It ought not to be a shocker, but it's being treated as one: The decision by the Tallahassee Democrat to not run a story online and keep it for its Sunday newspaper only.
The 120-inch story involves an investigation into a local sheriff and the paper chose to hold it offline in order to provide some unique content to the newspaper. Besides, the editor said, few people read the lengthy stories online.
The former reason is stronger than the latter one, because lengthy stories aren't read in print by the vast majority, either. They're special and they attract and motivate a special audience, but they're not mass material.
As for unique material, many newspapers do not own electronic rights to many syndications and other content (in our case, for instance, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Daily Telegraph, Los Angeles Times and Getty Images material, along with many of our comics and diversions, cannot be supplied online).
But the Democrat's dilemma belongs to many newspapers today: Now that the work has been done to make the Web site like the newspaper, how do you make the newspaper different than the Web site?
The 120-inch story involves an investigation into a local sheriff and the paper chose to hold it offline in order to provide some unique content to the newspaper. Besides, the editor said, few people read the lengthy stories online.
The former reason is stronger than the latter one, because lengthy stories aren't read in print by the vast majority, either. They're special and they attract and motivate a special audience, but they're not mass material.
As for unique material, many newspapers do not own electronic rights to many syndications and other content (in our case, for instance, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Daily Telegraph, Los Angeles Times and Getty Images material, along with many of our comics and diversions, cannot be supplied online).
But the Democrat's dilemma belongs to many newspapers today: Now that the work has been done to make the Web site like the newspaper, how do you make the newspaper different than the Web site?
