econman - 12:42 pm on Sep 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

The journalism analogy works for most information-providing websites. Direct mail catalogs work as a good analogy for many ecommerce sites.

There are also important differences. For instance, the optimal length paragraph on the web is a little shorter than what would be optimal for a journalist working on a newspaper or magazine, and a lot shorter than would be optimal for a non-fiction book.