Tunnel vision for National Times’ early days
A few days on from the launch of Fairfax’s comment site National Times as a challenger to News Ltd’s The Punch, some early signs are emerging of the difference in approaches between the two.
As Mumbrella has previously mentioned, The Punch seems to be leaning towards a more open, blogosphere-friendly style, which has even extended as far as allowing criticism of its parent company, and links to rival sites.
National Times, meanwhile, is seemingly going old skool newspaper style, including pretending rivals don’t exist.
Unlike the Punch, there are few, if any, links to the non-Fairfax world on the National Times. And when the much heralded Goanna column reported on Kevin Rudd’s infamous ute potentially ending up in the National Museum, it failed to give credit to rival The Punch for breaking the story several hours before.
It’ll be interesting to see which approach gets the online public’s support.
Er, Tim, did you read the Goanna column?
Sure, the story is on the ute, but it’s not about it ending up in the National Museum. There’s a throwaway line in there a few pars in, but that’s about it.
Same ute, different story.
I tried looking at National for the past couple of days. It is so similar to other Fairfax mastheads (SMH and The Age), I often get confused which site I am on. Why did they bother again?