Online Journalism Practicum:J415

I just realized why the links were broken in the audience reports above. It's a Microsoft thing. If you use Internet Explorer, you should be able to see them fine. They're apparently using proprietary code that doesn't render in Firefox, the browser I use, or Safari, the Mac browser ... so try to look at them with Internet Explorer and see if that works. I'm going to leave them up there for only a week or so ...

The Post Online says right at the top that it is an independent student-run daily newspaper serving Ohio University, Athens and the surrounding communities. With a picture of the OU class gateway at the top and University Courtyard apartment ad right below, there is no doubt this is a site whose audience is the university and its students, faculty, etc.

As far as focus, I was a little confused because the top story on the Wed, Oct. 5 edition is about “Reform Ohio Now, an organization created to reform Ohio's electoral system, placing four controversial amendments on the ballot for the November election.” While there is an Ohio connection, and the story had merit, I didn’t see a direct connection to Ohio University or Athens. The other stories about OU searching for $70,000 in lost Engineering Dept. money, “Cats” the musical coming to Athens, and a local Akido club were more of what I’d expect for a focus from the student paper.

As far as registration, I would not do it. The student paper is, by default, a promotional vehicle of the university it serves, like it or not. Making people register may deter people who are searching for information about the school and the goings on in the community around the school. Making it more difficult to access the content may mean less people will bother going the extra mile to look at the site, even if there is worthwhile content to be seen there. In terms of demographics information, I would not expect registration will discover much different than what would be expected of readers of a student newspaper. It would likely be confirmed that most readers are student aged (between 18-30) and don’t make a lot of money.

Athensi's intended audience seems to be students in the area and alumni that want to know what everyone is up to in Athens. I think that it is general enough (has many types of news) yet focused enough (includes only Athens happenings) that it keeps a pretty specific audience.
Since traffic on Athensi seems to spike in the morning around 9 and in the afternoon around 3, I would update the site twice daily, if possible. I would be sure to have daily news up by 8 a.m. and maybe do a midday update around noon. This midday update could include breaking news that the Post would not have until the next day.
One problem that Athensi has is that people often leave the site and perhaps do not come back. One tool that I use on ACRN.com is to have every link to a different site open in a new window. The ACRN window stays open for when the user is done with the other site. Athensi can implement this for their newspaper articles. When the user is done reading a Post article, they would be less inclined to keep surfing the Post's site because they can get more Post articles on Athensi at one glance.

Judging from the content on Athensi site, there is a heavy focus on the Athens area in general. For example, in class we looked at Matrix, the Athens High School Newspaper. Articles have been carried by the site in the past, although they haven't been updated in a long time, and are still recieveing hits and page views.

Interestingly enough, the tracking on where views for Athensi are coming from showed there are users outside of the Athens area, for example, some people logging on from the U.S. military. It is a safe assumption that there are soldiers logging on from places like Iraq who have some sort of connection with Athens and are interested in seeing what is going on. So the target audience for Athensi is the Athens population, both students and residents, and those with a strong tie to the Athens community.

In addition to this, data showed Athensi users typically log on around 8 or 9 in the morning. Therefore it would be beneficial for content to be posted on the site before these times so users will find new content as soon as they log on, not old content that was posted AFTER they logged on the day before. Updating at a consistent time on a consistent basis will likely increase the stability of viewing times for users.

I think the site is not focused quite enough. The site is not updated as reguarily in every aspect as most news sites. The problem then is that since there is a wider focus on target audeince the types of articles covered are all over the board. Therefore, some sections might target a particular portion of the audience but may not be updated for a long time. If there was a more narrowed focus and articles targeted the same group of people, they might get a more consistent user basis.

Athensi has no web registration. While I think the registration might help to better understand who the users are, there seems to be little reason to do so on Athensi other than understanding users and to potentially use this information for advertising. There really would be no benefit to register on the user side however. For example Speakeasy users are allowed to comment on articles after they register. I would not implement registration therefore because it could deter some users who are interested in just casually seeing what is going on in the Athens area.

