Every afternoon, I get what is called a “Site Catalyst Report.” It’s a listing of the top stories on our Web site, based on page views. It’s pretty interesting to look at, because you get specific insight into what stories readers are reading and what ones they aren’t. And because it measures page views, it’s precise. Newspaper circulation works differently. We print and distribute 80,000+ copies, and our assumption/belief/spin is that readers read the whole thing, front to back.
Online, it is different. Those sorts of assumption don’t exist. It’s all targeted. We know which stories readers looked at, and which ones they avoided or failed to see. With this knowledge comes power, the power to tailor content (and advertising) that seems to fit better with what readers want. It creates the framework of a marketplace, where each story lives and dies on its own merit, rather than getting swept along with other more important news. It’s what many people have been arguing for with regards to the printed paper: Publish what people want to read, not what you think they want to read.
The flip side is that journalism isn’t a popularity contest. Based on the Site Catalyst Reports, it’s not infrequent for stories that we thought were important to get ignored online. The brutality of the online bazaar would lead you to the conclusion that we ought not to run these stories. Nobody is reading them, so they’re a waste of everyone’s time. Someday, it may come to that. Not yet. The fact is that one of our tasks as journalists is to bear witness to stories and issues that people ought to know about. It’s true that the emphasis on writing/reporting for readers is pushing us to rethink what we do and how we approach stories, but once you make decisions based solely on page views you end up spending all your time outside with your finger in the air, trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing.
Like everything else, there’s a balance. I think it works best like this: Find stories that readers are dying to read, and run them next to stories they ought to read. They come for the circus and stay for the lecture…
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
The problem with reading the site report that way is that it presumes that the JournalNow website is the only site read. I don’t ever read National or International stories on JournalNow, because I’ve already read them on WashingtonPost.com. I go there first, then come to JournalNow for local stories, local coverage, which I obviously cannot get on WP.com.
I daresay I am not the only one who picks up national/international stories elsewhere, because frankly the WSJ has been terribly slow to embrace online possibilities. For goodness sake, until very recently, breaking stories didn’t even appear on your site until the newspaper for the next day had been printed.
so for quite some time, I would use WXII for local news since they had it up as soon as it came into them. Now you are there, speedwise, and your reporting is much better, so I read you first, then look at WXII to see if they have additional info if it’s a local story of interest. But national/international news the WSJ website gets off the AP wire, which I have already read on WP.com, so until you do a better job of reporting it (which isn’t going to happen, and that’s fine) I will continue to really only read local stories on the WSJ website.
Don’t mistake me - that is a GREAT niche, and it’s what I want from the paper, both the website and the physical paper. But my point is, don’t presume readers aren’t reading the stories you deem necessary to read, because they very well may be reading them elsewhere.
I never ever read national stories either online or in paper form in the WS-Journal. Local matters to me.
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