Broadway Blog - Exclusive Exclusive Exclusive

ex⋅clu⋅sive  [ik-skloo-siv, -ziv]
Journalism. a piece of news, or the reporting of a piece of news, obtained by a newspaper or other news organization, along with the privilege of using it first.

There's a total of 14 definitions of the word 'exclusive' at dictionary.com, including the above one which I looked up after reading my usual stack of a dozen magazines purchased at the airport for a current trip that I'm on, many of which touted exclusive content photos and more.

BroadwayWorld.com is *filled* with lots of exclusive and exclusive content of a variety of types across our 100 web sites ranging from videos to photos, interviews and features and everything in between.

I've never personally liked the word exclusive and as an editorial policy since day 1, it's nothing that we ever ask for when arranging coverage and content on the site.

Sure, we have plenty of content that no one else does - most gotten the old fashioned way of hard work and having a great editorial team here, some are given to us, and sometimes, we're just the only site that runs certain things.

We never ask for them though, because in the relatively small industry that is Broadway, I think that they can often do more harm than good to the various productions -- just look at how the exclusive advertising deal that Brighton Beach Memoirs had with the NY Times certainly played into that show's early demise (how much so is naturally debatable). 

I strongly believe that the 'rising tide lifts all ships' and that the shows which have proven the most successful at marketing and press (online especially) have been those which have taken advantage of all of which the (relatively few) outlets can provide. It comes down to presentation, traffic, audience and a wide variety of other factors that make certain content more ideal for certain outlets than others but ultimately, you want your message in as many different flavors and on as many different sites (and social networking services) as humanly possible. That's the most ideal use of content in our digital world today.

The more the merrier I say.