Yesterday the Midland Reporter-Telegram concluded its annual opinion poll of "favorites" among its readers. And two categories the newspaper itself is sure to win are best newspaper and best local website. There's only one local paper, so that one is a given. There are plenty of local websites, but the paper's website, MyWestTexas.com, is a pretty good local information hub and deserves the votes.
The website recently underwent a major face lift, and the new look has gotten thumbs up from some of the local bloggers, Jeff and Eric in particular. However, Jessica's Well tried to put a finger on the problem, but couldn't quite come out with it.
The old website had six local blog links featured prominently on the front page. Three were permanent fixtures, and three other local blogs rotated with excerpts from their most current posts. I'm sure the other local bloggers appreciated that attention as much as I did. When Sleepless was featured, there were always folks clicking through to see what showed up on these pages, and when my topic happened to be one that locals were very interested in, a flash flood for instance, lots and lots of people clicked through.
Three local blogs held permanent spots on the front page: Jimmy , Newsroom Stew, and one other that I can't remember. Given the number of click-throughs Sleepless got with a rotation of a dozen or so other blogs, I always wondered what percentage of Stew's and Jimmy's site visitors came from the MRT site. It had to be a lot. So now that they, too, are no longer front page items, their visitor rate has probably diminished significantly. They have both gone on blogging hiatus since the change, but that was coincidental.
The Sleepless daily visit rate dropped off by about 15%-20% initially, and scant few come from the MyWestTexas.com back page blog links these days. But the daily number of site visits has bounced back. So people are finding the site, and hopefully, the information they get here is worth their time.
Townnews, which boasts 1,500 customers, is the MyWestTexas site web host utilizing Blox content management system. And glancing at a random selection of the Townnews new launches, MyWestTexas is doing a lot more for local bloggers than other local papers are. So there are no complaints here. Bloggers like me who feed off news are like raccoons waiting at the dumpster for someone to discard some edible trash, and we are in no position to complain.
But there's an alternative. Take a look at this San Antonio Express News article appearing at MySanAntonio.com. The design looks very similar to the TownNews/Blox sites although this one doesn't sport the logo and link. In particular, scroll down to the section that says "From Around the Web." There we see links to articles elsewhere related to the subject of the article. And lo and behold, there's a link to a Sleepless in Midland article. Nice idea.
If the Townnews/Blox setup allows that type linkage without driving up the price, then MyWestTexas.com could headline an article about a politician's granddaughter's local lemonade stand, and a link to a related site could lead to a Jessica's Well article about local economic development. Synergy!
I always had a vague uneasiness about the MRT's blog listings and links. I couldn't decide if it was synergy or conflict of interest, and I was uncomfortable with occasionally having three Gazette posts listed on the MRT's home page because of lack of posting on other local blogs. I finally asked that the Gazette be removed from their news aggregator. And, of course, my traffic dropped considerably. At least, I'm pretty sure it did, because I also dropped my stats program at the same time. I have no idea how many visitors I'm getting nor where they're coming from.
But I do like the idea of including local blogs in a category of "related stories," if they can figure out how to do that reliably.
Posted by: Eric | June 30, 2010 at 09:10 AM
The MRT staff probably shared that uneasiness, Eric, but with the whole idea, not necessarily with the Gazette.
Monitoring the thing must have consumed way too much time.
Posted by: Geo | June 30, 2010 at 10:34 AM