PAPERS START TO TAKE WEB SERIOUSLY

The Times is following the Guardian and beginning to publish stories online before they appear in the paper. This is a big move for papers which have always regarded their internet operations as inherently secondary to their print editions (unlike sites like AOL, Yahoo! and BBC online, which publish what they get as son as they get it.
In part papers want to protect their commercial interests (their papers are more lucrative than their websites). But also (as I argued in a speech at Newswatch06 last week), papers are psychologically and organisationally in thrall to the production of a canonical print edition that is out of date as soon as it is consumed.
So fair play to the Guardian and the Times. But before we get too excited, observe that the stories they will put online first come from their foreign (and, in the Guardian's case, business) correspondents. Home news, features, columnists, leaders etc will be preserved for the printe edition, so there's still some way to go. Nonetheless, an experiment worth watching.

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