Opinions on holding content for print

I posted a question to the Web site WiredJournalists.com, after a newsroom discussion a few weeks ago. We were debating when we should post news online, right away or later. The concern at the time was that the local television station would use our Web site as their daily playbook. (That concern is still there now, but it has evolved in its scope to a more philosophical debate between print and Web.)

I got several great responses. Almost all of them supported the idea of posting to the Web without consideration of the competition because the TV stations aren’t really our competition online; everyone is.

Here are two of the best:

Noah Bombard, multimedia content editor for The Eagle-Tribune in Mass., wrote:

We are one of the few industries I know of that sabotage our own work. We try to do not quite so good of a job online so as not to compete with our print editions. When is not making something the best it can be ever a good thing?

Steve Yelvington, whose writing about news and the business behind it I greatly admire, wrote:

Begin by recognizing that “holding” for print is not a journalism decision, but rather a business decision. The journalism imperative is to tell the truth to as many people as will listen. The business imperative is to make as much money as possible.

If journalists are going to make business decisions, they have a responsibility to make well-informed, well-reasoned and strategically smart business decisions.

Being well-informed begins by understanding where your money comes from today, where it’s going to come from in the future, and how that picture is changing. How many journalists in such a discussion understand the financial picture? What is your revenue per page impression on the Web? is it for print? What is your daily/weekly/monthly reach/frequency for print and Web? How do those numbers break out by age cohort? What does that tell you about 2015 and 2020?

It could be that after equipping yourself with such information, you might chart out a product-differentiation strategy that would define certain types of news content that would go straight to the Web, and other types that would be held and planned for a print product and maybe never placed on the Web at all.

But if your conversation is not so well informed, and instead focuses on what a broadcast competitor might do, then you’re going to be reactive and not strategic, and set yourself up to have your butt kicked by time and change.

Related posts:

1. Web first or not?
2. Print headlines don’t always work online
3. Most readers would find a free alternative if their paper started charging for content
4. Doctored Language : CJR