Storm traffic
For what it's worth: Friday morning's storm brought us the most page views of any day since we installed our current measurement system in August 2006. Comparing tragedies, the traffic was a third again higher than the fire at Eastern High School in November 2006. These numbers don't include multimedia (photos, video or audio) so the total is even higher.
I asked Michael Grossman, our online content editor, his thoughts on why the numbers were so high: Typically, bad weather (hurricanes, winter storms -- both actual events and predictions) are among the most viewed. There was a death which may have added more. And it made the national news, which I'm sure helped as we got some traffic from Google, but it wasn't a big chunk of the traffic. I think the fact that there were numerous updates always helps bring people back -- the initial reporting, the city letting some business owners in, several press conference updates, releasing the identity of the man killed.
Compelling news story, constant updating and different types of media. That's a recipe for success. I'd add that we posted virtually the entire day beginning at about 12:30 a.m. and were really cranking it up before most people woke up in the morning to see the damage.