Tag Archives: cnn.com

Japan quake sends record audiences to broadcast and online news

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The unravelling disaster in Japan has seen record online traffic and a hike in TV audiences.

A spokesman for BBC News told Journalism.co.uk that there were 15.9 million unique users on the site last Friday (11 February), an all-time record – beating the previous best, election results day, which saw 11.4 million unique users.

There were 9.5 million page impressions for the main story, and 6.1 million for the live text page.

And this very visual story saw record video views too. The BBC News site had more than six million hits on its live video stream on Friday and seven million unique users of video, compared to a previous high of 2.7 million, for video views on the day of the general election.

The BBC News website also had a record weekend in terms of web traffic, with 10 million unique users on Saturday, and nearly eight million on Sunday.

BBC News unique users on the day of the Japan earthquake (Mar11) Many Eyes

CNN is also reporting a large increase in traffic. In a release, CNN Digital said between Friday and Sunday, CNN.com had 264 million global page views and 87 million global video streams.

The network said more CNN.com video was watched in those three days than during the previous 30 days.

Sky News said by 4.30pm on Friday, page impressions had more than doubled – to nearly five million – and unique users had also doubled.

Channel 4 has told Journalism.co.uk that it had trebled its usual web traffic on Sunday.

Bar graph of UK TV ratings after the earthquake in Japan Many EyesTV News

Bloomberg Television claims to be the first cable news network to report the quake, six minutes after the record tremor.

All the TV news providers we have spoken to have reported above average ratings for the subsequent days. On Friday, Sky News had one of its 10 largest audience days ever, with only the Iraq war having a higher daily reach. The BBC had an audience of almost six million to its 10pm news programme on BBC 1 on Sunday; ITV had almost five million viewers to a special report on Friday night while Channel 4 News had 1.5 million viewers on Saturday.

The BBC told Journalism.co.uk it had 5.7 million viewers to Friday’s 6pm news on BBC 1 and 5.3 million viewers to the 10pm bulletin when average ratings are 4.3 million and 4.8 million respectively. ITV News had 4.6 million viewers of its 6.30pm news programme on Friday, a 700,000 increase on its average audience of 3.9 million and an audience of 2.9 million for Friday’s News at Ten, up from an average of 2.5 million viewers. Channel 4 News said that its special report on Friday night had 1.3 million viewers, rising to 1.5 million on Saturday.

Social Media

And of course social media is rife with mentions of ‘quake’, ‘tsunami’ and ‘nuclear’.

In the hour that followed the quake on Friday, Tweet-o-Meter reported 1,200 tweets a minute coming out of Japan. And at the time of writing (Wednesday lunchtime), tweets from Tokyo are again peaking the Tweet-o-Meter scale at 1,200 a minute. In a release, CNN has reported that its breaking news account on Twitter acquired followers at a rate of 10 times greater than average and now totals more than four million followers.

Facebook users were also discussing and sharing first hand knowledge of the quake. BBC News created this map based on mentions of key words in status updates.

And, of course, people have been flocking to see user generated and videos from the news channels on YouTube. This dramatic footage from Russia Today has clocked up more than 10 million hits. Meanwhile, Channel 4 has had 200,000 views on this video of Krishnan Guru-Murthy with before and after tsunami shots and ITN Productions is reporting record views of the ITN News Channel on YouTube.

Survey: Financial leaders turning to broadcast channels for news?

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The financial world’s decision makers are turning to TV channels for their news, according to research from the Global Capital Markets Survey (GCMS).

CNN International was the most popular news channel amongst these users, the survey suggests, above BBC World, CNBC and Bloomberg, according to a press release.

There’s a full breakdown of the media sources and their audiences within this sector at this link.

According to the results, CNN.com and CNNMoney.com were ranked second behind Bloomberg in terms of popularity for news sites – closely followed by Reuters.com, FT.com and WSJ.com.

The research was conducted by the Think Media Consultancy on a group of senior bankers, chief financial officers and treasurers of the world’s largest financial organisations, over a period between October 2008 and March 2009.

CNN takes control of CNNbrk Twitter account with nearly 1m followers

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CNN has confirmed to Silicon Alley Insider that it has now taken control of @CNNbrk – the Twitter account started independently of the news organisation, which now has close to 1 million followers.

According to the report, CNN has been working with its founder James Cox for more than two years.

“This is no-brainer for CNN, and we hope they paid Cox a lot of money for the account he’s nurtured. By adding more stories to the feed — and links to CNN’s site – CNN.com could generate hundreds of thousands of extra pageviews per day. (CNN isn’t sure if it’s going to add links in the near-term.),” writes Dan Frommer on Silicon Alley Insider.

