The New Yorker has a story about Paul McCartney this week by John Colapinto that I have not read, since I do not have a paper copy of the magazine handy, and that is the only place one may find it. It is called "When I'm 64" and is apparently about about the Beatle and his music, making good use of that headline before McCartney turns 65 on June 18th. Probably a lot of Beatles fans online, I'd wager (the band gets 46.6 million hits on Google, so I think that wager is safe) — yet for all intents and purposes, this article does not exist for them. They are welcome to see what David Remnick has to say about The Sopranos, sure, but if they want to read the latest about Paul McCartney they'll have to content themselves with whatever Heather Mills might have dropped to the press most recently (and, fine, press for his new album but that is beside the point).
The point is, the New Yorker is doing the same thing with this McCartney article as it did with Remnick's massive piece on Bill Clinton last fall: Rendered it effectively non-existent online. Sure, people may write about it (that's how I found out about it, via my excellent and insightful mesh colleague Cynthia Brumfield), but that doesn't translate into pageviews or, less cynically, the chance to read an excellent article about Paul McCartney.
Perhaps that is their strategy; since the Clinton article was published the New Yorker has had a website redesign and remains clearly selective about what it makes available and what it does not. If the goal is exclusivity, fine — achieved. But if the goal is for material to not only be read and enjoyed in the magazine but to also enjoy a healthy life beyond it online, then it's a lousy strategy. Here's an example: In writing about the non-line presence of the Clinton piece, I noted that Clinton had gone on the record saying: "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit." One week after publication, a Google search for "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit" had yielded one hit. Today, a Google search for "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit" yields 310 hits. Considering how many people out there are sick of Karl Rove's bullshit, that number seems sorta low. Meanwhile, Remnick's mash note to Tony Soprano, also in this week's New Yorker, already easily tops that.* That article will have a life beyond this week's issue; the Clinton and McCartney pieces, not so much. Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Read Me, When I'm 64? Yes, of course — but only if we can.
Related: Remnick On Clinton On Everything, Picked Up By Nothing [ETP]Gates-Jobs, McCartney-Lennon: Time Heals Wounds [IP Democracy]
Related, but come on, it is SO not the same thing: Podcast: Meeting A Beatle [New Yorker]
*Note that I used an expanisve Google search for the Clinton quote — "I am sick of Karl Rove's bullshit" — and that a number of the hits on the first page seem to be auto-feed pickups from my original item; I used a more restrictive Google search for the Remnick/Sopranos piece — "david remnick" sopranos "family guy" — which yielded 532 hits. A search for "Remnick" "Sopranos" yielded 10,900 hits.