Regional publisher Johnston Press is hailing record audiences for its websites in January.
The company says says visitor numbers across its 196 local websites, which were relaunched last year, were up more than 56pc on January 2013 at 15.6m.
Meanwhile visitors to all JP sites in January numbered 16.85m, more than 46pc up year-on-year.
Johnston Press group editorial development director Paul Napier said: “The huge audience growth in January is a clear indication that editorial teams are making the most of the publishing opportunities offered by much-improved local sites.
“Significant work has been undertaken by product teams and content teams to make sure Johnston Press journalists can serve our audiences’ needs. Editorial teams are ever-more adept at creating and curating content with a digital-first mind-set.
“It is clear that innovative ways of telling and sharing stories across all JP platforms, along with more content, including video, from our audiences, is paying off.”
Last year’s relaunches saw the web portals for the Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News split into separate site.
The move appears to have paid off with the combined audience for the two sites up 71pc on that of January 2013 at 3.36m.
Johnston Press digital platforms director Alex Gubbay added: “It’s very pleasing to see the hard work we’ve put in from a product perspective delivering significant audience growth, especially our relaunch of the Scotsman and the Edinburgh Evening News. “
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JP hosing web stats at us just like Loco World before them.
Two more figures please JP:
1) revenues achieved from said page visits;
2) correlation between increase in web numbers and newspaper circulation declines as ridiculous and disproportionate focus is given to the former.
Publishers quoting web numbers at us is a little like the captain of the Titanic reporting on increasing success in achieving H20 absorption rates on his ship.
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Hits are bound to be up when we’re putting more content on for people to view for free. How much money did JP’s websites generate last year?
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Significant web traffic,sadly does not equate to significant profits..unless there is of course,a paywall.
It’s strange that no one mentions the BBC paywall…sorry,license fee.
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The main reason for the large increase in the digital audience figures is the excellent work editorial teams across JP are doing in improving the quality and quantity of digital content.
The websites look better, that is without doubt, but it is the superb work of the journalists on the ground that is driving these record audience figures.
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Long Gone seems to have taken JP Cost Cut Victim’s seat at the table of doom.
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Totally agree with previous comments. I imagine a large percentage of these visitors are being directed, via search engine, to read about one topic (local football, floods or whatever). Having read just the one story or viewing one vid, they’ll then move on to the next publication that covers their topic of interest.
These figures will be used to generate advertising, of course, but when a client’s advertising generates little response, from little viewing, then what?
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Never mind all this…..why haven’t we had any update on successes at The Cornishman lately?
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I’d wager that, year-on-year, JP’s digital revenues will be up and print revenues will be down. It’s naive to believe that not putting any content online, or putting it online behind a paywall, would have a material impact on print performance.
I love newspapers and I don’t believe they’re dying, but some of the dinosaurs on here need to face facts. Do you know that legion of people who used to regularly buy the newspaper but now rarely do because they can get all the info they want or need on their PC, tablet or smartphone (regardless of what websites they’re viewing)? They’re not coming back.
You could slash the price of the newspaper. You could limit the amount of content the newspaper puts online. You could charge for online access. You could invest heavily in journalists, photographers, more pages, better print stock, etc. None of these steps – absolutely none of them – would make a material, sustained difference to print sales.
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Thank the lord, record web hits!
Rest easy folks, our jobs are safe. Wages will go up and photographers will be welcomed back on the tidal wave of revenue brought in by Mr X and Mrs Y spending three minutes of their day clicking on an amusing picture.
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Aahh, so we (or rather I) can only make positive comment on here … I get it now.
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Loving your analogy, Long Gone.
In JP speak the captain of the Titanic would also have won plaudits for meeting targets on 100% deployment of lifeboats…
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JP Cost Cut Victim – occasional positive comment would be welcomed by many, I’m sure.
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I think I’m right in pointing out that regional newspaper circulations began to decline long before the advent of online stuff.
I agree with ill-informed. I’ve always enjoyed newspapers but I think the problems go much deeper than we realise.
For one thing, the public (never mind all the charity stories) is much less community minded than it once was. People are not interested in anything much beyond their work and garden gates.
Second, nothing too serious happens nowadays (disasters) unlike in the 1960s, 70s, 80s. Health and Safety is partly responsible for that. Honestly!
People are more interested in bad than good news, but most of the so called bad news today is just nimbyism (no fracking in my back yard). It’s not dramatic, just moaning and boring to read.
Stories about hospital closures don’t capture the imagination and as for Justin Bieber (or is it ei?), everybody knows he’s just a marketing ploy.
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How incredible that, even when JP experimented with every type of paywall approach and found they had no positive effect on print fortunes, people still moan about them trying to claim a share of the obvious future.
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I see no-one has mentioned the idea that building audience, engagement and page views equates directly to ad revenue. Also, did anyone notice that some modestly successful sites (google, Facebook, Twitter) started by building audience – the monetizing it afterwards?
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Facebook and google are always being plugged by the BBC.
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‘realist’ – good point and well made.
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