Saturday, July 16, 2005

Post Site Splits Into Local, Global Pages

Eighty Percent of Visitors Are Outside Area

Washingtonpost.com on Wednesday night launched separate home pages -- one for the local audience, and one for national and international users -- as part of an effort to make the paper more relevant to readers and advertisers.

The home page will feature a different mix of stories depending on the Zip code readers submit when they register at the site.


About 80 percent of the 8.5 million unique visitors to the site each month are from outside the Washington area, said Tim Ruder, vice president of marketing for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. He added that local readers return to the site more frequently and linger longer. ....

But Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said The Post also has lost something. "What The Post is doing today is a recognition that the balance of power has shifted to users who can choose the way they receive news . . . that they're not entirely in charge of how people get their news anymore."


Huh? Newspapers who present their material in a way that enables readers to get what they want when they want aren’t losing anything. They are gaining credibility.

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