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A recent article titled: “Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage” from the NY times caught my interest this past week. The article explains how some of the top online newspaper publishers are starting to use analytics to better understand the performance of content. While I am glad newspapers are starting to look at their online metrics, it’s really surprising how VERY basic the data is that they are looking at. With so many of the traditional offline newspaper businesses losing traction, you’d think they’d go a little deeper with the online data they’re looking at. I do like the focus of the Washington Post however, they appear to have a greater investment in their performance metrics and have 120 different people looking at the numbers daily.Below is a summary of where some of the players are heading:
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Editors at The WallStreet Journal, follow the Web traffic metrics closely. The paper’s top editors begin their morning news meetings with a rundown of data points, including the most popular search terms on WSJ.com, which articles are generating the most traffic and what posts are generating buzz on Twitter.
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At The Washington Post they like to see metrics such as — the number of unique visitors to washingtonpost.com, how many articles those visitors view and where on the Web those visitors came from. A red or green marker designates each data point, indicating whether the Web site’s goal for the month on that particular metric has been met. About 120 people in The Post’s newsroom get an e-mail each day laying out how the Web site performed in the closely watched metrics.
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The New York Times does not use Web metrics to determine how articles are presented, but it does use them to make strategic decisions about its online report, said Bill Keller, the executive editor. “We don’t let metrics dictate our assignments and play,” he said, “because we believe readers come to us for our judgment, not the judgment of the crowd.
So important for the newspaper industry to take advantage of what their analytics are telling them. This way they can cater to their traffic sources more effectively, understand how they are stacking up.