Tag: Boston.com

Dear Next Owner of the Boston Globe …

On the eve of what may be an announcement that the New York Times Co. is selling the Boston Globe, Boston.com editor David Beard weighs in with a smart piece for Poynter Online on “10 hopeful points about the future of journalism.”

Although perhaps Dave missed Dan Gillmor’s 11th rule.

Boston.com editor blames Celtics

Boston.com editor Dave Beard says that his site’s readership numbers are down over the previous May and June in large part because of the Boston Celtics’ early flameout. Since the Kevin Garnett-less Celts were eliminated on May 17, that explanation definitely makes some sense. Beard writes:

Two words: Boston Celtics.

No rolling rally. No euphoria. No heart-stopping NBA finals, sadly, with photo-friendly celebs packing the Garden. No May-to-June buildup for such a record season.

That said, despite a 40 percent dropoff from Sports in June pageviews, we made up most of it with News and Arts and Entertainment. By internal measurement, we came very close to our record June number for pageviews and for unique users, and we showed 11 percent more visits that the preceding June.

And, not to be a salesman on you, but July is looking very strong.

In short: We don’t read too much into a month or two of the widely variable and smallish samplings of Nielsen, as you mentioned in your lede. But we’re not relaxing one bit.

Boston.com’s missing readers

Web readership numbers tend to fluctuate so wildly that only a fool would try to read any deeper meaning into month-to-month changes.

Still, it’s hard not to notice that the number of unique monthly visitors to Boston.com, the Boston Globe’s Web site, has dropped considerably over the past two months, according to Nielsen Online figures provided by a reliable source who asked not to be identified.

After hitting an all-time peak of 8.5 million visitors in January of this year, perhaps tied to President Obama’s inauguration, the figure plunged all the way to 4 million in June, a drop of more than 23 percent over the previous June and the lowest number in two years.

Last June, then-senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were engaged in the final stages of their hard-fought battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, and I’ve been told that Boston.com’s political coverage does well in search engines and aggregators. So that could be an explanation.

Or maybe it’s Red Sox fatigue — it’s possible that the Sox have been so good for so long that casual fans are checking in less frequently than they used to. Could it be the Globe’s labor unrest? (Unlikely, though it’s interesting that readership figures for the Globe’s corporate cousin NYTimes.com were also down by 21 percent in May.) Or maybe it’s just one of those things.

Based on Nielsen’s May figures, Boston.com is now the ninth-ranked newspaper Web site overall — down from sixth for all of 2008, though it’s still the most widely read regional newspaper site in the United States*.

Among all news sites, including perennial ratings leaders MSNBC.com, CNN.com and Yahoo News, Boston.com now ranks 32nd, down from 17th in January.

What follows are Boston.com’s unique monthly visitors over the past two years. Percentages are increases and decreases over the previous year.

  • June 2009: 4,020,000 (-23.2%)
  • May 2009: 4,397,000 (-11.4%)
  • April 2009: 5,888,000 (+33.0%)
  • March 2009: 5,742,000 (+37.2%)
  • Feb. 2009: 5,659,000 (+15.4%)
  • Jan. 2009: 8,535,000 (+64.3%)
  • Dec. 2008: 4,086,000 (-6.4%)
  • Nov 2008: 5,436,000 (+12.3%)
  • Oct 2008: 6,133,000 (+11.4%)
  • Sept 2008: 8,610,000 (+121.5%)
  • Aug 2008: 4,479,000 (+3.9%)
  • July 2008: 4,891,000 (+21.4%)
  • June 2008: 5,233,000 (+23.0%)
  • May 2008: 4,962,000 (+22.9%)
  • April 2008: 4,428,000 (+6.2%)
  • March 2008: 4,184,000 (-1.4%)
  • Feb. 2008: 4,904,000 (N/A)
  • Jan. 2008: 5,194,000 (N/A)
  • Dec. 2007: 4,364,000 (N/A)
  • Nov. 2007: 4,839,000 (N/A)
  • Oct. 2007: 5,506,000 (N/A)
  • Sept. 2007: 3,887,000 (N/A)
  • Aug. 2007: 4,311,000 (N/A)
  • July 2007: 4,029,000 (N/A)
  • June 2007: 4,254,000 (N/A)
  • May 2007: 4,038,000 (N/A)
  • April 2007: 4,171,000 (N/A)
  • March 2007: 4,245,000 (N/A)

*I’ve been asked how Boston.com can be considered the most-read regional newspaper site when the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Post and New York’s Daily News are all ahead of it.

My answer is that the LA Times has long been considered a national paper. Indeed, Slate includes it as one of the five papers it summarizes in its “Today’s Papers” feature. (The others are the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.)

It’s only recently that Boston.com’s readership dropped below those of the other three papers, so perhaps I’ll have to rethink my “most-read regional newspaper site” formulation. Both New York and Chicago are huge metropolitan areas that dwarf Greater Boston. Yet the Tribune, the Post and the Daily News are all more regional than they are national.

I’ll have to ponder that for a bit.

Best New England books

Boston.com has posted an interactive list of the 100 best New England books evah. My nominee — Nicholas Howe’s “Not Without Peril,” a compilation of a century’s worth of fatalities in New Hampshire’s White Mountains — checks in at number 85.

Clarification: I didn’t mean to suggest that I think “Not Without Peril” is the best New England book. Rather, I proposed it to Boston.com a few months ago as one of the top 100. Boston.com’s choice of “Moby Dick” at number one is all right by me.

