News outlets must publish to the Web first
I recently sat in the offices of a small paper, talking with the firm’s principles about the direction of their website. I was disheartened to hear some of the room’s decision makers say they should be holding back their best content from the Web. After all, they believed, if they put all of their content online, no one would bother to read their publication. I’ve heard similar arguments in television newsrooms, where the fear isn’t so much in undercutting their efforts as it is not wanting to tip their hand to the competition before they’ve had a chance to break a story on air. These are lines of reasoning that make sense to many print and broadcast professionals, but whether they realize it or not, we’ve moved to a time where all news media outlets need to be, first and foremost, Web publishers.
