Print or online, that is the question

As a trainee journalist I am frequently hearing how the various sectors of the journalism industry are in much closer proximity to each other than they were in the past. Today's journalist needs to be able to converge and just because you are trained as a newspaper journalist does not mean that you could not become a broadcaster later on.
Kim Hollamby, who is currently Head of Electronic Media for IPC Media, came to speak to us today, and talked about the relationship between magazines and websites. He discussed whether it worked to have a website that directly reflected your magazine or whether the two should be doing different things. I personally feel that a magazine and a website should compliment but not copy each other. After all if someone can get everything from your website for free why would they bother buying our magazine? He looked at the different ways in which people use both magazine and websites and from this was able to show that the two mediums being able to perform different functions is in fact very important. He showed us figures relating to several IPC Media websites and indicated how those websites were used and when. In fact figures are a definite pro to websites. For a website you can learn a great deal about your viewers relatively quickly whilst it take a magazine about six months for them to get comparable figures back. Overall Kim was a very approachable and intertwine man whose long career in the industry allowed him back up his valuable points with first-hand experiences. He further fuelled my interest in online journalism.