VanityFair.com Didn’t Ace The Deep Throat Test

Vanity Fair meticulously planned the unveiling of W. Mark Felt as “Deep Throat.” It should have been a slam dunk for the magazine’s companion web site. Instead, the decision to exclude anyone from the web site — understandable if it was limited to two or three people instead of the 15 required to sign confidentiality agreements — cost the magazine the chance to own its own story. Instead of drawing and keeping traffic, Vanity Fair’s delay in posting the story — or anything about it — dispersed people all over the net. Hours later, HTML and pdf versions went up. The delay didn’t harm advertisers; VanityFair.com is primarily a promotional vehicle for itself and other CondeNast/Advance.net sites. But it does say a lot about the magazine’s vision of the net. David Friend, the VF editor in charge of the project, told the Post’s Robert MacMillan: “Getting the magazine out is what’s important. … I was more interested in getting the magazine out than [getting] the Web out.”
The Washington Post, at least, had an excuse — it was blindsided by the story. When the staff recovered, it was with the all-out coverage one might expect, tapping all of the site’s resources including live discussions. The result should be a boost for advertisers and washingtonpost.com’s own contextual ad revenue, as well as increased readership of other parts of the site.

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