Forbes.com has an interview with Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek from 1998 to 2006 and now vice president and editor-in-chief of new ventures for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. He makes an intelligent point about the challenges of preparing a publication for a Web-only audience (bullet points are not in the original, but I thought it made it easier to read):

“For everybody in the news business, it’s about producing something that goes beyond the headlines and offering something that other people can’t offer. There are three fundamental ways of doing that.

• One is break news that nobody else is breaking.
• Two is have writers who have a distinctive point of view that you’re not necessarily going to see someplace else.
• And the third has to do with user experience. Traditionally, one of the things that people have loved about their favorite magazine was the way it looked and felt. What everybody has to do online is try to create a user experience that makes people fall in love with their site.”