Remember the “print edition?”

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The Houston' Chronicle's front page PDF.

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A screen shot of the Chronicle's PDF.

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The Chronicle's home page.

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The Chronicle's News page. Keep scrolling for the front page link.

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The Chronicle's electronic edition, running on the somewhat awkward Newsstand.com.

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A web blurb on the Chronicle's front page.

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The LA Time's home page.

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The Print Edition page at LATimes.com

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The Newsstand home page, which the Chronicle links to. (You have to search for the Chronicle once you are there.)

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The NY Times's PDF edition.

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The New York Times Today's Paper page.

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The Washington Post's front page is shown in the browser window.

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The WP's Print Edition page.

hERE IS A simple question: Why don’t newspaper Web sites promote their printed newspapers more? When they first built Web sites, papers crowed about them. They were proud to have gone online, and they wanted everyone to know. There were lots of teasers in the paper about all the stuff you can get on the web. Stories point to more resources. Readers are urged to vote in polls, give feedback to the columnists, and buy cars.

They’re still doing this. The Houston Chronicle has a big front-page blurb, “What's on Chron.com.” But when you go to Chron.com, it”s really hard to find anything about the printed Chronicle. (I single out my friends in Houston because I helped design both the paper and the web site, and I've tried to make this point with them directly.)

On their web site, there is nothing about the print edition on the home page except a little subscription link on the footer. If go to the bottom of the News page, and there just above the lottery number link is, “Today’s Front Page.” that gives you a PDF file, laconically titled, “p1.pdf”.

At The New York Times, and many others, there is still a whole section organized like the printed paper, entitled, Today’s Paper, and reached via the top nav bar on the home page. It not only shows an image of the front page — they show you a low-res image where you can’t read the text, presumably so you’ll go to Starbucks and buy a paper. (The Times doesn’t think that you know about the Newseum’s high-res file.)

I like “Today’s Paper” because it show the editors’ news judgement at a particular moment (usually 5:00pm the previous day.) On the web site, breaking news often takes over, and it is harder to sense the importance of the stories, just as it is on TV. Last Friday it was the bomb scare in London. That day the web editors held on to the papers’ lead stories (the court integration decision at the Times and Biggio’s 3,000th hit at the Chronicle), but often the truly important sutff is bumped for breaking news, like on TV.

The folks at Chron.com say that their audience is now substantially different from that of the printed edition. Something like 20 percent of the site’s uniques also see the paper at least occasionally. But that is only another reason to promote the paper. It may be that out-of-towners can’t get the Chronicle at Starbucks, but the authority of the brand comes from the increasingly interesting mix of stories in the paper. I see it mostly passing through the Houston airport, or at my sister’s house when I stop over, and I really think it is now the best daily outside of the big nationals, after the Washington Post. The news audience on the web is ranking it up there, too. As is Google News, according to Newsknife, which provides this list for the year to June:

No.1 sources
  1. New York Times
  2. Houston Chronicle
  3. Washington Post
  4. Voice of America
  5. Times Online, UK
  6. Forbes
Home page sources
  1. New York Times
  2. Houston Chronicle
  3. Washington Post
  4. Voice of America
  5. Bloomberg
  6. International Herald Tribune, France
Home page + 10 sub-pages
  1. Guardian Unlimited
  2. Forbes
  3. Houston Chronicle
  4. ABC News
  5. CBS News
  6. New York Times

So I don’t think it would hurt if they would push the print product a bit, after 10 years of the tide going the other way. The printed edition is, after all, still paying for the newsroom — but the papers, shoved to the wall by an unholy combination of stock analysts and media buyers, need all the help they can get.

Until we get a digital version of a newspaper that is as handy as the printed product (The New York Times Reader comes closest) it would be great to see how they are presenting the news. And it would be a good idea, as the web grows and the print circulation shrinks, if they offered some things you can’t get without subscription, “Times Select”. Maybe the crossword puzzle is online, in print. Or certain comics. Or, if Rupert gets his way with the Journal, the WSJ Sweepstakes.

Your Thoughts (1 comment)

2007-11-01 by Chad Edge

In agreement

Mr. Black, I've followed your wisdom (and disagreed on occasion) for many years - specifically when it came to daily newspapers. What has vexed me for years (since Web sites that work) was how resistant editors have been to creating a two-way communication between the print and online products. For instance, there is a deep discussion going on at my current employer about the balance of news, editorial, user generated and user contributed content. Most feel that some sort of community contributed content is important (as long as that contribution doesn't result in a LA Times blog fiasco). Unfortunately, with the agreement that contributions are important, they have been relegated to the Web only - submit your comments here and that's the end of the story. I think this is a shame - if a daily newspaper takes such effort for promote the Web site(s) under it's roof, submitting content and information in a desire to extend the viewership, why not reverse this process? Isn't user contributed content valuable in some form that could improve the views (ABC's?) of the print product? I agree with my editors that blog posts and "the Seahawks are number-one!" are not appropriate editorial, but if 1,000+ people repeat how great their local football team is lately, wouldn't that raise a red flag of "hey, visitors are *very* interested in the Seahawks; let's find a way to put more content in the print product - and of course let's inform those same visitors of the new printed content!" I'm a young person, having only worked with dailies for ten years, but this is an issue I've presented for that entire career. I've yet to see a bridge worthy of being called "two-way." The PDF-versions of daily product is important for ABC's, but I don't see a lot more value; there's no interactivity (defined by me as the impact of my personal involvement in the news process as a subscriber with a voice). Maybe I just need to come up with something important enough to say.

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