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Drudge Generates More News Traffic Than Social Media
tcd004 writes "A report released today by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that the Drudge Report is a far more important driver of online news traffic than Facebook or Twitter. In fact, for the top 25 news websites, Twitter barely registers as a source of traffic. The report hits on several other interesting findings about news behavior."
It beats the hell out of the network news sites, with their pervasive cookies, auto-start videos, and general unwanted flash-a-palooza.
I would gripe that if you look at either CNN or Fox (or whomever's) website, it's so busy that it's offensive, even after you take out scripts, flash, videos, etc. Simplify. (Maybe just a personal preference)
My bane lately is the trend toward these major news sites linking to "stories" that are only videos.
I don't WANT to watch video unless I ask for it. I want to see text. I want to see a version of the information that is quiet and doesn't waste bandwidth or require flash. I want to be able to scan relevant details without clunking through some 3 minute clip just to get the one detail I'm after.
(sorry. rant over)
> "90% or more of the news links take you AWAY from Drudge to sites with an array of political leanings, both right and left."
Heh, heh. Drudge isn't really linking to left-leaning articles. I used to visit Drudge for a while. Pretty soon, I'd play a game called "name the political party". Whenever they had a headline about a politician where I didn't recognize who they were or which political party they were with, I'd play a game called "name the political party". I was actually pretty good at it. If the headline was downplaying a politician's wrongdoing, then you could pretty much guess he was Republican. If it was a blistering headline attacking the politician, it was either a Democrat or a Republican that they were turning their back on because he had dome something they couldn't condone. The very fact that I could guess the political party based on how harshly they attacked them in the headline should be pretty good evidence of a right-wing bias.
I also thought it was interesting in the last election that they refused to give the electoral vote count between Obama and McCain, choosing, instead to show the popular vote. Of course, the electoral vote tends to magnify the gap between the winner and loser, and they wanted to minimize how badly McCain lost. I'd bet money that they showed the electoral count and minimized the popular vote count during the Bush-Gore election, since Gore won the popular vote.
Do you really think Drudge would get an approving nod from Rush Limbaugh if he wasn't a right winger? "Matt Drudge is the man who is to the Internet, what I am to broadcasting." -- Rush Limbaugh
I think Drudge's favorite newsource is Andrew Breitbart, who is most definitely conservative.