Re: [Utah-astronomy] Tribune Astronomy Blog posts and a plea
Sheena,
Well, it's that time of year. The editors at the paper are going through and eliminating blogs that don't have high readership or reader interaction (ie comments).
It's unclear to me what we need to do to generate a click record for your management's stat tracking on your blog, The Final Frontier. Is it: a) Posting comments b) Subscribing to the RSS feed c) Other? I generally hit the rss subscribe, read it regularly and leave it at that. Is the pass/fail test for the Trib editors posting comments? - Thanks, Kurt http://blogs.sltrib.com/frontier/
Hi everyone, Thanks for the discussion on the Tribune's blog The Final Frontier. Visiting the site regularly and generating click counts is very important. My editors are looking at pure visitation as one of their largest criteria for keeping a blog. However, they also are looking for audience interaction. That means commenting, submitting photos, or whatever other ideas you might have. And Joe, thanks much for the offer of using some of your great photos. I don't look at us as enemies, either, and I'm very glad Utah has insight into your expertise and love of all things astronomy. I appreciate many of the recent comments, and, as always, thanks for reading! Sheena McFarland State Government Reporter The Salt Lake Tribune 90 S. 400 West, Suite 700 Salt Lake City, UT 84101 Office: (801) 257-8619 Cell: (801) 510-5567 Fax: (801) 257-8525 smcfarland@sltrib.com
Hi all, I want to echo Sheena's concern, but for my own blog too. I have received far fewer comments than many other blogs and I don't know if the editors really like my astro stuff. I haven't had much feedback. Most blogs are brief posts, but I wanted to try something different, write something meater and more extended. I wonder if that was a bad idea. Today I went to the office to visit old friends and I ran into one of the editors in charge of blog matters. I asked him how he likes mine, and he said, "Well, it's in there." A real no-comment. Then he said something about not reading all these blogs. So of course I'm worried that my little essays aren't seen as interesting to the public. I have no idea how many people actually read it, but when I get about one comment per blog, I take that as a bad sign, and probably others do too. 'Nuff said. Thanks, Joe
I guess I'm not completely surprised the the reaction of the folks at the paper. Science seems to not fare well with much of media (look at CNN and their recent axing of the entire science reporting staff). Virtually every paper has an astrology column but how many have a real science section or even a science column? We all know people are interested in science. Heck just last night the physics demo I did at the U drew more than 150 people. So I have to wonder why so little readership. Of course, we're sort of judging the local blogs' popularity by the low numbers of comments. Joe, Sheena, can you find out how many hits your blogs receive? Maybe if those numbers were known to us the outlook would not look the same. patrick On 03 Mar 2009, at 00:29, Joe Bauman wrote:
Hi all, I want to echo Sheena's concern, but for my own blog too. I have received far fewer comments than many other blogs and I don't know if the editors really like my astro stuff. I haven't had much feedback. Most blogs are brief posts, but I wanted to try something different, write something meater and more extended. I wonder if that was a bad idea.
Today I went to the office to visit old friends and I ran into one of the editors in charge of blog matters. I asked him how he likes mine, and he said, "Well, it's in there." A real no-comment. Then he said something about not reading all these blogs. So of course I'm worried that my little essays aren't seen as interesting to the public. I have no idea how many people actually read it, but when I get about one comment per blog, I take that as a bad sign, and probably others do too. 'Nuff said. Thanks, Joe
participants (4)
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Canopus56 -
Joe Bauman -
Patrick Wiggins -
Sheena McFarland