Tech-pundits have droned on for years that print is dead. It sure started to seem that way this year, with report after report of lost newspaper revenue and subscribers. Cooler heads all along have countered the impending doom theory with the idea that nothing worth anything dies—it only evolves. The LA Times puts itself up an example of the latter idea.
In January, my “How Bloggers Will Save Journalism” piece got some attention, and was part of a series of columns pumped out over time advocating the evolve-or-die mantra. Print will die if print publications rely only on the print side of their business instead of incorporating all the new media at their disposal to boost readership, and therefore ad rates.
In July, thanks to a late push by the Los Angeles earthquake, latimes.com set a new record for pageviews: 127 million. What was the key to their success? Embracing and developing their options, for one, but also some nice search engine optimization.
In a posted memo to staff, executive editor Meredith Artley credits the traffic burst to increased SEO skill: “Latimes.com keeps getting better at SEO (search engine optimization), which means our stories are ranking higher in Google and other search engines. We are also performing better on sites like Digg.com. All that adds up to more exposure and more readership than ever before.”
In addition to posting the most-viewed articles, photos, and videos, Artley also directly credits the staff blogs as being a huge boost to said readership. Namely, Hero Complex, Geoff Boucher’s sci-fi blog led the charge.
But there was also something else new to the journalism world in the list of top ten most-viewed articles: the intrusion of the writer into a journalistic piece. In number ten, for example, an article about a study debunking the liberal media myth, James Rainey recounts his personal experience of readers accusing him of being unpatriotic and even French.
Sacre bleu, to resound the resounding cliché.
No journalism professor or editor 10-15 years ago would allow such personalization in an article. These days it seems understood and appreciated that the Fourth Estate comes down off of its high horse to meet and greet with the people.
Where are the reader comments on that article to plunge the LA Times fully into Journalism 2.0? Well, looks like they still have a little evolving to do in that respect, as do many other outlets—when journalism becomes a network of two-way streets, the evolution is complete.
An SEO tip, then, here is appropriate, since the Times is willing to lend an ear to a concept just three years ago was as esoteric as card-counting. Reader comments help build your keywords and all you have to do is prompt the reader to speak their mind. They’ll likely insult you in the process, which is how you pay for it, but often they add clarity, value, and sometimes even compliments on your work or thoughts.
