What's wrong with online publications

Valleywag blog hires away a magazine editor from Business 2.0. The media world shudders. (Sheesh.)

Digital Media Wire: Analysis: Business 2.0 vs. Valleywag. 2007-Jun-15, by Scott Karp

What would happen if Business 2.0 stopped publishing in print and instead allowed each of its writers to become full-time bloggers? A magazine editorial would likely say that the result would be less in-depth feature reporting, and more short news items. And there would be less compelling layout and design enhancing the content. And you can’t take it with you to the beach or on the plane.

I do agree that there is a real art to magazine layout and design, and that is lost online. But I don’t believe that the opportunity for feature-length reporting has to be lost online. If people don’t want to read long stories online, then why not make those stories easily printable — maybe even a smartly designed layout in a PDF, but one that is optimized for a standard printer? You could argue that Valleywag does do extended reporting through it’s ongoing coverage of topics like Second Life and Mahalo, rather than saving it all up as a traditional magazine piece would.

The point of Business 2.0 vs. Valleywag is not to suggest that one is better than the other — there’s definitely something lost and something gained in the evolution of publishing, although probably not in equal proportion.