From Britain's Press Gazette, April 8:
'Paper of record' has seen page views go up as total story count went down.
The Times says a strategy of publishing “fewer, better stories” has led to three consecutive months of record-breaking global audience growth.
The Times news desk has reduced the number of stories it publishes by 20% since the mindset change while the sports desk cut its output by 30%.
But deputy head of digital Anna Sbuttoni said “they didn’t lose any audience. In fact, they gained it.”
Across the whole newsroom, The Times has gone from publishing more than 200 stories a day to about 150 – a 25% cut.
This was not a cost-cutting exercise, Sbuttoni said, with staff levels remaining neutral.
She added: “We’ve had three consecutive months of all-time, record-breaking audience growth at The Times,” referring to internal global traffic figures for the website and app (excluding Apple News), “and we’re publishing fewer stories than we ever have.”
Sbuttoni said organic search traffic to the website was up 29% year on year and 13% month on month in February, bucking the industry trend.
Google Discover traffic was up more than 150% year on year and social referral traffic was up more than 100%, she added.
The “fewer, better stories” strategy has five priorities, according to Sbuttoni, who said it was “a real change in mindset”.
The first priority is “exclusive, original reporting that you can’t get anywhere else”....
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