Following a link on Instapundit led me to author Virginia Postrel’s story about her kidney donation in the current issue of Texas Monthly. It’s a moving and admirable story, and well worth the read.
Thinking about how the story was presented online, the immediate thing I wished for was some form of interactivity - a forum, a place for feedback, comments, well-wishes, etc.
Then I looked closer and noticed another interesting twist. The link I followed went to a section of TexasMonthly.com titled “Media Previews”, where, apparently, members of the press can read stories without being a magazine subscriber or registered user.
Not only that, media members with the right link get the full story, while everyone else gets short shrift. Compare these versions of Postrel’s story, “Here’s Looking at You, Kidney”:
Media preview: The full story.
Everyone else: Just short of two paragraphs.
A quick search on Technorati for “virginia postrel kidney” turned up 125 posts that contained those words. Every single link to the story from the first 20 posts listed — including links from high-profile bloggers like Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan — went to the full version - none to the regular Texas Monthly version. Even Postrel’s own blog points to the special version of the story.
In a way, Texas Monthly scooped itself, letting the full version of the story out there and making it readily available while offering up a lesser version for those not in-the-know, while missing out on the opportunity for interactivity.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Pinkdome // May 25, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Many publications offer ‘advance previews’ to blogs and other media outlets so they can hype the story or quote from it and write their own opinion pieces or what have you. They don’t publish the entire piece on the website so people will go buy the magazine.
2 Jeff // May 25, 2006 at 5:02 pm
That makes sense. I understand that. But the world of publishing is changing fast. Magazines are wrestling with what content is free vs. paid, what content is subscriber-only, etc. I like how Wired rolls out stores from the current month’s issue over time. You can’t read the whole magazine online on the day it hits the newsstands, but you can eventually read the whole thing online after a period of time.
3 eliz. s. // May 26, 2006 at 10:16 am
Jeff - This post was chosen for Austinist’s best of the local blogs for the week.
http://www.austinist.com/archives/2006/05/26/best_of_the_austin_blogs_week_of_may_22.php
4 The Jeff Beckham Weblog » Texas Monthly’s Media Preview Problem // Jun 16, 2006 at 3:07 pm
[...] Like they did with last month’s story by Virginia Postrel on her kidney donation, Texas Monthly releases the full story as an online preview to a group of media members to gain attention for the upcoming issue. There’s nothing wrong with that and I understand the practice. [...]
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