Zombie Journalism

Would newspaper editors be likely to eliminate anonymous commenting from their websites if they knew how much it would bring down page views?

If even Gawker is changing its measure of choice away from the page view to the unique user, when will the rest of the news industry follow suit?

In the three months since Newsday put up their pay wall, they’ve signed up only 35 online subscribers and their traffic has plummeted.

The New York Times’ plan to charge for online content is an act of desperation from a company that chose to abandon a growing audience of dedicated online readers (and the ad dollars they bring with them) in favor of a quick fix.

The New York Times announced today that beginning in 2011, it will begin charging online readers for unlimited access to articles. While it’s not a bad idea to try out, Times execs will need to readjust their expectations for their online readership stats and change their online content when they go forward with this plan.

Lest anyone think I’m casting stones without acknowledging my own sins, I decided to share a list of the shameless ploys I’ve used to get page views for my employers. What I’ve listed is hardly out of the ordinary for any website, but I still feel bad about it sometimes.

Big minds in journalism and marketing take on the confusion and misleading nature of web analytics as they relate to readers and news.

Does the quest for page views drive news judgement decisions in online news? Does that make us, the newsroom types, in the employ of advertisers?

Sites like that of the Chicago Tribune cater to Digg’s cause with buttons that feed their content directly to the site. Why?

Recommended links from Twitter data mining and visualizations to a Twitter client for journalists, more hand-wringing from “the establishment” and tips on social media policies.