Chicago Tribune mulls evening online ‘edition’
Cory Bergman May 4th, 2007
The Chicago Tribune is thinking about focusing some of its reporting staff on an evening “edition” online. “One reason to consider such a publication is that people now are absorbing news and headlines throughout the day. There may be a new appetite for something more thoughtful to read during the evening,” said the Tribune’s Public Editor Timothy J. McNulty. The idea of dayparting is not new, but backing it up with reporter deadlines is a more serious attempt at attempting to bring in appointment users outside their typical workdays. Also, it’s important to note that despite the 24/7 nature of news and the web, both paper and TV websites still largely rotate around old media deadlines simply because that’s how the staff is scheduled and tasked. Newspapers have their biggest burst of fresh enterprise stories at night, and TV stations have them at 5 p.m. Ideally, if you ask me, these stories should be distributed throughout the day, especially in the peak 11 a.m.-1 p.m. hours.
2 Comments Add your own
1. Safran | May 4th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
This is still thinking in terms of the old way news was consumed. You point out that prime time on the web is midday. And midday stretched across four time zones is, pretty much, all dayside. So it makes no sense focusing your efforts on the evening - when TV newscasts are dropping audience share by the bucket.
Write the news when there is news to be written. Report it when it’s done. Beat the other guys by being more aggressive and accurate. There’s no huge secret here.
2. Eric | May 4th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
The SeattlePI tried this with their “day part” web site publishing. They had totally different styles and content for the web site published at set schedules throughout the day (still updated news within those blocks).
They could not realize enough traffic to justify the expense of a three-times daily template change and pagination effort.
The office prime time that rules the web still holds. 10am-2pm is where it’s at.
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