Until recently the phrase “digital exclusive” was code for “this wasn’t good enough to put in the paper”.
Young reporters devastated to see their hard work spiked were pacified by the news desk thusly – it’ll get a good show on the website we don’t care less about.
That’s changing and it will change rapidly this year, I expect.
The Times’s app is already very good and it seems to have more and more resources being chucked its way. Stories that would otherwise be in tomorrow’s paper seem to be available earlier and earlier.
You don’t need to wait till tomorrow to read what Mike Atherton thought about today’s cricket, for example.
The FT and the Guardian seem to increasingly put up columns for tomorrow’s print edition a day “early” as it were.
At the Standard, the paper is still the main thing, but copy appears on the website before it has hit the street.
If you think this sounds like newspapers belatedly doing what they should have done years ago, you’re right.
I think for flaks this means you are going to find you’ve a shorter and shorter window to get your message over, since we’re filing earlier.
Also, that if you’re quick, there’s a chance to see what’s going to run tomorrow and get your complaint in before it does…
