Telegraph.co.uk

A different online strategy: Lag behind deliberately

Sunday, 25 March 2007, 10:52

The Independent on Sunday today contains an article that seeks to justify its editor-in-chief’s famous scepticism about new media.

Looking at the Telegraph’s multimedia newsroom, Tim Luckhurst says it’s working well, but wonders whether the Telegraph’s readership really cares. Despite its Hitwise claims, the Telegraph lags behind the Times and Guardian in online readership among the quality newspapers. Moreover, he notes, nobody seems to commenting on the Telegraph blogs. And the bloggers themselves don’t seem to be very enthusiastic, having failed, in some cases, to post for weeks on end.

Then come the quotes from various unnamed sources, including a “leading web site editor” and a Telegraph correspondent, who appear to share the Indy scepticism about newspapers blogging, podcasting and video.

And then, in the final paragraph, comes the Independent view:

It is already clear that Telegraph readers appreciate web coverage that emulates the content of a traditional newspaper. That is excellent news for newspapers in general, but it does not prove that rushing to embrace each new item of technology makes editorial or commercial sense. Waiting and watching has often been the astute response to revolutionary technology. Those who pioneer multimedia may not be the ones to do it best.

Judging by various interviews with editor-in-chief Simon Kelner and chief executive Ivan Fallon over the past few years, this seems to reflect the Indy’s position. Fallon has predicted problems for the Telegraph’s integration efforts. The Independent’s strategy seems to be that it will deliberately lag behind the other quality papers online, leave innovation to others, and then pick and chose which new media approaches to emulate. In his interview with the Guardian, Kelner said:

We’re happy not being pioneers, because it means we won’t get shot in the back. Our approach has been – and will be for the near future – that we’ll go about things more steadily, we’re not going to rush headlong into massive investment.

The Indy, of course, sees its online foot-dragging as a hard-headed businesses decision. Newspapers-printed-on-newsprint, they like to stress, are still booming globally (a valid point for a newspaper group with major interests in growing economies like South Africa and India), and they have sat backed and watched as their traditional rivals have invested millions into their web sites. The Times this year spent £10m on a web relaunch, and the Guardian will spend another £15m on its site over the next 18 months. Kelner, by contrast, can boast that his more humble web site is at least profitable — and increasing the revenue it generates significantly.

But if the Independent’s short-lived experiment with blogging is anything to go by, there is, of course no guarantee that this approach will be successful. The innovators will be way ahead, having learned what doesn’t work as well as what does. Those who follow the pioneers will have to reinvent the wheel every time.

Perhaps it’s most telling that the corner of Independent News & Media’s UK empire that makes all the money — the Belfast Telegraph — is not as reluctant about multimedia integration as the flagship in London.

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Is the Telegraph really Number 1?

Tuesday, 30 January 2007, 15:31

The long-simmering feud between the Telegraph and Britain’s other quality newspapers about who really has the biggest online reach is heating up again.

Back in November, both Times Online and Guardian Unlimited rubbished Telegraph editor Will Lewis’s claim that his web site has the most UK traffic among the quality newspapers’ sites.

Lewis’ claim is based on data from Hitwise, a network-centric metric that was rejected by the editors from the two news sites generally thought to be well ahead of Telegraph.co.uk.

The dispute has become more interesting in recent days, since an anonymous member of the public has filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority about the Telegraph’s claim, which is now repeated in giant letters on billboards across Britain.

Today Simon Waldman, director of digital strategy at Guardian Media Group, could no longer contain himself. He has weighed in with a long, detailed post on his blog explaining the competing web metrics available, and why he feels these suggest that the Telegraph’s claim is bunk.

Sure, the newspapers like a good public row. But one of the bigger issue in this dispute, Waldman concludes, is that online publishers are failing to stick to the standard of audience measurement represented by the audited unique user measure prescribed by ABC Electronic:

There is little that’s perfect about measuring Unique Users. It’s not the same as people. But we have all (including the Telegraph, indirectly) agreed through Jicwebs that audited unique users are the way forward. At least it is consistent and frankly, our industry looks a shambles if we keep hopping from one metric to the other just because it suits us.

Stay tuned.

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