The rise of the internet v old media: score one for the new

Last Wednesday (November 1, 2006) I was reading that morning's Washington Post (hard copy) when I happened on a story on the front page of the Business section about some doctoral candidate at the University of Indiana who'd created a website that let anyone in the world create fake airline boarding passes.

The FBI visited the guy, then returned with a search warrant and apparently smashed through his front door and carted off all his computer equipment.

That wasn't as interesting as something else that caught my eye about the story: look carefully at the graphic leading this post — what do you see?

Looks like your everyday Washington Post staff writer byline, in this case that of one Brian Krebs.

Except Brian Krebs is a staff writer for Washingtonpost.com.

Which, in case you haven't been keeping up with the goings-on at the Post over the past year, is growing like topsy at the expense of the old media newsroom, where a huge number of long-time writers and editors have recently taken early retirement and cash buyouts in response to the Post's remaking of its business with a web-centric tilt.

Of interest is that Krebs wrote about the boarding pass website in his blog on the Post's website on October 28, but it took four days for the paper version to get itself together enough to publish the news.

That won't cut it.

Look for such lags to disappear real soon.

And look for more such .com bylines, not just in the Post but in all the major newspapers, in the months and years to come.