dispatches is a new current affairs quarterly with a companion website, Rethink-Dispatches.com featuring original content as well as extracts from the magazine.

Virtual Intern Natalie Chillington put forward a few questions to editor and art director Gary Knight about the online side to dispatches.

Why is dispatches not published online?

“Principally [the fact,] that our content is not web compatible in so far as web users don’t respond to 25,000 words and 80 images. The point of dispatches is depth. Having said that we do have a website and it will grow.”

Knight hopes that Rethink-Dispatches.com will be used in addition to rather than instead of dispatches.

“I am currently reading a 700 page book on the Korean War by David Halberstam and I would never do that on the web,” says Knight, “but next to me is my laptop and when I want more background on the players in the book I look them up on the web.”

The fact that dispatches is produced by just four people – three of whom have other jobs – also means that the team has had no choice but to prioritise. “We decided to get the book right first.”

In comparison to other sites

Perhaps as a result of having a small team, the website is rather simple and lacking in interactive features – although effective nonetheless in, as the Mission Statement says, “aiming for the widest possible appeal.”

I asked Knight how he felt the website compared to other magazine websites.

“We have made no attempt to put the whole book online. Most magazines have a staff of over a hundred and come out weekly. We are properly compared with Granta or the Paris Review, both of which have more than one member of staff! I would judge our website in a year.”

It seems Rethink-Dispatches.com is a work in progress and it will be interesting to see how the team chooses to make use of multimedia to enhance their product.

“As time goes by I think our visual presence will be much stronger than our competitors’. I think it will be one of the places to go to for photography on the web, but that takes time and we don’t have too much of that.”

The website contains a lot of requests to “Subscribe to read the rest of this…” So has providing ‘teasers’ of the magazine content online increased sales of dispatches in print? Knight thinks probably not.

“The point is that this is a small operation paying for original content and we have to monetise it somehow. Giving it away on the web would probably not be smart at this stage in our evolution, especially as it is not an appropriate platform on which to read our content.”

Knight’s view on the media landscape

I asked Knight what his perspectives were on how the media landscape is changing.

“I think the media is changing but that is not such a bad thing as long as we have high standards. Delivery methods change all the time, big deal. TV did not, as predicted, kill off the radio and I doubt the web will kill off print or TV either.

“What is important is not the delivery system, it is the content, and when old media understands how to use the web, I think the web content will improve.

“I think MySpace and YouTube are not the media, nor are bloggers. They are the 21st century equivalent of Hyde Park Corner [sic] and youth clubs. The future of news delivery on the web demands better editing and citation so people know where to get reliable well written/filmed material.

“Currently, it’s like walking into a book store the size of a football field looking for a book to read on the beach. It’s confusing.”

Knight feels that publishing dispatches only in print will be sustainable. “We need depth, independence and clarity, not sound bites.”

Perhaps as Rosenblum puts it in the editor’s note, “Subjects as important as the fate of our world deserve the permanence of print.”

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Virtual intern Natalie Chillington rounds up last week’s online journalism-related news

Google

• Google will announce a new metrics tool to measure web site audience, to rival current power players Nielsen and ComScore.

• Lots of debate over whether Google is making us stupid

WordPress

• Puffbox.com announces it will be sponsoring WordCamp UK in July,bringing together around 100 devotees of WordPress in Birmingham for aweekend of code and conversation.

Twitter

• Debate over whether you should use Twitter for live blogging at a conference.

• The same people behind the tech news site WebProNews have launched Twellow, a new search tool and directory for finding Twitter users

Social

• Facebook launched new mini-feed comments

• MySpace partners with NBC News and msnbc.com to find a citizen journalist to cover national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties later this summer in the US.

• Nokia has acquired German social networking service Plazes,expanding it’s mobile internet services. Plazes offers a location-basedservice, with friends posting messages about their location and whatthey are doing from their mobile or PC – sounds like Twitter.

• Domestic Chinese mobile phone service provider MICAT has announcedan agreement with social-networking website, MySpace. Together, theywill be launching “MySpace MICAT,” a social platform for Chinese mobile internet users.

• Facebook introduces Chinese-language versions of its social networking website, marking its first move into the world’s largest internet market.

Web

• Interactive map shows the aftermath of Parkersberg tornado

• YouTube is home to nearly half of web clips watched in the UK

• Magazine publisher IPC Media buys gaming website Mousebreaker in an effort to increase its access to an audience of young male internet users.

• Yahoo to announce the results of a major staff reorganisation as internet firm tries to reassure investors and staff that it can improve its performance and competitiveness.

• The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was due to vote on new internet domain names this week. It is thougth that from early 2009, users will be able to acquire generic addresses such as .love

Media

• Debate over ‘Pay-per-view’ future of online journalism

• House of Lords report says growth of news sites is harming investment in news gathering

• Sky News Online prepares to re-launch with a new look

• CNET is also getting a new look

• The Associated Press will begin rolling out details of its new pricing to members this week, a plan that will return up to $21 million to its U.S. member newspapers.

• Debate over the usefulness of blogging to journalists continues

• BBC launches new revamped online catch-up service, iPlayer with integrated radio shows.

• Trinity Mirror launches a series of branded YouTube channels for the video content of its regional newspapers.

• ITN has signed a ‘six figure’ deal with Al Jazeerato make 800,000 hours of archived video content available to thebroadcaster. As part of the deal, the network and production companieswill have access to Channel 4, Reuters, Granada and ITN.

• The Independant hires the former head of the prime minister’s digital PR operation Jimmy Leach, to lead online development.

• Some journalists still opposed/scared of the internet

Other

• Freelance journalist Sean Langan released after being kidnapped by a group associated with the Taliban in a three-month ordeal.

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