A Steady Decline at Strib.com?
Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 7:36 pm
- 8 Comments
Star Tribune Dot Calm: In April, StarTribune.com ranked 26th in Nielsen’s ranking of the most popular newspaper websites. In May, the site fell off the list altogether, and in June — according to new NetRatings statistics released by Editor & Publisher — the site doesn’t merit a spot in the top 30 newspapers as measured by the number of page views and unique vistors per month. In June, the collective websites of Village Voice Media papers, owner of City Pages, made the list.
How far have Strib stats declined? The paper’s April ranking showed 1.5 million unique visitors over the course of a month. StarTribune.com must be doing worse than June’s last-place finisher: the 30th most popular newspaper, the Boston Herald, brought in 1.2 million visitors last month.
Question: Will numbers improve for July, the first full month James Lileks will have logged at Buzz.mn? Probably. But perhaps not much. After all, he was in charge of the site for all but five days during June.
McClatchy goes down: Also seeing southward-bound numbers is former Strib parent company McClatchy. Bloomberg analyst Jonathan Weil writes that, after the company bought the Knight Ridder chain for $4.6 billion a year ago and sold off papers it didn’t want, the “stock market thinks [McClatchy's] balance sheet belongs on the funny pages.” The company sold the Pioneer Press, a KR paper for years, to Media News in 2006. Weil reports that McClatchy’s stock price is now 31 percent lower than it was the day it bought KR.
Changes a-coming to the Strib Op-Ed page? When he worked at the Pioneer Press in 2004, Brian Lambert attended a 2004 “business literacy” get-together with Par Ridder, in which the then-publisher said he liked the idea of making the PiPress Op-Ed page “a conservative alternative to the Star Tribune.” Now, writing for The Rake, Lambert says his sources at the Strib’s editorial page are hearing a message that focuses on what Ridder thinks readers want — and not on national issues. “His message, basically, was to write with more of an eye on the marketplace, and he sees that marketplace as being less interested in national issues, like Iraq, Scooter Libby, the U.S. attorneys story, than local issues,” an opinion page employee told Lambert. “Essentially it’s another step in the transition from treating readers like citizens to treating them like customers.”
Gigs and Grants: This year The Knight News Challenge — which had two local winners in its first year — will again award $5 million in funds to projects experimenting with digital newsgathering for communities. Applications are due Oct. 15. Also, here’s a good-lookin’ job: With a cozy town and a so-so salary, this gig as Northfield News’ managing editor would be perfect for a bought-out Stribber.
Oh, That Liberal Media: Polinaut confirms!
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8 Comments
Comment posted July 12, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
pathetic I think it is actually 1,413,000 unique visitors, not 1,413 visitors. The latter seems just too low to me.
Comment posted July 13, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
Lambert quote on the Strib Brian Lambert says, “Essentially it’s another step in the transition from treating readers like citizens to treating them like customers.”
If the directive had been to shift the editorials away from issues, and to focus more on price comparisons between cordless electric lawnmowers, that would be a more convincing argument.
It’s not an uncommon or unreasonable position that most local papers will have the biggest chance to survive with a stronger local focus.
I’m no fan of Par Ridder, of course, based on what I’ve seen of his hair. But it’s not that difficult to imagine a money guy at a paper asking, “Say, might we attract more readers if we presented relatively more insightful editorials on local issues, and relatively fewer spitting, unoriginal restatements of the already-knwon national policy views of these two or three random people who somehow ended up working as editorial writers here?”
Comment posted July 14, 2007 @ 9:58 am
why wa the star and sickle losing money hand over fist? what Lambert and his ilk want is obviously why the Minneapolis fish wrapper is a dead paper….the continous left wing rants on the editorial page are not main stream…..they are psychotic
Comment posted July 12, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
pathetic I think it is actually 1,413,000 unique visitors, not 1,413 visitors. The latter seems just too low to me.
Comment posted July 13, 2007 @ 8:18 am
Lambert quote on the Strib Brian Lambert says, “Essentially it's another step in the transition from treating readers like citizens to treating them like customers.”
If the directive had been to shift the editorials away from issues, and to focus more on price comparisons between cordless electric lawnmowers, that would be a more convincing argument.
It's not an uncommon or unreasonable position that most local papers will have the biggest chance to survive with a stronger local focus.
I'm no fan of Par Ridder, of course, based on what I've seen of his hair. But it's not that difficult to imagine a money guy at a paper asking, “Say, might we attract more readers if we presented relatively more insightful editorials on local issues, and relatively fewer spitting, unoriginal restatements of the already-knwon national policy views of these two or three random people who somehow ended up working as editorial writers here?”
Comment posted July 14, 2007 @ 4:58 am
why wa the star and sickle losing money hand over fist? what Lambert and his ilk want is obviously why the Minneapolis fish wrapper is a dead paper….the continous left wing rants on the editorial page are not main stream…..they are psychotic
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