News sites get social for Obama inauguration

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To mark President Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20, news sites are plotting and planning their online coverage already:

CNN

CNN’s going for the social networking angle, teaming its live video streaming site, CNN.com Live, with Facebook. Users will be able to update their Facebook status from the CNN site and see a stream of updates from their friends.

The updates entered via CNNLive will be tagged with the hyperlink ‘via CNN.com Live’ so Facebook contacts can click through to view the inauguration site from the social network.

NPR

At the end of last year, NPR used its inside blog to put a call out for social media ways to cover the inauguration. Among the ideas mooted in the post were:

  • Citizen journalism iPhone app
  • ‘Mobcasting’ – audio recordings of voicemails left by listeners about their experiences of inauguration day
  • An inauguration #tag – for Twitter, Flickr, blog posts etc. The tag #inaug09 seems to be in use already.
  • Maps of user-generated content

More help is wanted from techies and journalists – contact Andy Carvin (@acarvin on Twitter) via the blog post.

‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas…’ Journalism.co.uk’s melodious 2008 list

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Well, we could have brought you ‘Flocking Around the Twitmas Tree’, ‘We Three Nings’ or just a straightforward end of the year list (if only to add to our list of lists), but instead we chose this: your sing-along treat to round-up 2008 is the ‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas’ (hyperlinked to relevant stories, but bear in mind it’s a selection of picks and not comprehensive…).

On the first day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … An editor in a law court

Colin Myler, News of the World

On the second day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Two arrested hacks

Milton Keynes Citizen’s Sally Murrer / ITV’s John Ray (video below)

… And an editor in a law court.

On the third day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Three web gaffes

Steve Jobs and CNN / United Airlines stock collapse / AFP photo ‘altering’

… Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the fourth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Four journo forums

Wired Journalists / Journalism Research / Visual Editors / Journalism.co.uk forum

… Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the fifth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends

Stephen Fry / Paul Carr / John Cleese / Mark Mayhew (Hurricane Gustav) / the Mad Men

… Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the sixth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Six news sites out-linking

WashingtonPost.com, BBC, NYTimes.com, CNN.com, Drudge Report, Not the AP (they didn’t even want to be linked to)

… Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the seventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Seven feeds a-mashing

Publish2.com, Daylife, Delicious, Digg, Technorati, FriendFeed, Yahoo Pipes

… Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the eighth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eight maps a’plotting

Hurricane Gustav tracker, BBC Beijing Olympics map, PaperCuts newspaper job losses map, Economist pre-election map, NYTimes.com post-election map, Managingnews.com’s newstracker during Chinese earthquake, Interactive maps of Canadian tornado damage, Journalism.co.uk new timeline-maps.

… Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the ninth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Nine strikers strikin’

Le Monde, Writers’ Guild of America, Australian Fairfax newspapers, Express Newspapers, Sheffield Star.

(or at least thinking about it…) Trinity Mirror Midlands, Telegraph Media Group, ITV regional, BBC Scotland.

… Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the tenth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Ten blogs a-blooming

10,000words.net, Adrianmonck.com, Jay Rosen’s PressThink, OnlineJournalismBlog, BBCJournalismLabs, BusinessMediaBlog, RegretTheError.com, Publishing2.com, Spokesman Review’s Daily Briefing, Tomorrow’s News Tomorrow’s Journalists

… Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the eleventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eleven papers packing

(up for new offices) The Guardian, the Birmingham Mail, the Independent.

(away their desks forever) NY Sun, Belfast’s La Nua, Kazakhstan’s Law and Justice, Moscow’s The Exile, US Post newspapers, Trinity Mirror weekly titles, Switzerland’s Mittelland, three editions of Spanish Metro.

… Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!

On the twelfth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Twelve sites a-starting

Trinity Mirror mobile sites, outside.in UK, Spot.Us, Hubdub.com, Coventry Telegraph, FT’s Alphaville Long Room, Magicalia, DailyPostCymraeg.co.uk, Time Out Kuala Lumpur, the BusinessDesk Northwest, the Daily Beast.

(and re-focusing) CSMonitor.com.

… Eleven papers packing, Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks and an editor in a law court!

Election traffic: WashingtonPost sees biggest jump but CNN leads

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Beet TV’s Andy Plesser, writes that the Washington Post was long a pioneer in online content,

“[and] … registered the biggest percentage jump on Election Day, compared to the previous Tuesday, Nielsen Online reported last night.  Although far from the newly crowned traffic leader, CNN.com, the Post jumped 113 percent to 2.3 million unique visitors”

So, CNN were the real winners of the day with a 400 per cent traffic spike for the site.

