The Economist needs to take advice in its own survey of new media

The Economist takes a seriously in depth look at the new media revolution in a survey this week.

I'll admit I'm still reading my way through it, it's been a busy weekend. But one thing that did strike me in the article entitled "Compose Yourself" was that the survey noted the need for successful publications in the online world to have free access to their content. First among the commentators was - who else? - Mr Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine:

The first step, says Mr Jarvis, is to tear down any walls around the website. Nowadays “it's not content until it's linked,” he says, and bloggers will not link to articles that require logins and subscriptions to be viewed. This has immediately obvious effects (see chart 2). The sites that bloggers link to most are the online New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, USA Today and the BBC. These are free or mostly free sites and thus, in effect, part of “the” conversation, because they are already part of a great many conversations.

It goes on to say that media analysts Jupiter also think it's good idea:

Free access and permanent links are two specific examples of a new “story-centric” approach that Jupiter Research, an internet consultancy, advises newspaper companies to adopt for their web editions.

A bit of physician heal thyself here.

The article is one of three in the new media survey that you must have a subscription in order to be able to view.

Is that defiance,or just the Economist's famed dead-pan irony at play?

I expect that free access is one of the things that will be high on the agenda of new editor John Micklethwait, who acknowledged that new media was a "hurricane" that would hit his business hard (see previous post on Open).

technorati tags: theeconomist media journalism blogs socialmedia citizenjournalism

Comments

[Stacy]

It would be nice if all publications had free online access to their material (even if they required a login like the nytimes --which is not entirely free either). Also, I think a commenting feature on articles would be an additional interest to most internet surfers.

[Chris Herbert]

I agree with you about the seeming contradiction.

I still haven't read the actual articles from the survey yet but in listening to the David Sifry audio interview, this contradiction is briefly addressed. They're discussing Technorati's top site list and the fact that The Economist isn't included (and the interviewer mentions that this website that he's never heard of--BoingBoing is included; I'm sorry, but any average web person must know about BB, but I digress). The newspaper's person, Andreas Kluth, says that any walled-off content automatically excludes the top sites from the spontaneous conversations of Technorati's top list. "It is a sin in the New Media world; if you're taking yourself out of spontaneous human conversations, that cannot be a good thing."

He says that he's not sure why The Economist still has walled-off content but suggests that he'll ask his boss.

[Antony Mayfield]

Stacy - I see you have helped the Economist out with a full version of the article on your blog.

I agree completely about the need to open up for comment. When you're used to reading blog content it actually begins to feel instinctively wrong that you can comment on articles and that there's something missing when you can't see what others have said.

Interesting that the NY Times is top of the list with those restrictions. does that contradict what Jeff Jarvis and Jupiter were saying, I wonder?

I don't mind paying for the Economist sub, I have done for a while. For me it's worth it. The question is: is that subscription sustainable in the new media market we're moving to?

Chris - thanks for pointing out that the audio is available. I'd clocked it but not listened yet.