhere else with your content is a disservice to both the producers and the consumers. It is in no one’s best interest to sit on timely information.