Comments on: Salon cuts post count by a third, gets 40 percent increase in readers

By: Mark Stewart

Mark Stewart — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:37:00 +0000

Now, off to my blog to post about Rob Beschizza letting me know that Salon’s Kerry Lauerman found that the given wisdom of publishing more content did not yield more traffic.

By: Jack Feerick

Jack Feerick — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:02:00 +0000

How about agreeing half as often, but with twice the intensity?

By: MarlboroTestMonkey7

MarlboroTestMonkey7 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:00:00 +0000

No! agree 50% for better results!

By: lecti

lecti — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:24:00 +0000

“dispatched an intern to cobble together our own summary”

Hey, that’s like Gizmodo. Oh wait, some of those are written by the editors?

I tend to skip over feeds that post too much. I hope Salon’s new approach becomes a trend!

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:16:00 +0000

Please don’t let us waste your time.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:50:00 +0000

I’ve heard stuff from boingboing on NPR (wbur) within the hour.

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:31:00 +0000

I didn’t realize Mark Frauenfelder, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, Xeni Jardin, Rob Beschizza and Maggie Koerth-Baker were all interns for Boing Boing and are cobbling together aggregate news feeds?

No wonder Boing Boing has such low traffic…

http://technorati.com/blogs/www.boingboing.net

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:22:00 +0000

I wonder if Salon should do both? Combine in-depth content with aggregate stuff in another section of the website and have separate RSS feeds for readers to choose from? That way you still keep the aggregate readers.

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:09:00 +0000

Well I see things that BB puts up mid afternoon show up on the evening news… (and I’m not talking about breaking news stuff either.)

By: Nathania Johnson

Nathania Johnson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:48:00 +0000

So they stopped pulling a Boing Boing and increased traffic. Hmmm…

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:45:00 +0000

Can I agree 200%?

By: UrbanUndead

UrbanUndead — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:41:00 +0000

Agree 100%!

By: Jack Feerick

Jack Feerick — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:06:00 +0000

Funny, I literally just clicked over to Boing Boing from Salon, where I had spent a full twenty minutes engrossed in reading a lengthy piece of in-depth, exhaustively-researched, insightful journalism. And I was reading it, I was thinking, “This is great. I can hardly believe this is Salon. Why don’t they do more of this and less of the rolling feed of news-nuggets that amount to little more than retweets?”

I’m glad to see that that’s the plan. Fewer stories as a trade-off for longer stories and better stories — I call that a bargain.

Magazines — in print or online — are living, growing entities, and as they grow they often lose their way. It’s rare and wonderful to see a magazine finding its way back to what made it interesting in the first place.

By: Mike Riverso

Mike Riverso — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:05:00 +0000

Same here. I used to read a variety of tech blogs, and then I realized they were all just posting the same stories, linking to each other, so I cleared out a bunch of them and yet still get the same content.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:03:00 +0000

You mean that removing content “cobbled together” by interns and relying on experienced professional writers increases overall quality of a news source?

It’s a good thing for our culture that so many bean counters understand why quality is paramount.

[/s]
edited to close sarcasm tag

By: therantguy

therantguy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Makes total sense…my RSS feed has 100-150 items per day and I usually end up cutting out feeds that don’t offer bang for the proverbial buck…if Salon is just regurgitating stuff I get elsewhere they they might be the one that gets deleted…if they produce smaller original stuff that I am more likely to want, then I’ll stick around.

By: Trig Discipline

Trig Discipline — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:53:00 +0000

Now if only Science Daily would realize the same thing.