Expanding Page One for the Web

If Websites are actually the portal to the future, should newspaper front pages mimic Web content? Neil Chase, editor of nytimes.com, dispelled some myths about the relationship between the print newspaper and the paper's website in a session at the American Press Institute's recent seminar "Page One: Content, Presentation, Brand".

Myth 1: Releasing articles online before they are printed shrinks circulation.

Posting articles as soon as they are written does not affect print circulation. Rather, it increases the number of people who access your newspaper's content. This is because there is very little overlap between print readers and Internet readers - at least for The New York Times, says Chase. For Internet users, it's digital content or nothing. Yet print readers don't unsubscribe because content is available online. Perhaps the difference can be attributed to a lifestyle choice. Chase says that market research also suggests that if people hear of a breaking news story in the evening, they are more likely to buy a newspaper with the story in the morning.

Because most newspapers make the majority of their revenue from ad sales as opposed to circulation, ads matter more. Perhaps the same philosophy can be applied to newspaper Web sites.

What about charging for access to the Web site? Chase doesn't have an answer for this yet, though he suggests that The New York Times' current strategy of making select material available to paying customers is working. It's not surprising that the select material consists of columns - content exclusive to The New York Times.

On the flip side, the people most affected by the holding of stories are the journalists themselves. Why risk breaking a story online at night, they reason, only to have it picked up without credit in the morning by another news source? Chase believes that if journalists can move beyond personal feeling of protection, posting articles online first actually improves the image of the newspaper.

Myth 2: Using Internet feedback in the print edition can attract more readers.

Now that Web sites can track users, is it wise to use that market information to tailor the front page to what readers want? Neil Chase says an emphatic no. Compromising the hard news for stuff that readers seem to enjoy threatens the integrity of the publication.

Take a look at the nytimes.com's "Most E-mailed" list. There's no doubt that these items reflect issues that people find interesting, Chase says, but people go to The New York Times because they know that it is a pre-eminent news source. While the quirky articles may get continuous traffic for several days as people tell their friends, hard news articles get heavier traffic upon release.

In addition, the quirky features are usually one-hit wonders; people are often directed to them from other websites and leave nytimes.com after reading the article. For example, although nytimes.com's most popular article for several weeks was a story on a high-pitched ringtone that only young people can hear , Chase says it's not a good idea to feature this information as a "serious" news article on the front page of the Web site, much less the front page of the paper.

Ultimately, Chase says, the newspaper still serves the valuable purpose of editing news and presenting it in a way that makes the reader feel informed. This skill may be more valued in today's age when consumers are bombarded with information. The self-directed nature of a Web site - people only search for the information they want - cannot replace the serendipity value of a print paper.

Myth 3: Adding more content to the Web site means increasing cost.

Chase points out that many of the things that can be done on a website use information that has already been gathered. He listed several ways to expand a newspaper's Web site without incurring additional costs: