In their drive to find the business secret to successful journalism, some outlets have slashed their lineup of stories to gain more readers.
The unconventional move has focused initially on stories and topics readers just don’t care about to the elimination of breaking news that so many other media do.
A report from the International News Media Association suggests that the media shift to providing more “candy” than “vegetables.”
It included this recommendation, according to a Nieman Lab analysis, “What if you just … got rid of the content that nobody reads?”
It gave two examples where that strategy worked.
In the first, USA Today Network conducted an internal campaign to “stop doing things readers don’t want.” It produced a tool to show how well — or badly — stories did online.
The “bottom half” of stories actually accounted for just 6 percent of readership.
Said the analysis: “‘We could eliminate half of our journalism and our traffic really wouldn’t change — if we replaced it with nothing,’ said [Josh Awtry, senior director for news strategy at USA Today Network]. ‘What if we replaced that with content readers really wanted? We knew early on we didn’t just want it to be about page views … We are publishing 2.7 percent less monthly while the article page views have gone up.”
Nieman also featured Britain’s Times newspapers that cut breaking news already available from the BBC.
It then quoted Times Managing Editor Chris Duncan. “We effectively retired from breaking news,” he said, adding, “Our readers didn’t really value it. So why compete on something our customers didn’t value?”
