Quick addendum to this morning’s item about the Strib’s record-breaking Favre traffic. Of the 5.4 million page views Startribune.com received yesterday, 900,000 were for its Favre photo galleries. That was roughly 40 times the traffic of the site’s video offerings.
I’ve been meaning to do a column on whether the Media Depression has punished photographers more than those of us who work with words. Anecdotal reports from freelancers about savage pay cuts, and wholesale staff cuts, suggest this is the case.
There are all kinds of reasons, from shrinking papers and the video craze to a belief that reporters’ (or amateurs’) shots are acceptable and cheaper substitutes for trained pros.
Still, the pageview-hiking benefit of the slideshow is well-known to many local sites, and as the Favre example proves, there’s still power in the still image. One would hope future resources would be deployed accordingly.
A possible reason for the preference for photo slideshows over video.
Newspapers have GREAT photographers. They know what they’re doing and they do it very well. The video on most newspaper sites (all the rage of late) mostly stink. They are poorly shot, poorly lit and poorly edited.
Personally, I don’t think video will save newspapers by boosting traffic on their websites. That’s what WCCO,KSTP, FOX9, and KARE11 websites are for. Newspapers will never do video as well broadcast media and they should never try.
What they do have are awesome photographers, great writers and well trained graphic artists. Narated photo slideshows are the way for newspapers to go. Pull the plug on the video.
Just my two cents.