Not All Web Sites Are Created Equal

The news that the lauded Editor & Publisher (E&P) has been sold and will survive to fight another day was officially announced last week. E&P, which has undergone many incarnations, mergers and forms since its founding in 1884, was in danger of dying. Fortunately, the E&P magazine and Web site were bought by an Irvine, California-based company called Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc. Well, maybe it was fortunate—it’s hard to say so early on.
 
That’s because although it seems like a happy ending, anyone who has spent time in California knows that it’s a state of suspended reality and trendsetters. Trendsetters like McIntosh, a newspaper publishing company, tend to have money. But in the case of E&P—a resource that has no comparable equal in terms of reporting on the news industry and being a resource for those who work in it—being saved from extinction under such conditions wasn’t necessarily the most desirable solution.
 
In a Huffington Post blog on Tuesday, former E&P editor Gregg Mitchell (who was ousted along with Senior Editor Joe Strupp in the takeover) describes the changes that will now be coming.
 
"Much of the speculation about the "new" E&P has been on the decision to focus on business and tech/press room issues. Many observers in recent days have warned that the "E" will be largely taken out of "E&P." McIntosh pointed to this for The New York Times, as it reported: ‘Mr. McIntosh said in an interview that he wanted to shift Editor & Publisher's focus toward the business and technology of the industry, with less emphasis on what happens in newsrooms.’"
 
Add to this that E&P Pub, the Web site's newsroom-oriented (and most popular) blog, was shut down.
 
From a business angle, it is only natural to seek a niche on the Internet. McIntosh might think they can do this by taking the tech-business savvy angle and backing off on newsroom action. Yes, of course that makes sense--E&P's audience of mostly journalists, editors, and publishers never set foot in a newsroom.
 
The decision-makers at McIntosh might benefit from checking out a recent study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism that illuminates just how important the information that comes out of newsrooms is to the public. And thus, how important the life of the newsroom is to industry professionals. In fact, the newsroom and economic survival go hand-in-hand.
 
Among the most key findings of the study was that the majority of new information comes from traditional sources, and that new media, with which the new E&P is so enamored, plays only a limited role in disseminating information.
 
Despite the logic of the Pew study and the conventional wisdom of journalists, Charles McKeown, who remains as E&P's publisher, is on board with the shifted focus. In a statement announcing the sale, McKeown said:
 
"Newspapers, which are transforming beyond the printed page to all forms of digital media, simply could not lose the one place where the industry could have a conversation with itself and exchange ideas and best practices for navigating the uncertain waters ahead, exemplified by our Interactive Media Conference which includes cable, TV, radio and other media."
 
Newspapers are transforming beyond the printed page to all forms of digital media? Isn’t that what the executed E&P Pub blog was for? Call me stupid, but I don't get it. Ironically at the same time as the sale of E&P, a study based on empirical data found that newspapers are not moving beyond the printed page. The web is the web and the printed page is the printed page. They intersect and overlap, but neither can replace or supplant the other.
 
That same Pew study, in fact, found that much of what is published online does not adhere to the traditions of print journalism that make it a more reliable source of information than the Web. The study found "numerous examples" of Web sites that stole entire sections of other people's work, press releases republished word for word, and on and on. 
 
Of course, E&P is not a newspaper for mass consumption, it is an industry Web site and magazine that caters to a specific professional audience. But much of that audience remains involved in the daily work of producing newspapers. For some, the newsroom might feel a bit like their second home. So a tech-savvy-business-media-mogul revamp of E&P could be precisely the wrong direction to take.
 
They say the newspaper industry is in trouble. But I think it's a corporate identity crisis that tries to place blame on the most traditional, reliable and time-tested version of information—newspapers themselves.
 
If you liked this piece about the sale of Editor & Publisher, check out this post on the Tonight Show battle, the young demographic and free online television.
 
(Photo from the Library of Congress Digital Archives)