Newspapers vs. News Sites

I thought this Adaptive Path post did a decent job of capturing the issues surrounding TimesSelect, op-eds, restricted access to content on news sites, as well as editorial "manipulation" in the context of "blogging":

"I believe now that it’s possible to evaluate the maturity of an organization’s online strategy by the overall “awareness” its actions betray; a truly mature communications strategy conveys awareness that the greater value lies in contributing to, rather than attempting to own or manipulate the conversations it engenders."

Apparently, the New York Times still needs some work. But then I accidentally came across an article published on a think tank website via a predefined Google News search (think tanks? news?) and noticed at the top of the think tank version of the article that it had also had appeared on washingtonpost.com. Really? So I visited the news site, and had to register to get access. I didn't feel like registering, so I searched for the article in Factiva: no luck. What? They're supposed to include the Washington Post. But wait: this is washingtonpost.com. So I went back to washingtonpost.com and registered--for free--only to find the article in a special section called Think Tank Town (really?), which is restricted to registered users. Interestingly, Google News lists the washingtonpost.com article as Washington Post content: hrm.

In defence of news sites, NYT is NOT a blog, and washingtonpost.com is not really the Washington Post. As I was able to register on the washingtonpost.com site, I got a glimpse of their social software at work: they link directly to what bloggers are saying about their articles. What concerned me is that I could access neither GM's or anyone else's response to Friedman nor AEI's piece in Factiva. Who's going to archive that stuff other than the publisher? How are database vendors such as Factiva going to deal with that kind of content?

It does kind of cut the discussion short when you can't find out what all the fuss is about without forking over dough, or without registering. But these problems aren't new, and newpsapers as well as news sites are going to try to make their money, because that's what they do. But TimesSelect might want to take a look at washingtonpost.com's use of web 2.0. [Source: Adaptive Path]