When I look at Athensi.com, the audience seems to be Ohio University students and the surrounding town, along with alumni who want to keep in touch with what is happening in the area. I think this is a fairly general audience, but that is okay since Athensi doesn't necessarily produce tons of original content, but acts more as a portal for other news sites. However, it is specific enough to the fact that it is for current/former Athens residents only.

For Athensi I would most likely not implement registration. The biggest reason is there is not much original content, people are going there for that along with links to other news sources. If you make people register, especially when the other news sites don't register, your audience may be tempted to just go to other sites to get their news. However, if every other news site does start doing registration, I think it would be possible for Athensi to do that as well, just make it simpler. I just don't think people are necessarily going to register for content when they can get the same articles and information, for the most part, elsewhere.

I agree with Jen on the updating twice daily right before the two traffic spikes, Athensi should use to its full advantage that it is first and foremost a website. I would put up all newspaper stories in the morning, many times people can visit the internet from the comfort of their own homes in the morning before they even leave to grab the paper. Then at midday update with any more news stories you can then add in a bunch of original contents and links, more featurey stories even. This gives the audience a reason to come back in the afternoon. And it's something they can't necessarily get elsewhere.

The Athensi audience seems to be Ohio University students who are interested in the Athens community and events as well as students who are interested in news from various sources. I think the most unique part about Athensi is how it pulls news from local publications like the Athens News as well as news wire services. This gives broad news coverage that is not available packaged this way anywhere else.

I think Athensi is focused enough because, even by its name, it establishes its focus on Athens as a whole. It is probably the place people would go if they wanted to know anything about Athens, from the media to travel information to local events. The main goals of the website are pretty much clear from the time of entry. Its focus is Athens, and OU students: the news is what students would be interested in, and the site's contents revolve around the city.

I don't think that registration would be very beneficial for Athensi because, while it may be useful for people outside Athens, most of the people hitting it are going to be OU students, and knowing more information about them would not be very useful. The statistics we viewed helped illustrate this. Also, Athensi is not set up to be a site where people post comments or national advertisers buy ad space, so information collected by registration wouldn't be very helpful and might actually discourage people from visiting the site.

The statistics we viewed regarding Athensi showed interesting information about users. The Links page was the one that was viewed most, which shows what many people are interested in. Judging from the top viewed pages, it seems people use Athensi as a portol for viewing more Athens information. All of the stats can be useful in helping Athensi determine what time of day to post, where people are visiting the site from, and what days of the week receive the most traffic. It is important for any web publication to moniter their stats so they can get a feel for where they are succeeding and where they might need some work.

From looking at the Athensi website, I think they are geared toward targeting the Athens community, and not just catering to students of OU. They look at many aspects of life in Athens; the arts, including an "underground" music scene, sports, community, and news. This wide range does not make their audience necessarily too general, but it is hard to gather from the site if they put more emphasis on targeting the college-aged viewer, (the student), or the community member, who could range from a professor, or an Athens single mom in her late thirties. For example, is their arts scene for the young music listener looking for a mention of their friend's band, or the older listener looking for a good local concert for a weekend night.? From the data, although little can be assumed about demographics, it is easy to see that the links provided are bringing major hits. This leads to the question of whether or not the site is targeting an audience that only wants to find some type of information about Athens life, and sees Athensi as their gateway. This could reall be any number of people. With registration implemented, this crowd would most likely be turned away. I think the site could be more focused by defining their audience to a certain degree, maybe with a specific student section that shows separation from the community-based content.

Speakeasy's target audience is certainly the typical Ohio University student. Much of the content is geared toward college kids and what generally interests them. Its different from the Post's audience in that the content is more feature pieces as opposed to hard news. Although its targeted to OU students, I don't think that only they benefit from the site. I think of it as a tool that can be utilized by many. I think perspective students, former students and even students from other campuses could use it as a resource.

I think the site is focused enough. If people are using it as a resource, then it shouldn't be too narrow. It can be used to find more information on a specific topic, like a band or a campus event. With more feature stories, it can also be used to convey general opinions about a topic to the audience. If the audience were looking for straight facts, they would look at The Post. Once all the information is known, then comes the desire to know others' reactions, thus the focus of Speakeasy.