Here, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien speaks to Beet TV about reporting from the exit polls, and the changes she has witnessed in web reporting over the past 12 years.

CNN.com sees 400 per cent traffic spike by Tuesday afternoon

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This from Beet.TV, an interview with CNN.com and CNN International. By 3pm US time, the sites had received 88 million page views this afternoon, three to four times more than on an average weekday, executive vice president of CNN News Services Susan Grant told Beet.TV. In this clip:

  • CNN.com Live (with has four simultaneous live streams), had generated 1.6 million views domestically and internationally – seven times higher than an average full day.
  • Grant expects today’s (Wednesday’s) traffic to be even higher.
  • Grant said that election day concerns were centred on the site’s capacity to handle the traffic, but that it was coping fine so far.
  • Grant also discusses CNN’s mobile offerings and its live video feed available through AT&T and Sprint.

Spanish websites claim top prizes at ONA awards

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ELPAIS.com and Soitu.es claimed the first general excellence awards for non-English language sites at the Online News Association (ONA) 2008 awards on Saturday.

Speaking of ElPais.com, the judges said the site was ‘a shining example of how traditional media can blossom in the digital arena.’

“On a bedrock of first-class journalism it has built a brilliant suite of infographics that are rich in information, yet easy to consume,” they added in a press statement.

‘Bearing Witness‘, Reuters multimedia coverage of fallout from the invasion of Iraq in 2003, took the best multimedia feature award in the large sites category, while Adrian Holovaty’s EveryBlock was awarded the prize for outstanding use of digital technology by a small site.

A full list of the winners across the 23 awards and comments from the judges is available through the ONA awards website, but are listed in brief below:

Knight award for public service – WashingtonPost.com, Fixing D.C. Schools

General excellence (small site)– ArmyTimes.com

General excellence (medium site) – LasVegasSun.com

General excellence (large site) – CNN.com

General excellence, non-English (small site) – Soitu.es

General excellence, non-English (large site) – ELPAIS.com

Breaking news (medium site) – STLtoday.com, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkwood shootings

Breaking news (large site) – NYTimes.com, Eliot Spitzer’s resignation

Investigative journalism (small site) – RecordOnline.com, The Times Herald Record (Middletown, N.Y.) “I Didn’t Do That Murder”: Lebrew Jones and the death of Micki Hall

Investigative journalism, (large site) – DallasNews.com, The Dallas Morning News, Unequal Justice, and The Globe and Mail, Talking to the Taliban

Multimedia feature (small site) – GEO.fr, Hidden World

Multimedia feature (medium sites) – STLtoday.com, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Reporting for Duty

Multimedia feature (large site) – Reuters.com, Bearing Witness

Online commentary (small site) – Mark Fiore, MarkFiore.com, animated political cartoons

Online commentary (medium site) – The Bottom Line, DallasNews.com, The Dallas Morning News

Online commentary (large site) – God-O-Meter, Beliefnet.com

Online video presentation – OregonLive.com, The Oregonian, Living to the End

Outstanding use of digital technology (small site) – Everyblock.com

Outstanding use of digital technology (large site) – DesMoinesRegister.com, Iowa Caucuses

Specialty site journalism – WebMD

Student journalism – University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill & Universidad de los Andes, South of Here, and Taylor Hayden, Western Kentucky University, Closer to Home: A Daughter Becomes Caregiver

Topical reporting (small sites) – Azstarnet.com, Arizona Daily Star, Immigration in the Spotlight

Topical reporting (large sites) – USAToday.com, Today in the Sky

Digital developments at CNN: Gustav raises traffic, as new international digital role is created

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CNN‘s web traffic did rather well out of Hurricane Gustav: a press release issued yesterday told us that breaking news channel CNN.com Live ‘more than doubled its highest day on record on Monday, by serving more than 1.7 million live video streams globally’.

That figure represents a 124 percent increase on their previous highest day – February 21 – when it streamed the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In other news, another release announced the appointment of CNN’s first vice president of international digital services: Nick Wrenn, current managing editor for Europe, Middle East & Africa. Although based in Atlanta, Wrenn will manage all of the digital content outside of the US in his new role, bringing together CNN.com/international and mobile with its broadband services.

Wrenn will report to Tony Maddox, executive vice president and managing director of CNN International.

“Our digital services are playing an increasingly important part in the growth of CNN International and this new position ensures that they will be leveraged and incorporated into our current business appropriately,” said Maddox in the statement.