News-Record.com

You want game? Greensboro's got game!

Did you see the Audi ads in the NYT - they took over the crossword puzzle one Sunday. Huge hit.

OK, really.. if this idea was sooooo great, how many people actually clicked on it?

Then, if they did click on it, how many actually looked through it?

What kind of a click-through rate did it get? (I think I saw it served on EVERY home page visit for at least two weeks -- so the click through RATE is very important)

Can't beat those games, Sue. Can we hire you?

Jim, why so negative? The piece got 1,100 downloads in April. We're pleased with that number, particularly as the intent was to drive people who are online to the paper. We can't measure how long the average person spent on it, and we don't measure click-through rate on anything other than ads.

It's not negativity.

Here's a perfect example of what is wrong with newspapers and their websites...

You build a "cool" Flash thing (which may or may not have actually been cool) to try to get people to buy the newspaper. That's the ultimate goal, right? Get people to buy the paper....

You spend the time, effort and energy to build the Flash thing.

Then, you don't measure if it is successful or not.

Obviously, you're happy that 1,000 people clicked on it.

I'd say, how do you know if this is good? That's it.

What you do now is determine -- in your mind -- that all of the work and energy that went into that WAS worthwhile (and a neat mention in a media journal/blog doesn't hurt).

But, aside from giving you a warm feeling, what did it do? Do you really think 1000 more people read your paper because of that Flash thing?

Who on Earth would click on such a thing unless they were a journalism geek or already a long-time, uber-interested subscriber?

This now fixes in everyone's mind that in order to make upper management happy and get mentioned in a Journalism whatever (capital J is on purpose) that something has to be SUPER COOL -- forget the actual impact it has.

I'd say that is precisely what is wrong with the thinking at newspapers, particularly on their websites: The buzz and internal "hip factor" that something generates far outweighs the actual usefulness of something. (OK, that part WAS negative, but it had to be said...)

It sure ain't what I'd call positive. You seem to think that the only measure of value is the number of people who clicked through. That's one, but only one. If 10 people got a sense of what we were trying to do, then it was worth the time we spent. We also added to our skill set in pulling multimedia programs like this together. That means we can do it better and faster next time.

You keep pounding on the capital J journalism drum, as if that is our prime reason for being. There's no evidence of that. I have noted lots of small J journalism efforts here. Of all the large papers in the state, we probably do the fewest "let's do this project to win an award" kind of journalism.

"Can't beat those games, Sue. Can we hire you?"

Someone said, "We're all whores. We're just haggling about price." IOW, you have my cell number.

(Hope that didn't trip the ugly-word-o-meter I hear you're installing.)

Jim said, "Who on Earth would click on such a thing unless they were a journalism geek or already a long-time, uber-interested subscriber?"

Two things:

1. Journalism geeks and uber-interested subscribers are the paper's customers too, so even if they're the only ones attracted by the exercise then how does that make it less valid?

2. It's always dangerous to assume that just because you think something is worthless that most other people think so. I think American Idol is probably the worst crap ever put on TV but apparently tens-of-millions of people disagree with me.