Audience Building Initiatives
Introduction
This series of case studies
showcases both operational
excellence and initiatives
that have successfully increase
audience for newspaper Web
sites.
Introduction
| Other Articles in this Series: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
About the Author
Audience
Building Initiative: Online Community at the Racine Journal
Times
By Rich
Gordon
Summary
 The
Racine (Wis.) Journal Times (print circulation 28,000 daily, 30,000 Sunday)
built an active online community by offering Web site users the opportunity
to comment on the news. Using simple (and free, open source) technology,
the paper’s journalists have posted content, solicited user comments
and managed user interaction to keep conversations lively and on track.
In 2007, the “News and Views Weblogs” section on journaltimes.com
has been averaging more than 200 user comments a day. As user participation
grew, so did the paper’s Web site traffic. In just two years, the
number of online users who visit the site regularly (once a week or more)
more than doubled, and monthly page views more than tripled. In late
July, the Journal Times rolled out a new online community platform that’s
intended to increase user participation even more.
History of this initiative
 Like
many papers, the Times began experimenting with staff Weblogs in 2004.
As of early May 2005, one reporter, Rob Golub, was writing what he describes
as a “quirky” blog for the site, entitled “Rob on the
Road.” Traffic to the blog was growing, and users were posting
comments. City Editor Dustin Block was a leader in pushing to expand
blogging on the site.
“It wasn’t exactly
a groundbreaking idea,”
Block said. “I was
using sites as models that
I went to on a regular basis
myself, like Daily Kos, Fark
and BoingBoing. The way they
were using the readers to
provide content, with a small
staff — that seemed
kind of appealing to me.”
The paper’s then-editor, Randy Brandt, was interested in finding
ways to grow the site’s traffic. In the paper’s print edition,
Brandt had increased reader engagement by applying audience-building
recommendations from the Readership Institute at Northwestern University.
He read a report from the Readership Institute suggesting that news sites
create a "Talk about it" Web site for people to engage with
and comment on the news. This recommendation was based on Readership
Institute research that suggests the “gives me something to talk
about” experience is one of the most powerful drivers of newspaper
and Web site usage.
“I realized that not
only could we give people
something to talk about,
we could provide the forum
for them to talk about it,”
recalled Brandt, who left
the Journal Times in June
2007. “Interactivity
and addictiveness could be
such a powerful driver for
audience.”
Brandt, Block and their
team decided to create several
new blogs and use them as
a platform for publishing
news — stories from
the paper, updates during
the day, and more. While
the underlying technology
(an open-source program called
Nucleus) is typically used
to create blogs, the paper
used the software more along
the lines of a news publishing
system. After a news item
was posted, users had an
opportunity to comment.
The paper also created an
area on the top of the home
page (labeled "News
and Views") to highlight
the new blogs, and began
specifically inviting people
on the Web site to comment
in those posts. One blog
was devoted to a regular
feature called “Debatables,”
which invited people to argue
opposite sides of an issue.
The first thing that happened
was that people started to
post comments. The number
of reader comments rose like
this:
• April 2005: 543 comments
• May 2005: 1,127 comments
• June 2005: 2,611
comments
• July 2005: 3,980
comments
• August 2005: 4,128
comments
Coincidentally, in July
and August 2005, Belden Associates,
a research firm working for
the newspaper was conducting
an online survey of users
of Journaltimes.com. Site
visitors were randomly invited
to take an online survey
and have a chance to win
$1,000.
The results of the survey
stunned Belden researchers.
Between July and August,
the survey suggested, the
size of the site's total
audience more than doubled,
from 40,000 to 89,000 visitors.
What's more, the survey indicated
that the growth in audience
in August was due almost
entirely to people who were
previously infrequent visitors
to the site. (Belden could
measure this because the
survey asked respondents
how many days they had visited
the site in the previous
week. The survey found a
huge surge in the number
of people who said this —
the day they took the survey
— was the first day
they had visited the site
in the past week.)
“I thought it was pretty astonishing,” said Greg Harmon,
director of interactive for Belden. “We were very concerned about
the jump in estimated use and reach because it was so dramatic. I looked
for other explanations. We told Racine that you can’t use the August
figures for marketing and ad sales because you don’t know if they’re
going to hold up and you can’t over promise the [advertising] clients.
… We assumed these folks would go away.”
A year later, in August
2006, The Journal Times hired
Belden to repeat the survey.
The new visitors had not
gone away. The site's "core
audience" — a
term Belden uses to describe
people who had visited the
site at least once in a seven-day
period — was more than
double what they'd found
in 2005. In a year’s
time, the core audience rose
from 9,000 to 21,000 people.
“That really blew
my mind,” Harmon said.
“What I thought was
truly astonishing about this
was that they were growing
the core audience. That’s
something I’d never
seen before. Typically, audiences
don’t grow 100 percent
in a year.”
