Now, if the Chron can only turn page-views into cash they may be onto something
Despite its flaws, the Houston daily apparently is doing something right with its Web product. It ranks 6th in the nation for page views. What could the reasons be? All those blogs -- both staff-written and reader-written -- that once were viewed as dire threats to the sacred impartiality of the daily gatekeeper for the nation's 4th largest city?
The Chronicle ranked ahead of even the LA Times, despite the obvious difference in market sizes. according to
E&P
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6 comments:
What could the reason be? Maybe all the bloggers kept hitting their browsers' refresh button all month to assure themselves a better ranking.
When the same web sites are ranked based on unique visitors (the number of actual humans who showed up to read something on the site) as opposed to how many pages were clicked, the chron ranked at No. 15, up a pretty mediocre 4% over its uniques in October 2007 and behind the LA Times, both Chicago papers, Boston and Dallas.
I think linking to blogs is a fine idea personally, but the chron in my opinion suffers from link bloat. There must be damn near 1,000 links from the home page alone, each one given almost the exact same weight by headline size. As a result, I can't find anything, plus I have to click at least three times to get to the (mostly) press releases they run in place of news in my neck of the woods.
Chron.com is too "busy" for my taste too.
Personally, I like the N. Y. Times web page. I like how they've tried to make it look like a newspaper front page, which I suppose makes me old fashioned.
Me too. There's nothing wrong with helping the reader figure out which stories might conceivably be more important, using visual cues such as larger or blacker headlines, or placement nearer the top.
I thought it was up to you bloggers to decide what the important news was without the "filter of the mainstream media."
I sense an antipathy toward bloggers in your comment, Scarlett O.
No need. Bloggers for the
Most part just take potshots. Mainstream media
Reports the news. Some bloggers report news firsthand but only about 0.08 % fit that category.
So long live the MM and long live the takers of potshots.
No antipathy, Banjo, I love blogs, full-steam with the potshots, especially yours. But all the Chron ones are kind of out of hand. I was just messing with you. So I wrote something like what Sarah Palin would say. Remember her? Big mouth, clotheshorse, breeder in overdrive, hater of most citified Americans. As opposed to me, the devil's advocate: brown hair and smiley, slight Yank accent, vertically challenged, city kid, lifelong newspaperwoman. And yes, mainstream media usually gets to decide what's important, and that's OK because they're doing the work.
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