Cover It Live

Awesome.

 

Are we talking about a metro here? I'm just curious. So many places are actually cutting resources, rather than expanding what they do.

 

I understand that notion. I really do.
But let me ask you this — how many of that 200,000 is reading the entire paper? Front to back, in every section? 5,000 tops, right?
So if I am the guy who just opened up a furniture store and buys a 4x6 ad in the Home section every week, how many people can I realistically expect to draw in?
I am at a 25K, so pulling in a 1,000 is about 1 in 25. If the advertising department can pull in a sporting goods store or something to buy an ad that runs above the chat window, they're reaching a pretty good size chunk of the audience. Probably better than the furniture store, too.
Like I said, it's not one thing. It's a bunch of them. The same way a newspaper is. All 25,000 or 200,000 is not picking it up for any one thing. Some want the local news. Some want opinion. Some want comics and sports. Or Ann Landers. Or just the coupons. We have found a way to make the print version be something a lot of people want for a long time now, and we should continue to do that. But the same philosophy should apply to the web.

 

Yup, this is the catch. It's a great service, but right now they're like the drug dealer on the corner: giving us the first taste for free to get us hooked, then charging once we know the shit is good.

 

So if it works for Cover It Live, why can't it work for newspaper websites?

Oh, the shit actually has to be "good" in order to get people hooked. I get it.

 

We've used it a few times, most recently for Penn Relays live chats. Trying to really cover Penn Relays "live" would've probably been impossible for one person. From what I've heard, the first chat drew a dozen "unique visitors," but by the last one there were triple that. Not great, but better than nothing -- particularly since the chats were not very well-promoted, and all were during the normal work day.

I know several papers in our chain used Cover It Live for the state wrestling finals. That's actually where I first saw it, embedded in a high school blog, and thought it looked really cool. That was more running play-by-play style. I think a separate reporter was sent down specifically to do Cover It Live, since it's really tough to moderate comments and actually cover the event.