Endorsement changes

Speaking of how the Internet is changing the industry…

Here are some interesting excerpts from a live chat with the Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor at the Washington Post. The chat centers on the Post’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president.

Online journalism students might find it particularly interesting because Hiatt discusses how because of readers changing habits the paper to altered its endorsement release. He also talks about readership numbers.
Find the whole thing here or just read the excerpts below.

Washington: Doesn't the Post usually do Presidential endorsements on Sunday? Why today instead?

Fred Hiatt: We've always done it Sunday. But our Web readership--you all--is much larger on weekdays than Sundays, so we decided to experiment this year.

Springfield, Va.: The Post's circulation has dropped by about 200,000 copies in the past decade. How much of this loss do you attribute to curltural and generational changes (i.e. generation X prefers to get their news online) and how much is because subscribers are choosing to get news from another source that matches their liberal or conservative bias?

Fred Hiatt: Another excellent question. I think the two probably feed into each other. Our readership is actually way up, when you add washingtonpost.com readers to subscribers. But as you say, younger people (though not only) are used to getting their news on line, not in print--and this may tap into a tendency to want to go to websites where people know the views they read will be congenial to them.

On the other hand, I can tell from the comments that we and our columnists get that plenty of people who don't agree still want to read diverging view points