I have my issues with Nick Denton, but I have to say one thing about the Gawker CEO: he knows a thing or two about online audiences.
Next to Her Highness, Ms. Huffington, Denton is the leading revolutionary in online news. His blog network might be the web equivalent of a supermarket magazine rack, but he’s running circles around traditional media.
His latest move is the Gawker redesign. The new site (still in beta testing) will display a single “top” story in a main panel while links to other stories sit in a feed on the right side.
The rationale behind this is it lets the site get the most out of scoops. Denton has said several times that he believes big, breaking or exclusive stories are the key to bringing in new readers.
With gawker’s old, traditional blog format, editors had to hold back new stories indefinitely just to keep a scoop at the top where people would see it. The new design fixes this. New stories go in the feed while the most important news stays in the main panel.
Now what the heck does this have to with Strike Situation?
Well, the data we collected from the website confirmed Denton’s position: scoops and big stories drive traffic more than anything else.
Of our four largest spikes, three came on stories we broke (the faculty setting a strike deadline, faculty agreeing not to strike and contract professors and TAs settling).
The fourth spike came during our live coverage of the information picket that snarled traffic early on Monday, Nov. 15. Other media sources covered the event, but our coverage was the most in-depth.
Of course, Joseph Pulitzer could probably have told you the same thing 100 years ago. Point is, even in this evolving news environment, with SEO and social media, breaking news is still king when it comes to driving traffic and increasing readership.
Ultimately, then, our conclusion is the same as Denton’s. Several times we had to hold back newer, less significant stories so that the big news of the day would stay at the top.
The blog format is great 90% of the time. It does timeliness really well and it’s easy to read. It’s just in those few big moments that the format tends to struggle.
I don’t know if the new Gawker design is the exact way I would go about solving this, but I think it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
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Doesn’t the Huffington Post already do this? One of the things I’ve always loved about their main page is the entire top section is dominated by one enormous headline and photo. All the other content is available by scrolling down (below the fold, if you will).
I think one of the weaknesses of the blog format is the loss of inherent news value traditionally communicated by a story’s prominence on the page or position in a broadcast.