Mapping project, Manny Ramirez, budget ‘balancer’ among reasons for May growth
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Below is the memo from Executive Editor LATimes.com Meredith Artley to the staff detailing some of the projects that brought visitors to latimes.com in May.
Colleagues:
Growth for latimes.com continues. May numbers follow, but first let’s look at some outstanding projects and improvements.
Months ago, some brave souls decided to map L.A.’s neighborhoods with help from our readers. They gathered feedback and released revised maps last week and wrote about that process. But they didn’t stop there -- existing information from places such as our schools database was added. Then they added demographic information on population, geographical size, income, education, etc. Readers can look at this data by neighborhood, or see where their neighborhood ranks among the city’s most ethnically diverse areas. Or the wealthiest. Or even the most divorced. Next, crime data will be layered in. There are endless possibilities of what can be mapped beyond that. Note that this is a project that evolves over time, constantly seeking and reacting to reader feedback. It’s a shining example of the kind of deep, unique service that is key to our future. Congratulations to Ben Welsh, Doug Smith, Megan Garvey, Sandy Poindexter, Maloy Moore and Tom Lauder.
The state budget situation is so complex – if only there was an easy way to understand if or how the budget can be balanced. Enter Evan Halper, Sean Connelley and David Lauter with an interactive budget balancer.
The Sports team broke the news about Manny Ramirez’s suspension on the site - Sean Gallagher called the coverage a ‘daylong juggernaut’ with nonstop updates that spurred lots of mentions and links from local and national media.
For the special elections, we had minute-by-minute, county-by-county results for each proposition on this map, and live results on the seat races. Plus, explainers on the propositions with lots of thoughts from readers and continually updated coverage on L.A. Now.
When the state Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8, we had breaking news coverage to the minute, an active Q&A with readers, stunning images and this interactive chronology for every state in the nation.
On Memorial Day, many new readers discovered our California War Dead database on our homepage and via this story. For the past year the database has been quietly gathering touching tributes to those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As Russ noted, there’s a new occasional series, “Promise and Peril in South L.A.” The project launched Friday on the site – on the above link you can check out the powerful audio slide shows that complement Scott Gold’s first story, the version of his piece in Spanish, and truthful comments from readers like “this is very interactive, very informative, and great reporting. great job.”
A local basketball team (not the Clippers) has done well. Our NBA finals coverage includes live chats on the ever popular Lakers blog during the games, lots of links to colleagues at the Orlando Sentinel, fun video analysis, and all the updates, tweets and pithy columns readers know to expect.
All are great examples of innovative work that interests our local audience. No wonder visits from local readers have increased 23% over the last year.
On the national front, we hosted the most complete coverage of ‘American Idol’ available anywhere, period. Richard Rushfield and team gave readers backstage glimpses of the contestants, analysis of the ratings trends, exclusive interviews with the judges, weekly chats, the Buzzmeter prediction panel, videos featuring past stars, and an experts’ roundtable conversation. Plus, Richard appeared weekly on the morning shows of Tribune TV stations around the nation, sharing his insights on the most popular show on television.
We had 22 million unique users visit us in May - that’s up 31% over last May. And we had 137 million page views, 12% growth over last year.
What’s next? The coming weeks are all about the site redesign - we’re making the site easier to read, use and navigate. Sometime around mid-July, readers will see a cleaner, more elegant latimes.com. The redesign also includes new back-end tools that will make producing the site more efficient, so we can focus on turning out more great work to our growing readership.
Top blogs for May
Our blogs gathered more than 16 million page views, second-highest traffic month ever. We’ve come a long way: In May 2007, total blog traffic was 2.2 million page views.
A warm welcome to “LA at Home” – the home, garden and design blog that Craig Nakano and team launched last week.
1. L.A. Now (3,085,890 page views)
2. Dish Rag (2,120,198)
3. Top of the Ticket (1,034,268)
4. Idol Tracker (1,015,464)
5. Show Tracker (989,605)
6. Gold Derby
7. Lakers
8. Hero Complex
9. Technology
10. Dodger Thoughts
11. Pop & Hiss
12. Culture Monster
13. Fabulous Forum
14. Daily Dish
15. Company Town
16. Daily Travel & Deal
17. Big Picture
18. All the Rage
19. L.A. Unleashed
20. Booster Shots
Most-viewed photo galleries
1. Lakers courtside celebrities at Staples
2. Wind-driven blaze in Santa Barbara
3. ‘The Biggest Loser’ contestants before and after
4. Best and Worst: ‘American Idol’ finale Season 8
5. Summer Movie Sneaks 2009
6. Obama at Occidental
7. Star Trek: You’d never guess they were Trekkies
8. Cave sleepers
9. The world of competitive facial hair
10. Depression-era landmarks in Southern California
Most-viewed articles
1. Photos show President Barack Obama as Barry the freshman (By Mike Boehm)
2. California voters kill budget measures (By Eric Bailey)
3. Dodgers’ Manny Ramirez suspended 50 games after failing drug test (By Dylan Hernandez)
4. Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task (By Jason Song)
5. Rapper Dolla is shot, killed at Beverly Center (By Sam Quinones, Rong-Gong Lin II and Andrew Blankstein)
6. Farrah Fawcett: ‘Under a microscope’ and holding onto hope (By Charles Ornstein)
7. U.S. threatens to rescind stimulus money over wage cuts (By Evan Halper)
8. Fairfax High’s prom queen is a guy (By Ari B. Bloomekatz)
9. Early retirement claims increase dramatically (By Mike Dorning)
10. In-N-Out: Can perfection survive? (By Michael Hiltzik)
On the social media front, we now have more than 150,000 follows across our 150 Twitter accounts. One noteworthy success story includes the Show Tracker team live-reporting the Upfronts from New York via Twitter.
On a personal note, it’s wonderful to come back from maternity leave to such a dynamic site. A huge thanks to Sean Gallagher in particular for leading the effort during the past three months.
Meredith Artley
Executive Editor, LATimes.com