Tag Archives: editor

BBC enjoys bumper web traffic as banks’ fortunes slide

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It might be doom and gloom for Lehman Brothers staff, but at least someone’s gaining from it… Business news sites are reporting excellent traffic over the last few days – not least of all, the Beeb.

According to an article from yesterday’s Ariel, the BBC’s in-house magazine, the bbc.co.uk story from Monday ‘Lehman Bros files for bankruptcy’ was the site’s ‘most popular story’ in its 10-year history with more than 1.7 million page views.

From Ariel:

Boom time for business online as Lehmans goes bust: records fall while Wall Street trembles

Monday saw records tumble at the BBC news website’s business section.
As financial crisis circled the globe, culminating in the closure of Lehman Brothers, the BBC’s business pages enjoyed a record reach with 2.35 million individual readers logging on, double the usual amount.

And it also set a new record for most-read story: ‘Lehman Bros files for bankruptcy’ had more than 1.7m page views, making it the most popular story in the site’s 10-year history.

All told, the section attracted 9.25m page views in a single day.
Tim Weber, the business section’s editor, praised coverage of Lehman Brothers’ demise, which he said was ‘fast, comprehensive and authoritative’.

And he told ariel online: ‘Business and economics stories have always been more popular than most people suspect, but since the start of the credit crunch a year ago our daily reach has soared by about 50%.

‘However, Monday’s meltdown of investment bank Lehman has taken things to a new level.
‘It’s the most fascinating time in my live as a business journalist, but it’s also great to see that our audiences really appreciate our output.

‘Right now, at 1530 UK time on Tuesday, we’ve already reached more than 1.45 million people – it’s bound to be another bumper day.’

Allmediascotland: Herald&Times editor-in-chief ad renews merger speculation

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The Herald&Times newspaper group is advertising for an editor-in-chief to replacing outgoing Herald editor Charles McGhee.

The ad states the new role will be involved with editorial operations across the Herald, Sunday Herald and Glasgow Evening Times – renewing speculation that the group is to merge the daily and Sunday titles into one seven-day operation.

Forbes.com opinion channel gets a makeover

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Forbes.com/opinions has had a makeover, as of today. Under the control of new opinions channel editor, Tunku Varadarajan, no time has been wasted in having a bit of an autumn clean. Particularly significant is the introduction of an array of high-profile new columnists.

Here’s a run-down of the changes:

  • Four main topic categories: Business and Economics, Foreign Affairs and Defence, Culture and Society, and Politics.
  • 16 new columnists will be writing weekly columns for the channel, including author Reihan Salam, economists Brian Wesbury and Bob Stein, former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson and Quentin Letts (from the UK).
  • Book reviews every Monday and Thursday, on all subjects, as well as daily essays and commentaries.
  • Forbes.com Editor Paul Maidment’s will produce a weekly video “Notes on the News” about international politics and business.
  • Forbes magazine Publisher Rich Karlgaards’s daily blog “Digital Rules” will still run, in addition to a new video blog “Talk Back” about the business world.

Varadarajan was previously contributing editor at the Financial Times, where he wrote opinion pieces, arts and culture essays and book reviews. Before that, he was at the Wall Street Journal for seven years – most recently as Assistant Managing Editor.

He gives fuller run-down of all the changes here.

Editor&Publisher: Tribune had warned Google to stop crawling newspaper sites before United Airlines story

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The resurfacing of a six-year-old Tribune Co article, which caused a severe drop in share prices for United Airlines, is being blamed squarely on search engines by the publisher.

Tribune has said it asked Google to stop crawling its newspaper websites ‘months ago’.

The story came to light after a single user accessed the story on the Florida Sun Sentinel’s website at a period of low traffic, the publisher claimed.

This single user was enough to push the story to the top of the paper’s most viewed articles, where it subsequently came to the attention of Google’s crawlers.

When Twitter goes bad: newspaper tweets a funeral

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US newspaper The Rocky Mountain News has come under scrutiny for its use of microblogging tool Twitter.

The paper has been using the service to provide news alerts with its @The Rocky account, but recently experimented with an individual reporter twittering from the funeral of a 3-year-old.

“Rocky reporter Berny Morson filed live updates from the memorial service of 3-year-old Marten Kudlis. The messages are unedited,” reads the editor’s note accompanying the article on the death of Marten Kudlis, who was killed in a car crash last week.

Michael Roberts at the Latest Word blog points out that the updates are ‘self-satirizing in the most morbid, inappropriate way possible’.

“Morson’s not to blame for the lameness of these entries, which suggest a golfing commentator whispering at green-side while Tiger Woods lines up a putt.”

Questions have been raised about the appropriateness of Twitter coverage before, but usually centring on its suitability as a medium for coverage e.g. does the event require frequent updates or can it wait? Covering a funeral – that’s proprierty gone AWOL.

Always look on the bright side of life – business website bans bad news

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Nothing like a truly cheerful press release to brighten up the day, eh?

And this one is particularly chirpy: new website LaunchLab.co.uk won’t publish any more ‘doom and gloom’ business stories.

LaunchLab.co.uk is a small business website that started up a month ago and, as of yesterday, they have now decided to ban any pessimistic news about the economy.

“Confidence is a big part of what makes the economy tick,” said the site’s editor, Dan Matthews, on their website.

“All this bad news is making people feel pessimistic and scared. There’s no reason not to start a business right now, as long as you do homework and launch in the right way,” he said.

And perhaps, we might add,  come up with a quirky new angle for a press release if you want to stir up some interest a month in…

Advertising: Newspapers sign up with Zillow.com and Politico; UK radio station launches motor ads site

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A series of major advertising deals have been signed this week, starting with the creation of a national online real estate ad network between 282 US newspapers and Zillow.com.

The agreement, Editor&Publisher reports, will see the papers and Zillow sharing each other’s advertising inventories and splitting revenue.

Politico.com has opted for a selective approach in creating an ‘advertising and content distribution network’, says an article in MediaWeek.

US newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, aggregators, and local TV news websites are among 40 outlets signed up to the network.

Under the partnership the media organisations will carry Politico content on the political sections of their websites and feature ads sold by Politico’s sales division. The outlets can also run their own ads alongside Politico content.

Meanwhile in the UK, Birmingham radio station BRMB has joined up with classified advertising site AdFlyer to create a website for motoring ads targeted at the west Midlands. Users can upload an ad for the first week free of charge, a release from AdFlyer said.