Tag Archives: Online

comScore Media Metrix Data ranks The New York Times as Top Online Newspaper According to May 2010 U.S.

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The New York Times Ranks as Top Online Newspaper According to May 2010 U.S. comScore Media Metrix Data

U.S. Online Newspaper CPMs Nearly 3 Times Higher than Average

RESTON, VA, June 16, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report of the top U.S. online newspaper groups based on the comScore Media Metrix service. The newspaper category represents the first site category for which each of the top ten ranked entities has transitioned to the comScore Media Metrix 360 (Unified Digital Measurement) methodology.

The report showed that more than 123 million Americans visited newspaper sites in May, representing 57 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience, as the New York Times Brand led the category with more than 32 million visitors and 719 million pages viewed during the month. The average visitor viewed 22 pages of content on the New York Times, also leading the top ten. Tribune Newspapers ranked second in terms of audience with 24.8 million visitors, followed by Advance Internet (18.1 million visitors) and USA Today Sites (16.8 million visitors). Continue reading →

Newspaper Website Development in 2010

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Question:
Why do newspaper website still look like complete data-dump link farms in 2010?

Answer:
??????????

An unscientific poll I conducted at my Community College revealed the best newspaper website, as voted on by me and some college students, is not even a newspaper website… it is the Huffington Post.  Why?  Because as soon as you land on the homepage you know what the big story of the day is. You don’t have to agree with their bent, but you know what’s going on in the world pretty damn quickly. NPR.org, CNN.com, and BBC.co.uk were in the mix too as were even more unconventional filters like reddit, digg, delicious, facebook and twitter.

I think i know what the news is

I think i know what the news is

vs this

so what happened in the world today?

so what happened in the world today?

Newspaper website people, please do the following:

1. Use big pictures to tell a story, not because your readers are stupid and can’t read but because your readers are smart and want an engaging multimedia presentation.

2. Stop with the page jumps.

3. Stop with the invasive advertising.

4. Please break your mammoth newspaper website into a bunch of micro sites.

5. Fix your navigation.

6. Fix your navigation.

7. Fix your navigation.

8. Hire a web development company with no ties or experience with the newspaper industry to redesign your site.

9. Take your site down completely and syndicate your content to Google news… or whomever wants to make a deal.

Wikipedia Founder To Newspapers, “Give Up”

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Wikipedia Founder: How To Save The Newspaper Industry -from MediaPost.com

News is widely syndicated — and that’s one reason why it’s difficult to charge for the content, Wales said. “If you went into Google News and didn’t see 600 copies of the same story, but just one, that one could make money — and spreading it everywhere doesn’t make sense”.

I personaly feel that newspaper are too worried about damaging their credibility and cache to just give up something like the sports section to local sports nuts, but if phased in properly I can see it working.  Look at Seeking Alpha (I’m a contributing media writer, though I haven’t contributed anything in a while) as a model.  I don’t know what their balance sheet looks like, but I know that people trust the site enough that it has formed partnerships with companies including Yahoo! Finance, Dow Jones MarketWatch, E-Trade, and CNET. The company is backed by Benchmark Capital, a firm that funded eBay.

The key to launching successful user generated content and sections is #1 visibility: Get the authors in front of lots of people and they will usually do their best to look good and do good.  #2 selection:  Get the most enlightened and fanatical users onboard.  #3 strict enformcement of guidlines: to give readers a sense of security.

But Robert, you just laid into Topix in a recent blog post for being a big useless, flame war inducing, data dump.  That site is user generated.  Yes, and one of their big problems is ignoring rules #1-3 above.    When Wales said “give up”, he was refering to newspapers’ attempt to move their business model online.  Clearly the internet paradigm demands new models and revenue streams.

Google Pushing Advertising Innovation and Driving Revenues in a Bad Economy

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As the publisher of this news site, it was reassuring by an email I received this morning.  As someone interested in newspaper innovation, it gave me pause to wonder at what my own beloved industry was doing to innovate and meet demands in this new information paradigm.  When I see PetMed ads. appear next to nobel prize winner Paul Krugman on NYTimes.com, I know more can be done to improve ad performance.  Here is the email I was sent:

—————————————————————– Continue reading →

How are Newspapers Handling The Panic Surrounding The Bailout Vote?

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Screen Shots from top news sites around the nation and world taken at 1:50pm – 1:58pm, moments after agencies monitoring the vote revealed that it could not pass.  Traders in NY watching CNBC’s vote coverage immediately began selling off equities and buying up Treasury Bills.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average responded by dropping 600 points before bouncing and settling down 777.68 points at the close of market trading.  This post shows how the newspaper and news sites anticipated and reacted to this EXTREMELY IMPORTANT vote.

Some Good.  Some Not So Good.  There Should Be Breaking News Notices On All Sites.

As can be predicted, The Wall Street Journal covered this well.  They have a breaking news banner across the entire webpage drawing attention to the incident.  Good Job. Continue reading →

Digital Innovation and Green Initiatives at PressDisplay.com

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Telephone interview with Igor Smirnoff, Director of Strategic Development for PressDisplay.com

With sustainability and environmental issues dominating business strategy these days I became interested in what types of applications were available to newspaper publishers to reduce their carbon footprint. I discovered NewspapersDirect and their Smart Edition ePaper solution. Smart Edition is a version of their PressDisplay.com offering for newspaper publishers to serve up PDF versions of their content online.

In the past I have been critical of newspapers simply digitizing their newspaper and putting it online. I feel this is an under-utilization of the capabilities which the internet and high speed broadband connections offer. I was skeptical of this application, but wanted to learn more about their technology which is more dynamic than a simple reader. Continue reading →

APT, Yahoo’s New Digital Ad Platform – Good for Newspapers?

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I would say that most newspapers around the world are not suffering because they lost out on worldwide advertising. Newspapers have lost touch with the communities they used to serve so well.  If anything, Newspapers need to be developing their own LOCAL advertising platform.  I often see new 3rd party applications being utilized by newspapers for a share of their revenue stream and I wonder what the long-term implications are to the owners’ equity.

Yahoo also hopes the new platform will help the ailing newspaper industry, by transforming poorly performing remnant advertising into higher performing revenue streams. “We touch more users around the world than any publisher could dream to do,” says John Slade, Yahoo’s Vice President of Product Management. Continue reading →

Rob Curley on Loudon ‘flop’

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We try like crazy to give our readers content that is relevant to their lives, and give them other services in any way that they want them in order to help them live their lives better and be more informed.

And do it all in entertaining and interesting ways that keep them coming back.

Some people call that “hyperlocal”. We call it doing our damn jobs.

 

Taking good care of your readers will always be the right answer.

Just make sure you do whatever it takes to let them know what you’ve built.

To that point, our team has a few new tricks up our sleeves that we can’t wait to try out. And to say that we’re motivated is the understatement of understatements.

We’re going to Vegas, baby!

Excerpts from Rob Curley’s response to a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Big Daily’s Hyperlocal Flop”.

My Take

Lawrence.com is an awesome site that is intuitive and engaging. I live in New Jersey and I still visit the site regularly, that’s how interesting the content and features are. Extrapolating that interest to a “general population” site like LoudonExtra.com is difficult. I give Rob and his team credit for trying like hell to do something innovative. There are too many haters and doomsday watchers in our industry right now.