News & Record (Greensboro) cuts 9 jobs - 6 in newsroom

Also the way it was at the last paper I worked.

 

"Drive traffic to our site" is so ambiguous, though. Does the columnist drive more traffic than the beat writer? More traffic than the preps/recruiting writer? At all the shops I've worked at the columnist definitely drives traffic online but was never the top traffic getter in sports.

 

I was the Web editor at a small to mid-sized daily with a Power 5 conference school in town. The sports columnist drew the most page views of any writer in the building, by far. People spent more time on his stories and almost as many people entered the site through his stories or author page as the home page. Every single metric available suggested he was easily the paper's top draw.

 

What Jake said. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but "drive-by traffic" (my word) seems suboptimal. I'd rather have a guy who's spending X minutes on a story/column, is moved enough to comment on the story/e-mail the writer, then finds something else worthy on the site. If you're gonna coax any reader into paying for our stuff, it's that guy. Few noncolumnists, through no fault of their own, lead to that kind of traffic.

 

Interesting. But the big cheeses disagree. They're getting their asses shown the door everywhere. I don't disagree with the move either, honestly. There's some pretty damn good opinion writers on the Interwebs that I can read for free. Might as well keep as many of the ground troops in the firefight as long as possible.

On top of that, these columnists usually make three or four times what the ground troopers make and some even more. It's an easy decision for management. Save four jobs by cutting one. Or cut four jobs to save one. Site traffic is wonderful and nice, but when we're talking three cents a click, it's hardly worth a handful of shit to the beancounters.

 

That's hardly universal. The guy I referenced will be one of the last to go. Probably will retire before he's laid off. His salary is significant, but if they wanted it off the books they would have made that move long ago. Instead they haven't made hires to replace other sports writers. But he offers more than opinions. He writes some good features and breaks news. Nobody covering that program has better sources.

Some places, KC and Indy off the top of my head, made pretty big columnist hires in recent years. Sure, some places have cut sports columnists, but plenty of others have looked for any other spot to trim first.

 

How much of this traffic was from outside the local area. If you are in a town like Bloomington or Lawrence I suspect that most of the traffic are school boosters. They would recognize the the name of the columnist and click on that if he is writing about the school. I wonder if a paper without a big university in the town has the same experience.

 

In general, I agree with you.

But when a columnist is driving traffic to and engagement on the site -- sadly, that's the best we can do, hope they engage and eventually fork over some cash -- then the equation is flipped on its head.

Good enterprise drives a lot of traffic. Consider those the home runs. Even a weak columnist is Wade Boggs, a singles and doubles hitter. Those add up.

It would be nice if we didn't have to worry about any of this shit, but here we are.

 

By the way, it can't be an either-or proposition. Boots on the ground are reduced, for sure, but your columnist has no legitimacy if the rest of the section fails to break news and offer compelling stories.

Sorry for the threadjack. Here's hoping as many people as possible keep their jobs in Greensboro.

 

That dude is a hoot.

 

Fair enough. It's the trend that I seem to notice over time. I'm sure there are plenty that don't follow it.