Not surprisingly, the number
of page views on the site
also rose dramatically:
• August 2004:
1.03 million page views
• August 2005: 1.28
million page views
• August 2006: 3.18
million page views
 A
key development was a shooting incident in January of 2006, in which
a man named Adrial White was convicted of murder and attempted murder
for shooting three young men he caught breaking into a car. The case
generated strong feelings in Racine, with some people contending the
shootings were justified. Readers posted hundreds of comments about the
case on the Journal Times Web site.
While there is no more recent
Belden data, Web site server
logs indicate that since
August 2006 the audience
for the site remained relatively
stable at about 3 million
page views per month. But
the number of comments has
continued to grow.
Belden’s survey also
asked site visitors what
brought them to the site
that day. At many sites,
a common answer is, “I
like to check up on yesterday’s
news,” Harmon said.
“When you look through
the Racine comments, what
I noticed most was the ones
that said they came ‘to
find out what’s happening
now’ or ‘what’s
going on,’” Harmon
said. “It went from
being yesterday’s news,
a repurposed-content site,
to a place where people have
a real dynamic sense of what’s
happening now.”
How it works
The Journal Times integrated
“News and Views”
into the operation of the
newsroom. Golub, who is now
Web editor, played a leading
role in deciding what stories
to post and where on the
site to post them. But reporters
and other editors also posted
items. Furthermore, the paper
launched several blogs devoted
to traditional newsroom operations:
letters to the editor, editorials,
and some of the paper’s
featured columnists.
The blogs also served as
a home for breaking news.
“When it works well,
it’s like a wire service,”
said Block, the city editor.
“You post a blurb or
an alert, then you follow
up and make some calls and
update the story.”
The paper has experimented
with different kinds of blogs.
Based on user comments, the
most popular one was “Racine
Report,” which focuses
on news from the paper’s
home city. Other popular
blogs included “Beyond
Wisconsin” (news from
the nation and world) “Cheese-o-Sphere”
(state news, with a tagline
of “The Cheesy Center
of it All”) and “Schools
Report” (education).
The paper also published
a blog on parenting called
“Mommy Talk”
and several devoted to sports.
“We’ve had very
little trouble getting reporters
to buy into this,”
Block said. “I suspect
it’s because we’ve
so integrated it into the
regular news operation. We’re
just making it part of the
job, and everyone realizes
it can help them to see what
people are interested in
and responding to.”
The paper made it very easy
for online users to post
comments. No site registration
was required, and comments
went live immediately, without
prior review by staff.
“Turning the site
over to the user as much
as possible is the key,”
said Golub, the Web editor.
“Our role is just to
get out of the way. Getting
out of the way means lowering
barriers to the public, not
having complex signup, not
having it be difficult to
post something.”
 While
larger sites such as The Washington Post have struggled to manage online
comments and keep discussions from deteriorating, that has not been a
serious issue in Racine, Golub said. The site simply invited users offended
by a comment to “Suggest a Weblog comment for removal.” Such
a suggestion generates an email to about 10 Journal Times staff members,
any of whom has the ability to remove an objectionable post. Golub says
“a few comments a day” are typically removed.
When a comment is removed,
here’s what appears
in its place:
(DELETED: This comment
was reported to The Journal
Times and we have erased
it. We reserve the right
to ban users without warning
if they abuse our comment
system. We have the ability
to ban individual computers
from posting comments. -Editors)
“In a community of
this size, it seems to manage
itself,” Brandt said.
“We take comments down
that we think are abusive
or racist or obscene. But
the overwhelming majority
of people do behave. They
warn each other to keep the
conversation reasonably civil.
They enjoy the interaction
and don’t want it taken
away.”
The mayor of Racine reads
the “Racine Report”
blog and responds to complaints
about city government. One
evening, “our mayor
logged on and had a community
debate with people all night,”
Brandt said. “It started
out very rough, but he did
a very good job and at the
end people thanked the mayor
and thanked us for providing
the community forum. It was
quite gratifying.”
The site has also experimented
with “Open Thread”
posts – inviting people
to comment on absolutely
anything they may be interested
in. Block said he borrowed
this concept from other popular
blogs. While these posts
were among the most likely
to generate objectionable
comments, they have proven
very popular.
“People just want
a place to connect a bit
and they can write anything
and see where things go,”
Block said. “It’s
a little bit humbling from
a newspaper’s perspective.
… They take us out
of the equation.”
Promotion and connections
to print
The paper prominently highlights
its URL in print –
about 20 percent of the front-page
banner is devoted to the
Web address, Golub said.
Beyond that, the print edition
will mention topics that
people can comment on. The
editors will also periodically
publish a story about comments
that have been posted online
about a particular topic.
“We’ll gather
selected comments and run
them in the paper, with a
couple of paragraphs on top
saying, ‘Here are some
comments on JournalTimes.com,’”
Golub said.
