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The Scot Heard Round the World - The Scotsman and Overseas Newspapers
March 10, 2008
Last week The Scotsman published comments made off the record by Samantha Powers, an aide to the Obama campaign. I am married to a journalist so we spent much of the weekend soul searching with other journalists about the ethics of publishing off the record comments. Our friend Gwen made a comment that whether or not it was right, the editors may be patting themselves on the back due to soaring web traffic. Did the controversy drive traffic to The Scotsman website?
Of course it did - no surprise here. Share of US Internet visits to The Scotsman were up four-fold on Thursday compared with the day before. The site ranked #421 among News & Media - Print websites, up from #1,117 on Wednesday the 5th. Traffic has all but returned to normal, with the site ranking #944 on Saturday the 8th.
Visitors didn't stay long. The average session duration (again based on US visits) for The Scotsman declined to 1 minute 39 seconds on Thursday the 6th, down from an average of 3 minutes 51 seconds for the month of February. On Thursday, more than half of visits (52.66%) came from The Drudge Report website.
Crumbling Borders or Just Crumbs
This controversy also raises another interesting question - are borders crumbling as consumers increasingly read their news online? Not really... I looked at the top 200 News & Media - Print websites and found that in February 19 were overseas websites. Here's the ranking of the custom category I produced with these 19 sites. This is based on share of US Internet visits among this group of 19 websites.
Share of US Internet visits to this group of 19 websites is up 14% year on year in February. However, visits to the entire Print Media category are also up, and are growing at a faster rate of 19%. The New York Times website, the #1 ranked Print Media website in February alone received a 70% larger share of US Internet visits than these 19 websites combined.
The Scotsman may have enjoyed a hit online but acquiring loyal readers - and taking those from domestic publications - is a tougher task.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:00 AM
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Comments
Really fascinating list. where's the daily mail? ... all those drudge links ... maybe it's the loyalty factor (returnees) because their proper web presence is fairly new, whereas both the telegraph and guardian have been at it longer. the indie above the times can only be a dedicated, liberal american readership, surely?
Posted by paul canning | March 26, 2008 10:24 AM
Yes I think they weighed up the odds and decided on the benefits. If it was a UK campaign there would have been more to lose longterm. I guess they figured the loss of closeness to the Obama camp was worth it. But I am amazed campaign people say things like that to journalists ??
Posted by Jeff H | March 10, 2008 11:04 PM