Dogging the page views
Stan
Finger set a new record for our web site Kansas.com
with his story about a man
arrested for having sex with a dog. I’ve provided a link but don’t click on
it: you’ll just drive up the numbers.
The
popularity of the story does remind me of H.L. Mencken's observation
that “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Stan’s
story broke records for page views that were set during our coverage of the
tornado in Greensburg, which was a national story. It also cemented Stan in first place in our new game, the
unofficial race for clicks on the web page.
That
friendly rating began a couple of months back when our fearless senior producer
Jeff Butts realized he could
search page views by byline.
At
last count, Stan had about 10 times the rating as my measly second-place
finish. To be fair,, he would be
leading without the dog story. (Note to self: find a kinky sex story to post as
breaking news).
But
it is valuable to know who is drawing traffic on our web site.
The
answer is simple. The people who drive
the traffic are, for the most part, the reporters who think web first.
Stan
and I both report on the crime beat. So
does Hurst Laviana, who’s also in the top 5. Hurst does investigative pieces
and is a database guru. He recently
wrote a story about the decline in parolee
crime in Kansas.
Joe
Stumpe, our food writer, also leads the traffic count. He has recipes
and who doesn’t use the web to get recipes these days?
But
one of the real signs of how are industry is changing is from sportswriter and
blogger Jeffrey Martin. Jeff’s K-Stated blog is showing how well
people respond to blogs as away to get their news.
“Our
blogs are just now beginning to get as many views as our stories,” Jeff Butts
said.
There’s also a lively
discussion at Wired Journalists on how newsrooms are trying to get more
people involved in thinking about the web first.
What we’re finding is there’s no magic to getting people to
read your stories on the web. You just
have to post them there, early and often.
And Jeff Butts says anytime you can get the word “sex” in
the online headline, that helps.