AllThingsD cites a Hearst press release that argues the massively downsized and online only Seattle PI is doing better than expected:
Two months after becoming the nation’s largest newspaper to move to an all-digital news model, seattlepi.com’s year over year numbers show that it has more users this April than last April, when the Post Intelligencer was still publishing with an 80% larger staff, an amazing feat for an online venture with a newsroom of 20.
In April, its first full month of operation, seattlepi.com had 4.3 million unique visitors, up 1.6% from 4.2 million in April 2008 (source: Omniture). Total page views for the month were 37.3 million . . .
On one level perhaps that’s reason to cheer, but if the experiment “works” Hearst and other publishers may see it as justification for doing this around the country: downsizing with the elimination of print (and associated jobs). But there’s also strong evidence that “papers” without a print companion suffer.
May 24, 2009 at 9:34 am |
[...] Online Only Seattle PI Growing? « Screenwerk [...]
June 30, 2009 at 5:38 pm |
[...] Seattle PI, Christian Science Monitor, Asian Week) are not doing especially well online. Some are up, but most are flat or even down. It’s too early to say that an online-only strategy for [...]