I also see that Boston.com has ranked “Not Without Peril” at number 90, not 85. I think I was looking at the “most read” category earlier.

Finally, I just finished Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower” (number 36) last week. A worthy choice, though slightly overrated, in my view. Too many impenetrable accounts of battles, not enough narrative sweep. But well worth reading.

Globe expands Your Town

The Boston Globe has rolled out six more Your Town hyperlocal sites, the subject of so much angst (and a lawsuit) last winter. Unlike the original iteration, the sites now feature mostly Globe content, with a few links to community sites. Your Town is now in 10 communities.

My quick perusal reveals no links to GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites, even though the out-of-court settlement between GateHouse and the New York Times Co. allows linking as long as the Globe doesn’t resume its practice of running an automated feed of GateHouse content on Your Town.

Interesting that the Globe continues its local push even as the Times Co. threatens to close the paper.

The new sites are on the South Shore (Hingham, Norwell and Scituate) and in the urban communities of Medford, Malden and Melrose. Here’s an e-mail that went out to the staff on Friday from David Dahl, the Globe’s regional editor:

All,

This week we launched six more Your Town sites, bringing to 10 the number of our hyperlocal sites. The new communities are Hingham, Scituate, Norwell, Medford, Malden and Melrose. You can find the sites at boston.com/hingham, boston.com/scituate, etc.

As many of you know, in addition to posts from Globe correspondents and staffers, the sites offer a collection of links to other blogs and websites, interactive opportunities for readers to post events and to report potholes and other problems, and, coming soon, improved blogging tools to allow readers to more easily post words and photos on our sites.

The sites enable us to reach deeper — and on a daily basis — into the communities that we’ve covered for years in our zoned sections. And the effort represents another collaborative effort between the Globe and our colleagues at boston.com to boost our local online effort.

Thursday’s Globe North offers a good example of our early successes. Steve Rosenberg wrote a story about municipal salaries for the city of Medford, the latest in a series of muni salary stories to come out of the zones this year. Eric Bauer created a searchable database of the top 100 salaries. We published the story and database at boston.com/medford and in Globe North.

The response: several thousand page views, and 50 reader comments. “Great expose of public information. Plenty more out there. Next story: follow around a few of these administrators to see what they do all day and then figure out to whom they are related,” wrote one reader. (It wasn’t me, I swear…).

There are many people who worked to assemble these new sites, among them: Teresa Hanafin, Angela Nelson, Glenn Yoder, Marcia Dick, Dean Inouye, the zones copy desk and the staff on Bob Kempf’s product team. In addition to staffers whose work will appear on the sites, we are using free lance “Town Correspondents” to post blog items and conduct outreach in the communities. They are Kathryn Eident, Ben Terris, Lisa Crowley and Travis Andersen.

Several of you have asked about page views and about advertising support. We’re closing in on a half million page views this month from the Your Town sites. Ad sales are going reasonably well at this early date, and I’m assured that our sales people are looking for more.

David Dahl
Boston Globe Regional Editor
Boston.com/yourtown

Social networking and the news

Social Networking and the News

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On Thursday I had a chance to take part in a panel on “Getting Started with Social Media: Lessons from the Front Lines,” sponsored by the Mass Technology Leadership Council.

It was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot from the other panelists — Perry Allison of EONS.com, Pam Johnston of Gather.com and Brian Halligan of HubSpot. The moderator was Debi Kleiman of Communispace in Watertown, whose Fenway Park-theme meeting room was where we held our presentation.

I’ve posted the slideshow that accompanied my talk. Slideshare appeared to choke on embedded links, so I’ve listed them below in case you’d like to check any of them out.

Boston.com versus GateHouse redux

Boston.com’s Newton site debuted today. I’ll try to offer at least a quick assessment tomorrow. At first glance, it strikes me as an attractive mix of content from the Boston Globe, GateHouse Media’s Newton Tab, the Boston Phoenix and local bloggers.

Meanwhile, take a look at this video, posted on Boston.com’s Green Blog. Be sure to watch the closing credits. Pretty aggressive, don’t you think?

More: It’s only fair to point out it’s virtually impossible to learn that the video is from the GateHouse’s Belmont Citizen-Herald unless you watch all the way to the end. Even if you go directly to the YouTube site, you’ll find nothing unless you click on “more info.” And even then, it’s pretty cryptic.

So I can believe it’s an innocent mistake — but one that should be corrected soon.

Still more: Now fixed — see fourth paragraph.

Waiting for Boston.com’s Newton site

It’s a little after 11:30 a.m. So I guess we can now officially say that the Boston Globe has delayed the unveiling of its hyperlocal Newton site, the subject of much speculation and angst this week.

I would imagine the delay is due to some tech snafu, though it’s possible it’s being retooled in response to the concerns raised by GateHouse Media, owner of the Newton Tab.

Though I’ve been among those who’ve been wondering if the Globe’s plans might unfairly make use of the Tab’s content, I also expect that the Globe folks are smart enough not to go too far. If there’s a blog on the Globe site that links to some Tab content, well, you can’t stop the Globe from blogging. Nor should you.

If the Globe refrains from linking to every story in the Tab; and if, when it does, it does so in such a way that you feel as though you need to click on through, then everyone should be happy.

Update: Media Nation reader G.R. tells me that the the site now says the Newton page will debut on Monday.