Print features such as letters
to the editor, editorials
and “Glad You Asked
That,” which invites
readers to ask questions
that the staff can find answers
to, also direct people to
a corresponding blog on the
Web site.
About the technology
Nucleus is open-source blog software, freely available for download
on the Internet. It was installed on the Journal Times Web site as part
of a site redesign in early 2005. The installation was led by staff members
from the Journal Times as well as its corporate parent, Lee Enterprises,
Golub said.
The new online community platform launched in July was built using software
from two separate companies: The Port for blogging, personalization and
social networking capabilities, and VMIX for video publishing
and sharing.
Jeff Herr, director of interactive media for Lee Enterprises, said the
company plans to deploy these tools on other Lee sites as well.
About revenue
By driving more traffic, “News and Views” has played a substantial
role in helping the Journal Times increase its online
advertising revenue. Rick Parrish, the paper’s
advertising director, said online banner revenue –
primarily driven by banners on “News and Views”
– rose 69 percent from April 2006 to April 2007.
“We are clearly growing
revenue creatively and rapidly,”
Parrish said.
What’s next
The Journal Times’ new community platform is more fully integrated
with the rest of the newspaper’s Web site than the original one
powered by open-source software. It also gives users considerably more
power to publish content. In the original system, users were mostly limited
to commenting on posts made by the newspaper staff. The new system invites
users to create their own blogs and to submit and share photos and video
as well as text.
The new functionality, Golub said, will allow people in Racine to interact
with one another in much the same way that users of social networking
sites such as MySpace do.
“Our new presentation will be an alternative to MySpace, a different
experience that is not a replacement for MySpace, just different,”
Golub said in an email interview. “On MySpace, you can pretend
you're friends with someone in another country. It's a fantasy. On our
site, your friends will be your neighbors. It's real.”
One other change with the new system is that for the first time, users
must register if they want to comment.
“Requiring light registration but allowing posting without approval
will serve as a very low barrier to entry,” Golub said. “It
should reel in our abusive users but still allow unfettered access. We
hope the new content will make up for the new, relatively
mild barrier.”
Block wants to start coaching
and teaching contributors
to post news themselves.
“I think people really
want to be involved with
the paper, and they enjoy
it, and I don’t think
we’ve really tapped
that yet,” he said.
“I think the comments
are a start, but if we do
a little better job of teaching,
we could really affect the
local news. … If we
could get our best commenters
and direct them, it would
really change things. That’s
where I hope things go.”
Lessons from the Journal
Times’s experience
• Inviting user comments
is one of the easiest, fastest
and least expensive ways
to build online audience.
All the Journal Times had
to do was install free software
and invite user comments.
• A small paper can
cultivate interaction with
the community without disrupting
newsroom operations. In a
community the size of Racine,
something like “News
and Views” can be integrated
into the way the newsroom
works.
• Make it easy for
users to comment. Anything
that makes it difficult –
online registration, complex
procedures – will inhibit
participation. “It
needs to be easy so grandma
can do it,” Golub said.
• Unpleasant comments
are inevitable, but a reasonable
tradeoff if you want user
participation. “It’s
kind of, ‘no pain,
no gain,’” Golub
said. “If you want
to generate a lot of traffic,
you need to live with the
uncertainty of what people
are going to post.”
• When big news breaks,
the combination of Web and
print is powerful. The Adrial
White case “drove Internet
audience, and we also had
some of our best single-copy
sales numbers,” Brandt
said. “The Internet
was not drawing away from
the newspaper in any way,
it was adding and fueling.”
• Encourage creativity,
and allow room for failure.
“Fear kills initiative,
and there’s going to
be a certain amount of risk,”
Block said. “Instead
of looking for reasons not
to try things, you should
take initiative. …
Fail or succeed, you can
build a culture of people
who want to try new things.
You just have to reward the
risk and not punish the failure.”
Relevant links
• Racine Journal
Times Weblogs home page
• Most commented-upon
posts
• Readership Institute
Web site
• “Talk About It” Web site paper
• Nucleus open-source
blog platform
About
the author
Rich Gordon is an associate
professor at the Medill School
of Journalism, Northwestern
University. Prof. Gordon
directs the school’s
graduate program in Web publishing.
For the 2006-07 academic
year, he has taken on a special
assignment as director of
digital media in education.
He began his professional
career at the Richmond
(Va.) Times-Dispatch, and
later worked at The Palm
Beach (Fla.) Post and The
Miami Herald, where he became
the company’s first
new media director. In addition
to teaching and research
about new media journalism,
Rich has served as a consultant
for the Newspaper Association
of America, Pulitzer Newspapers
and Grainger Corp. He speaks
regularly to professional
and industry groups.
|
If you would like an e-mail notification of future Growing Audience
updates, please send e-mail to Sally Clarke at