Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Pete Blodget

While Blodget makes a strong argument in favor of a Wall Street Journal-style Web fee, his suggestion of trimming the newsroom budget by judging productivity on page hits is flawed. An example of this is Huffington Post, where scandalous celebrity stories routinely get the highest clicks.


While the New York Times obviously isn't going to start writing about celebrity gossip, there is a parallel phenomenon visible on their "most emailed" list, where the most emailed articles over the last 30 days are for the most part lifestyle pieces. Placing a higher value on writers that produce those types of stories will possibly impact the value of the paper by changing its focus. A similar argument can be made against the suggestion of shutting down bureaus.

As for the subject of charging for access to the site, David Carr of the New York Times makes the point that this may work for the Wall Street Journal because of its usefulness, but not so much for say, the New York Post, which is largely an indulgence. It's an interesting point, but it also makes me wonder if it is useful, in the sense that celebrity gossip bloggers often get information from the Post's Page Six.


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