BuzzFeed's news is growing, but still a small part of its traffic

digiday reporting:
... In short, don’t tell Smith BuzzFeed is fluff: “Our mission’s to do great journalism and tell people about the world,” Smith proclaimed in an interview last year. Out of some 300 editorial staffers, 140 are devoted to news.
...But if the viral perception still sticks, it’s not without reason. BuzzFeed drew 76.7 million multiplatform unique visitors in April, according to comScore. The publisher historically hasn’t broken out its content by vertical to comScore, like other top news sites including CNN, Yahoo and The Huffington Post do. But it started to on a limited basis as of last month, when it began breaking out its Entertainment and Life coverage, which stand at 43.7 million and 20.1 million uniques, respectively. BuzzFeed doesn’t break out its news traffic, suggesting it’s still relatively low.
http://digiday.com/publishers/17-percent-buzzfeeds-traffic-goes-news/

Want to increase your readership? Forget about Twitter and stop posting so many stories, says the Telegraph

gigaom /Mathew Ingram reporting:
In the arms race that is the social web, every publisher large or small is trying whatever weapons they can find to rise above the noise and increase their readership: some, like The Independent or the Daily Mail, have chosen to go the clickbait route and try to duplicate the success of ViralNova or BuzzFeed. But Jason Seiken, editor-in-chief of Telegraph Media Group, says the newspaper publisher has seen a significant increase in readership by doing two somewhat surprising things: paying less attention to Twitter, and posting fewer stories.
Seiken told The Guardian that the site saw a 20-percent increase in traffic in June, with daily unique browsers hitting almost 4 million, and he attributed this jump to some of the strategies the newspaper has been focusing on over the past few months — including developing the paper’s Facebook audience, which has almost tripled in size to 1.6 million, rather than focusing on Twitter.
The Telegraph executive said that in the past, the paper had not spent as much time on a Facebook strategy because of what he called an obsession among journalists with using Twitter. “Journalists are all on Twitter, and obsessed with it, so that is where the energy had gone,” he said. “An assumption had been made without looking at data” on where readers were actually coming from.
...
Interestingly enough, Seiken said the Telegraph had also been deliberately reducing the number of stories it posted, and focusing instead on putting more resources into fewer pieces. “We actually created that huge traffic jump in June producing fewer stories, not more,” he told The Guardian, adding that the paper had changed the way the newsroom worked in order to become more efficient. “Seemingly mundane things make a huge difference – things such as better planning, more creative story conferences, and using audience data to decide what to stop doing.”
http://gigaom.com/2014/08/01/want-to-increase-your-readership-forget-about-twitter-and-stop-posting-so-many-stories-says-the-telegraph/?utm_source=GeneralUsers&utm_campaign=465ad55d21-c:mdad:08-02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1dd83065c6-465ad55d21-99152541

WSJ staffers told to ‘stay the course – and accelerate’

Romenesko reporting:
Memo to the Wall Street Journal staff
From: Narisetti, Raju
Date: Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 5:23 PM
Subject: Stay The Course
Colleagues
On an average weekday in the last 12 months, our total circulation was 2.3 million for all three print editions of The Wall Street Journal combined. We should all be very proud of the great print offerings we provide, once a day, every single day to this audience.
On an average weekday in the last 12 months, WSJDN actually had 3.9 million readers a day coming to our websites, every single week-day.
The green line in the chart below is when readers come to us looking for the terrific journalism WSJ promises them, as measured in the % of daily readers who come, each hour.
The blue line was when we were publishing our stories, by the hour, in 2011-12.
The red line shows how all of you moved the needle significantly in recent months to get more of your great journalism to your audiences when more of them were looking for it on our site.
May you all stay the course. And accelerate.
Thank you. Goodbye
Raju


http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/10/wsj-staffers-told-to-stay-the-course-and-accelerate/?utm_source=Daily+Buzz+from+eMedia+Vitals&utm_campaign=dd5a8f08d5-nl_DB_03_12_2013&utm_medium=email

Seven tips in digital storytelling from the New York Times and CNN

Journalism.co.uk reporting:
"We are in a golden age of storytelling" was the message shared by the New York Times's assistant managing editor Jim Roberts early on in a session at the News World Summit today named 'Obituary: The death of the traditional news story".
For Roberts, this "death" was not something he is particularly worried about - as opposed to the risks being faced by foreign correspondents and issues relating to press freedom. When it comes to the evolution of the news story he said journalists have an "infinitely flexible" and "limitless" toolbox they can use "to employ their craft" on digital platforms.
Roberts was joined in the session by CNN International's vice president of digital Peter Bale, who also spoke about the opportunities in digital storytelling to help journalists witness, create, curate, experiment, monetise and feed curiosity - although he made it clear there are no certainties in this at the moment.
Here are seven of the key takeaways from this session, based on the advice and examples shared by Roberts and Bale:

• 1. Consider everything as a possible story lead

Roberts spoke about how editors must be open to considering everything from a Lady Gaga tweet, to a collection of uploaded footage showing a massacre, as "at least being part of the story if not the story itself".

• 2. Be comfortable across publishing formats

Journalists must be just as comfortable communicating to their audience within the confines of a 140 character tweet as they are through a 4,000 word article, Roberts added.

• 3. Incorporate live feeds into main narratives

Roberts said the New York Times, along with other news outlets (such as ITV News), have worked to find ways to pull together, often in live formats, the mass of information available in breaking news situations, to "filter to an extent to get rid of noise and find best signals".

But the challenge is then how to incorporate these feeds into the main narratives online, he added.

"It's clear to me that even at their best these live news blogs or feeds … are lucky to come close to matching the speed Twitter is able to react to events", with social media platforms becoming the news homepage for many people.
...
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/seven-tips-in-digital-storytelling-opportunities-from-new-york-times-and-cnn/s5/a549448/