Reports that the traditional media are in their final days are somewhat misleading if the New York Times’ latest figures are anything to go by. NYTimes.com had over 555 million pageviews in March, an increase of 17% year-on-year with 15 million unique visitors to the site in March 2005, an increase of 10% over the same period in 2004.
Their RSS figures also make interesting reading:
“NYTimes.com’s RSS feeds generated 5.9 million pageviews on the site in March, which represents a 342% increase year over year and a 39% increase from February’s 4.3 million pageviews. The sections that were most popular among RSS feeds included: Washington and Business. The feeds have been available since February 2002.”
Jim Horton points to an Associated Press story on how the newspaper publishers are focusing in on how best to take advantage of the Internet.
“Publishers who successfully navigate the transition will be pleased with the payoff, Schneider predicted. The Internet is “hugely profitable,” she said. “The revenue that comes online goes disproportionately to the bottom line.”
Andrew Smith recently gave a talk to the UK�s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) on how technology is going to change journalism, he provides a synopsis.
“What we can see as a general trend is that there are many, many more sources than there were. When I started at The Independent ten years ago in May 1995, the main sources of regular information were (in order of ascending importance) paper press releases, faxes, other newspapers, news wires, and the bloody Today program, which always seemed to set the agenda for the day. By the time I left, in December 2004, the sources were: 2 billion web sites, 200 emails per day, other newspapers, news wires and the sodding Today program. (I haven�t mentioned personal contacts in either list because I�m talking about regular sources – the stuff that newsdesks and hard-press daily hacks need to feed the tyrannical monster of the empty page.)
In that time things moved from my being one of only two email addresses on the newsroom floor (along with letters), having to use a dialup modem to collect my mail and thus blocking my phone, to one where everyone had broadband connections right on their desk.”
Meanwhile the ever reliable Trevor Cook provides a compendium of some recent content that covers the whole (as Trevor mentions futile) ‘blog vs. journalism’ debate.
Murphy's Law 