Texas Monthly’s Media Preview Problem

This month’s Texas Monthly media preview story is “Capture the Flag“, Paul Burka’s terrific take on the Texas governor’s race.

Like they did with last month’s story by Virginia Postrel on her kidney donation, Texas Monthly releases the full story as an online preview to a group of media members to gain attention for the upcoming issue. There’s nothing wrong with that and I understand the practice.

Where things go off the rails is a week or two later – the link is pulled down and only a fraction of the story remains available online to non-subscribers. Try looking for the Postrel story now at its original URL — http://www.texasmonthly.com/csc/865postrel.php — it’s now an error page.

Texas Monthly would counter, “If we give it to you online for free, we take away your reason to buy the magazine.” However, by not putting the full story online, even after the magazine is off the newsstands, Texas Monthly robs themselves of any lingering discussion, commentary, and relevance that story might have. It remains trapped between the covers of the July 2006 issue. People searching online for information and insightful analysis of the Texas governor’s race will not be able to access Burka’s story, and Texas Monthly misses out on another opportunity to enhance its exposure and authority on all matters Texan. If Google and Yahoo can’t find your stories, your website is essentially invisible to the world.

One additional point: I came across a mention of Burka’s story in another weblog, where the author had copied and pasted the story into his website so he could refer to it later, after the story was no longer available online. But he wanted to keep it secret because he was worried he’d get into trouble. Is this how Texas Monthly wants their readers to react to their stories? With covert action? That’s what the practice of showing us the goods then taking them away and locking them behind a subscriber/registered user paywall has encouraged.