Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Online over Print...Amen!
Couldn't agree more with Lena West's guest post over at Yvonne DiVita's Lipsticking about print vs. online articles...and which are "better" to get quoted in. (Lena is she of Technology Diet fame.)
I too find myself unreasonably cranky when a publication wants to quote me or someone else from BlogHer, or wants us to submit an article, and they don't have an online version we can link to. I actually have a stack of a recent Newsletter for which I wrote a piece by my desk. Have I sent out any copies? No. Do I have a "reception area" where I can artfully display the Newsletters? No. Do we even give hard copy press kits to people anymore? I can't remember the last time.
Even worse is when you're the subject of an article or the contributor of one, and they want you to pay to get copies. There was even one recent publication that would have let me pay for a soft copy version of the article to post to the BlogHer site, but you had to pay in time increments, so that theoretically the file would expire after 6 months! I mean, really?
Am I being a big baby?
Is this some huge revenue source that is now going away for publications?
And seriously, why did companies ever pay to get copies of work that their employed donated to the publication?
Funny how I didn't give this a second thought when I was contributing on behalf of a larger company. My role included contributing such work, for which I was well-compensated. And buying the distributable copies didn't come out of my groups' budget. So, I just didn't care!
Not anymore! Give me a hyperlink or let's just admit we're not right for each other.
I too find myself unreasonably cranky when a publication wants to quote me or someone else from BlogHer, or wants us to submit an article, and they don't have an online version we can link to. I actually have a stack of a recent Newsletter for which I wrote a piece by my desk. Have I sent out any copies? No. Do I have a "reception area" where I can artfully display the Newsletters? No. Do we even give hard copy press kits to people anymore? I can't remember the last time.
Even worse is when you're the subject of an article or the contributor of one, and they want you to pay to get copies. There was even one recent publication that would have let me pay for a soft copy version of the article to post to the BlogHer site, but you had to pay in time increments, so that theoretically the file would expire after 6 months! I mean, really?
Am I being a big baby?
Is this some huge revenue source that is now going away for publications?
And seriously, why did companies ever pay to get copies of work that their employed donated to the publication?
Funny how I didn't give this a second thought when I was contributing on behalf of a larger company. My role included contributing such work, for which I was well-compensated. And buying the distributable copies didn't come out of my groups' budget. So, I just didn't care!
Not anymore! Give me a hyperlink or let's just admit we're not right for each other.
// posted by ElisaC @ 4:04 PM 
Comments:
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They're the ones being short sighted. They never learned that being generous is always the best way. I'm with online over print.
Great post and a great read for a Thursday night! Thank you.
Liz
Great post and a great read for a Thursday night! Thank you.
Liz
# posted by 
: 9/28/2006 5:16 PM
: 9/28/2006 5:16 PM
I'm finding, at least in the finance area, that more and more of the bigger publications that used to give a link in the article are no longer doing so. A recent Forbes article that quoted me extensively just printed my URL with no hyper-link. An unfortunate trend in my opinion. Anyone seeing this in other areas?
# posted by : 10/02/2006 12:28 AM
: 10/02/2006 12:28 AM
Oh, PFA, that's a whole other story! I have noticed that traditional media publications, while getting their act together about getting articles online, have totally not gotten it together about hyperlinking whenever and wherever appropriate.
For example: they're pretty good about linking to any public company..either their web site, or their stock symbol, but as you've experienced, they're not so good at linking to those other people they quote.
It's a shame.
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For example: they're pretty good about linking to any public company..either their web site, or their stock symbol, but as you've experienced, they're not so good at linking to those other people they quote.
It's a shame.
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