I think I would only implement registration for commenting purposes only. I think when people are trying to find general information, registration scares them. If they're willing to comment, then they would be more inclined to register. Plus, if commenting, they're probably a regular visitor of the site. I don't think first time users are willing to take the time to register to a site that they may not know a lot about.

I think Athensi has a much broader base than just Ohio University. Frankly, the site is designed as a resource for community members and those living outside the community that maintain strong ties. Athensi serves as a portal for all local Athens information including headlines from local media, links to local businesses, etc.

Because Athensi is not solely university based (even though it is now linked from the OU main page) it might actually be beneficial to have registration. This would allow us to see the types of people that are actually accessing the site. Is the non-local audience much broader than we suspect? But I'm not sure if this is feasible since the information compiled on Athensi can be found in other places easily anyway.

The registration will allow us to figure out if the site needs to be more focused or not. Also it would allow us to see if perhaps there would be a demand for more original content.

If the site utilizes RSS feeds instead of its current setup it will be automatically updated when its sources update their sites. This will allow for more traffic as well as less need for a person to have to manually update the site.

I agree with Jen that the links to full-story articles should be in pop up windows so the user will not have to leave the Athensi site everytime they click a link.

Noticed there's nothing up here about Speakeasy yet, so here's a little more about where it stands:

1. Speakeasy's intended audience, based on what I see rather than our theoretical audience, is the involved OU student. The student who likes to read about organizations and unsung heros on campus they might not have known about. Also, the culturally aware student, who enjoys movies, music, food and entertainment.

2. Speakeasy thus far is perhaps not focused enough. The "general" OU student is targeted, but there could be a lot more segmentation of the audience to funnel them into different parts of the site. We have a part of that going with the "on the field" section for athletes.

3. Registration is only required for comments, but I would beef up the registration process to collect more info from the users. It will help us define our audience and give them "ownership" to the site in terms of comments or uploading pictures. Otherwise, content is free - we aren't in a position to demand pay when we aren't well-known.

4. Speakeasy this past week has fluctuated between 150-250 unique viewers each day. About 30-40 users returned regularly each day. About 40% spend 30 secs - 5 mins on the site while 16% spent 20 min to an hour. The majority come from Athens or other cities in Ohio, but we have had some stray visitors from Indiana or Michigan on college servers (and some Belgians) as well.

Athensi is a site that targets the community of Athens. This includes the university but it is not limited to students and faculty. The high school paper use to be on Athensi but even now, two years later, the high school paper is one of the top ten most visited pages. Also community members can access all the local media from Athensi as well as features such as movie reviews/times, original content, and local events.

I think Athensi will be more focused on its audience in the future. We're planning on adding rrs feeds for any local media that wants to participate and we want to keep the things that are drawing readers.

Registration isn't necessary in the Athensi case unless you just wanted to get more of a feel for the fanbase. The site doesn't real offer any services that registration is typically used for.

Athensi.com's target audience is the Athens community. Though it doesn't exclude students, it caters more to community members.

Based on information in the site statistics, the main audience of Athensi.com is Athens community members. Although some Ohio University students and faculty read the site, one of the most popular parts of the site are articles written by the Athens High school newspaper. Even though no new articles have been updated for over a year, Athens High School newspaper articles are third on the list of most-visited sub-sites. Most Ohio University students would not care about Athens Hight school newspaper articles. Therefore, I think that the percevied target audience is also the actual target audience.

As a portal site, Athensi.com is inherently broad. It draws content from a variety of sources, and different people choose different topics. However, if the site became less broad and focused on offering more of what other sites don't offer, it could gain more viewers. I think that narrowing the focus of Athensi.com (or focusing on this MORE and other aspects LESS) to orginal web content from the Athens High School newspaper or people working for the site would give more people a reason to visit the site.

Because Athensi.com is a portal site, I think implimenting registration at this time might be a mistake. Especially if planning to change the site,you don't want people to not experience the new site because they don't want to register. Registration could probably be implimented a few months after the site is refigured. This way, you wouldn't get as many one-time users and would hopefully get more accurate statistics about your viewers.