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One seemingly trivial (but potentially significant) thing about Greenwald and Obidyar's new venture that just bugs me is that "The Intercept" doesn't have its o

One seemingly trivial (but potentially significant) thing about Greenwald and Obidyar's new venture that just bugs me is that "The Intercept" doesn't have its own domain name, and instead appears as a subdirectory inside of the firstlook.org site. I know that First Look Media is going to play host to more than just this one publication (if you look at the homepage, there is a blog post from Matt Taibbi talking about his new collaboration with the organization), but that arrangement is not unique to First Look. It doesn't take a lot of effort to come up with a whole host of publications that operate under larger corporate umbrellas but which are accessible via their own independent domain name, even when they share resources with other sites. And I can't think of a single publication that is set up the way that The Intercept is. I'm a longtime Greenwald reader (back from when he first joined Salon.com), and yet I don't think I have visited The Intercept's homepage directly (typing out the url myself) even once since it got off the ground. I don't know why I haven't; I guess it just feels amateurish to nest a substantive news site inside a boring corporate holding company website. It feels like they don't care about building "The Intercept" as a meaningful brand, and as a result I probably don't want to build any personal loyalty to a brand that feels like it might just go away. I say this as someone who completely supports the effort. I also wonder how this might impact their search results, given that the firstlook.org homepage is effectively a non-entity, and each subdirectory will need to be separately indexed as separate site (for instance, firstlook.org/theinterscept/ has its own sitemap.xml). What's even weirder to me is that it seems like they even own theintercept.com, which is currently redirecting to firstlook.org/theintercept/. Why don't they use it? It can't only be me. This has to be affecting their readership.

dan_bk 12y ago
How is any of that relevant? Completely off-topic.
- legutierr 12y ago
  Perhaps off-topic with regards to the contents of this article, but as someone who wants to see information like this disseminated to a large audience, I think that decisions like this that may hurt that effort are relevant. In building an audience on the web, we claw after increased traffic by playing with anything that could change user behavior. Domain names have an effect. Maybe I'm wrong, and the specific issue I'm raising doesn't have any bearing on anything at all. But if I'm right, I think it matters. Most of the Snowden leaks are now being disseminated through The Intercept; if you care about this story you should care about the medium through which it is delivered. If you want to see these stories lead to change, you should want as many people to read them as possible.
ejr 12y ago
If firstlook.org isn't the only place they intend to publish their stories, it makes perfect sense. After all, why present a single target to those who wish to censor you? I think FL wants to reach out to other journalistic entities to use their platform. In that vein, The Intercept is one channel in a network.

dan_bk 12y ago

How is any of that relevant? Completely off-topic.

legutierr 12y ago
Perhaps off-topic with regards to the contents of this article, but as someone who wants to see information like this disseminated to a large audience, I think that decisions like this that may hurt that effort are relevant. In building an audience on the web, we claw after increased traffic by playing with anything that could change user behavior. Domain names have an effect. Maybe I'm wrong, and the specific issue I'm raising doesn't have any bearing on anything at all. But if I'm right, I think it matters. Most of the Snowden leaks are now being disseminated through The Intercept; if you care about this story you should care about the medium through which it is delivered. If you want to see these stories lead to change, you should want as many people to read them as possible.

ejr 12y ago

If firstlook.org isn't the only place they intend to publish their stories, it makes perfect sense. After all, why present a single target to those who wish to censor you? I think FL wants to reach out to other journalistic entities to use their platform. In that vein, The Intercept is one channel in a network.