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NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
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wertherian
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
And yet, and yet:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nytimes.com+gawker.com/

Ah the enigmas of the internet.
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TheHamBeast
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
Editorial integrity or not, ignoring your own traffic is insane. It's common practice among web publishers to vary the rates they charge for advertising on different sections of their site BASED ON THE TRAFFIC THEY GET. No wonder they're considering charging visitors because they're flushing free money down the toilet every day.
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Cynical Media Bitch
07/23/09

@TheHamBeast: Ignoring it completely, yes, that's insane. Not so much if you're making it one of many factors.

I have to say that I'm a little surprised to hear them flat-out deny any interest in their stats. I'm always curious to see what my sections have been doing, and to learn what's just not working at all.
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badasscat
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
Maybe they actually have some, you know, journalistic standards. I would certainly hope that any actual news source would not be tailoring the news they present based on web traffic but instead on what's actually important.
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Botswana Meat Commission FC
07/23/09

@badasscat:
Yeah, I mean... the end result of chasing pageviews is the sort of coverage you see regularly on the NY Post site or Forbes.com... salacious garbage about Erin Andrews or made up Listicles.
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misslinda
07/23/09

@Botswana Meat Commission FC: Quite certain if the Times switched things up based upon page views, we'd have a front page filled with Palin, the Gosselins, and baby animals doing cute things. Thank you, NY Times, for going down the crapper with integrity. You will be sorely missed.
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Cynical Media Bitch
07/23/09

@badasscat: It depends on whether your mission is to draw eyeballs to your site, or to maintain an image as the newspaper of record. There's no reason why those are incompatible.

I check the Times front page every hour or two just for giggles, and I look at the "Most Read" and "Most Emailed" tabs. It's an interesting way to look at the site, even if I seem to be more interested in the NYT's page stats than its own Webxecutives.
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The Cajun Boy
07/23/09

@Cynical Media Bitch: I often do the same thing. The "most emailed" and "most blogged" lists always get my attention.
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LolpantsofArabia
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
I used to work for a paper that worried about web stats. When I joined, it was a quality paper, with proper news. When I left, it was running stories about Amy Winehouse getting her tits out on a beach and a 16yo girl with a bat in her bra.

Focusing on web stats is inevitably a race to the bottom, as you chase the lowest common denominator. Any news source that wants to maintain any kind of reputation for quality has to ignore them.
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Botswana Meat Commission FC promoted this comment Edited by LolpantsofArabia at 07/23/09 8:29 AM LolpantsofArabia was starred LolpantsofArabia was unstarred

Magister
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
While I believe they might want to look at trends, I'm glad they don't tailor their product to the lowest common denominator.

It's sort of like the difference between The NewsHour and the ratings-driven content of their commercial competitors. The NewsHour and NYTimes.com tell me what's important, rather or not the majority of people would like to hear.
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Edited by Magister at 07/23/09 8:26 AM Magister was starred Magister was unstarred

Cynner
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
I read The NY Times, LA Times and other newspapers for their 'unique' stories and writer's prespectives. They're doing something right, whether or not they follow their 'traffic' of hot stories. If they only followed their hot stories, The NY Times would become a gossip and 'murder' story newspaper instead of remaining reading worthy when you're tired of the news of death, decay and deceit.
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momo
07/23/09

In reply to NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic
It's called having an editorial point of view.

Once upon a time this site took a stand and banned coverage of Paris Hilton. It was at a time when people were falling over themselves to create traffic from Hilton stories. As Gawker has become downgraded from a premium to a mass brand, these types of calls don't seem to be made as you basically more chase stories that everyone else is chasing more than find unique points of view.

NYT retains premium branding by maintaining a point of view. That's a good thing.
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elvenjewel
02/21/09

In reply to Why We Don't Go to Tech Conferences
And you've seen the scene out of "Wall-E" where the lady and man who have been knocked away from their viewscreens and forced to recognize their physical environment are splashing in the pool, and she's saying, "I didn't know we had a pool!"

Not such a subtle dig at Internet culture. :)
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SampattiLimpet
02/20/09

In reply to Why We Don't Go to Tech Conferences
Kee-rist, the hating. I'm in the conference right now. We're mostly asking each other how to get the API keys hooked up right, and figuring out whether it's PHP or Rails under the hood. Nerdy guys in jeans? Sure. MacBooks? Sure. Sausage fest? Absolutely. A sign that we're not paying attention? Not necessarily.
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Owen Thomas
02/20/09

@SampattiLimpet: Right. You're doing exactly none of those things. Instead, you're commenting on Valleywag. You didn't win many rounds in debate club, did you?
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Aaron Altman
02/20/09

In reply to Why We Don't Go to Tech Conferences
...and the Twitter folks are hosting a seminar next week to teach journalists how to become citizen journalists.
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The Really Broke Housewife of New York County
02/20/09

@Aaron Altman:

and Facebook's hosting a seminar next week on how to steal source code
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Aaron Altman
02/20/09

@The Really Broke Housewife of New York County:

And Tumblr is hosting a seminar next week on proper storytelling.
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number six
11/11/08

In reply to NYTimes.com Chief Leaving To Head NPR
If we are lucky maybe NPR will force all its' member stations to a format of nothing but RadioLab and those little games where the song is disguised with another song played by a snooty pianist.
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caligulash
11/11/08

In reply to NYTimes.com Chief Leaving To Head NPR
She is right; NPR is a "worldwide news operation". They operate on news to make it unrecognizably disconnected with true accounts of anything that happened in the world (with good training from BBC). Wait, Times is no different, the transition will be very smooth, I predict.
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Seeräuber Jenny
11/11/08

@caligulash:

No Point, Really.

Aaaaah, I listen to it once a year.
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Sproing
11/11/08

In reply to NYTimes.com Chief Leaving To Head NPR
Now I can get Carl Kassel to record an MP3 for my voicemail, rather than a "cassette tape" for my "answering machine," whatever those are.
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contradicto
11/11/08

@Sproing: Totally, I feel so left out since I haven't had a home answering machine since the 90's.
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Spirit Fingers
11/11/08

In reply to NYTimes.com Chief Leaving To Head NPR
Just wondering how being the General Manager of a website equates being lord and savior of the radio station my mother listened to? I'm sorry, but what does one have to do with the other?

Call me old fashioned, but I like my broadcast and print separate, and the whole website media thing, it's really just a fad, mostly.
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BookishLookish
11/11/08

In reply to NYTimes.com Chief Leaving To Head NPR
OK, Viv, good move and now it's time to kick Terri Gross and all her mild cohorts to the curb and bring NPR into the 21st century.
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scarletmenace
11/11/08

@BookishLookish: Oh cmon. I love Terri Gross. She's actually smart. Lean Hansen, however, you're free to dispense with.
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BookishLookish
11/11/08

@scarletmenace: TG is smart but...snoooze!
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Victor Ward
11/11/08

@BookishLookish: I don't know if I could live without Fresh Air. Don't take that away from me!
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