Rick Morrissey on Web hit mania

Page views also don't mean what they used to.

Latest thing I've heard is that they want to up the time spent on a site by the reader.

Heard the average paper reader spends 18 minutes with the product each day, while the average web customers logs 90 seconds.

 

Getting people to visit a website is similar to getting people to buy a newspaper. Shouldn't marketing people be focusing on that?

 

FWIW:
The most web hits our paper ever received was a story based on anonymous sources.. that the next day turned out to be 100-percent false!
Our publisher thought it was great - nevermind the story was false.

 

My old shop was set up where any hits from inside the building didn't count.

 

I think Rick is spot on, but I get why the reader comments were so critical. It was the kind of thing that would've worked better as a blog post, or in the sports media column spot. A little too inside-baseball for most readers. But for a summertime column with only baseball going on, it worked for me.

There's a running joke out in Los Angeles. Basically, you can put ``Lakers'' or any derivative of that, in any headline and it will be No. 1 in page views for most of the week. A couple weeks ago, the Lakers had only one pick in the NBA draft, No. 58 overall. The Clippers, meanwhile, had a lottery pick and two guys --Elton Brand and Corey Maggette -- who were deciding whether to opt out of the final years of their contracts in the next couple of days.

Anyway, the Lakers took a kid named Joe Crawford from Kentucky. Nice kid. He might actually make the team. I think I remember him scoring a bunch of points in an NCAA tournament game this spring. Anyway, the Clips take Eric Gordon, UCLA has two players drafted in the top 5, USC's OJ Mayo is taken third overall, then later in the night, Mayo and Love get get traded for each other. Not exactly a slow news day.

But the next day, and for the next week, the No. 1-viewed story on our website was ``Lakers draft Kentucky guard Crawford''

 

The little top 5 box on our Web site almost always includes that day's police blotter and death notices. Quite frequently, one of the other three is the previous day's police blotter or death notices. Guess we should start putting those above the fold on page 1 every day.

 

But, but, I thought the readers only want positive coverage!

 

great column.

delicious sarcasm.

who cares if fans get it - it's great writing.

too clever.