Around the Wire: TIME Redesign Lowers Bounce Rate, Reddit Launches Liveblogs, Usefulness Reigns
Welcome to the latest installment of Around the Wire, PR Newswire’s round up of journalism, blogging, and freelancing news from the past week.
Image by Tony Fischer/Flickr; used under CC BY 2.0 License
1. Time.com’s Bounce Rate Down Since Adopting Infinite Scroll; Design Strategy Gains Momentum with Major News Sites (Poynter)
Infinite or continuous scrolling, when a website transitions through content without requiring readers to click through pages, has recently been gaining popularity with major news sites.
Time.com, NBCNews.com, and LATimes.com all underwent site redesigns this year that adopted this design strategy, and the results are in. See how Time.com’s engagement has changed since moving to continuous scrolling.
2. Why Digital Publishers Want to be in the Magazine Business (Digiday)
While Time, Cosmo, and other print magazines focus on their online presence with site redesigns, digital publishers like Yahoo, Say Media, and Flipboard are looking to move into the magazine business with their content and highly visual and premium-priced advertising.
3. Reddit Live is Now Official, Lets Anyone Create Their Own Breaking News Live Blog (The Next Web)
Reddit officially launched on Thursday its live-blogging platform Reddit Live. During its “semi-open beta” only Reddit employees could create live streams or authorize users to contribute. Now, anyone can use Reddit Live.
The Next Web reports Reddit Live’s ability to automatically update in real-time with embeddable tweets and photos, combined with Reddit’s large user base, sets the site up to become the default for user-created live blogs.
4. The Absolute Worst Cliche Online Today (The Washington Post)
“All you need to know.” It’s a crutch that insinuates itself into the headlines and ledes of inexperienced writers and major media alike. Author Eve Fairbanks argues on the Post that it’s not just a lazy writing cliche, but also bad for journalism.
5. Content Isn’t King … Usefulness Is (Problogger)
Blogging used to be called king. Then, content. Then, community. Problogger’s Darren Rowse writes, “The arguments for all of these things being ‘king’ are good … but they all kind of miss the point in my opinion.” Instead, bloggers, content creators, and online community managers need to adopt the mantra that “Usefulness is king.”
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Amanda Hicken is a media relations manager with PR Newswire for Journalists. Follow her at @ADHicken for tweets about the media, comic books, and her love of Cleveland.
