Where the web leads...
The Guardian has as of today switched its editorial cycle for paper and site back to front. Now the site gets stories first, as and when they happen, rather than waiting for the paying customers to catch up - an integrated media brand on- and offline, as opposed to a paper with a nice website.Kim Fletcher's nice MediaGuardian (yes, in the paper...) summary of the far-ranging implications of the changes is worth a peek - "Has a reader more right to insult a writer on the Comment is Free website when he has paid 70p for the paper or clicked on the website for nothing?": http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1795194,00.html
posted by John @ 13:28
1 Comments:
If only it was this simple. The Guardian's "web first" strategy seems a bit bizarre. As a leader in the web news world, it puzzles me why they would suddenly introduce something because the Times has done it - as if Guardian Unlimited were somehow failing. Rather than integration, the policy of having paper journalists file to the web would appear to sideline their (consistenly underpaid) web staff. This is an old argument that I thought had been settled back at the end of the 90s. To run a good website needs professional staff working on the website, not an automated system to get the same copy on the web as in the newspaper (whatever the order it's done). As a professional new media journalist, I resent the implication in this that there's nothing special about what I do and that any journalist can do it. Integration is only possible if equal respect is given to journalists on the paper and on the website so that they can work together effectively. The big difference between what journalists on Guardian Unlimited are paid compared to their paper colleagues is a clear sign of a lack of respect, this apparently ill-thought out and haphazardly implemented policy appears to compound it.
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