How many journalists work at the Huffington Post?
One of the more difficult answers to pin down!
The Huffington post US, in its list of staff, claims to have between 60 and 100 editors, many of them editing specialised content on various parts of the website; business, celebrity, culture etc. These also include those who are employed to work on the regional editions, such as Miami, LA, Detroit among others. With regard to reporters however, there are 47 present on the staffing register, all specialising in a specific area, with nearly half of them (21) employed to write on their politics team.
In contrast, The Huffington Post UK shows to have zero reporters working in house, with 18 editors and assistant editors making up their total staff numbers.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Journalism Futures 5
Does The Huffington Post facilitate audience feedback? How?
Far from merely allowing its readers to give feedback, a large part of The Huffington Posts' content comes from its audience participation and comments. James Smith, chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post, describes the publication as a 'social news site' or a 'social media site with news attached'. This 'bottom-up' strategy seems to be a key part of the Posts' success.
The Post claims to receive over 1 million comments every month and actively facilitates user involvement and feedback. Its blogging/content aggregation business model relies, in part, on user feedback. This allows its editors to determine, in real time, which stories are proving to be popular and should be pushed and visa-versa. This as well as other forms of metrics, allows the site to taylor its content in alignment with audience sentiment.
In another quote form James Smith, her urges us not to think of The Huffington Post as a news site that welcomes audience participation, but rather, 'a social media site where news is the topic'.
Far from merely allowing its readers to give feedback, a large part of The Huffington Posts' content comes from its audience participation and comments. James Smith, chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post, describes the publication as a 'social news site' or a 'social media site with news attached'. This 'bottom-up' strategy seems to be a key part of the Posts' success.
The Post claims to receive over 1 million comments every month and actively facilitates user involvement and feedback. Its blogging/content aggregation business model relies, in part, on user feedback. This allows its editors to determine, in real time, which stories are proving to be popular and should be pushed and visa-versa. This as well as other forms of metrics, allows the site to taylor its content in alignment with audience sentiment.
In another quote form James Smith, her urges us not to think of The Huffington Post as a news site that welcomes audience participation, but rather, 'a social media site where news is the topic'.
Journalism futures 4
What is the collective audience of the Huffington Post and how does being online affect this?
According to statistics provided by Quantcast (all figures accurate as of May 2011) The Huffington Posts' readers are overwhelmingly American, overwhelmingly white and are generally made up of mid-to-high earners, with 49% earning over 30k per year and 36% in the 100k+ wage bracket.
It is fair to say that the publication seems to attract young professionals of both sexes, with men and women spread more or less evenly at 53% and 47% respectively. Only 19% of its readers are parents and only 31% are not educated to a college level or higher.
As noted above its readership is predominantly white with 86% of its 6.1million global audience being classified as caucasian. Outside of the USA, Canada hosts the second largest readership with Great Britain, australia and India providing the rest.
The way The Huffington Post combines news, opinion and aggregated content appears to appeal to those with an interest in a variety of news content and ease of navigation, allowing particular focus on business and sports. This is backed by figures showing other sites Huffington Post readers visit, including NBCSports.com, Sportsnetwork.com, Wonkette and Democracynow.org.
So what do these figures tell us about The Huffington Post as an exclusively online publication?
We could argue that many office based professionals would prefer to gather their news whilst at their computers or on the move, using Smartphones and other such devises. This kind of approach would suite the Posts' layout and model as 'Dailyme' style news can be got at with ease using the subject drop down menus as apposed to traditional newspaper layouts.
However, although over a quarter of global and American audiences access The Post from their place of work, the other 75% (approx) are reading from home, suggesting that not only does it fulfil the important, hard news, needs of its readers but the entertainment and lifestyle content is also popular with websites such as Rolling Stone, TMZ and The Superficial also showing to be popular among readers.
According to statistics provided by Quantcast (all figures accurate as of May 2011) The Huffington Posts' readers are overwhelmingly American, overwhelmingly white and are generally made up of mid-to-high earners, with 49% earning over 30k per year and 36% in the 100k+ wage bracket.
It is fair to say that the publication seems to attract young professionals of both sexes, with men and women spread more or less evenly at 53% and 47% respectively. Only 19% of its readers are parents and only 31% are not educated to a college level or higher.
As noted above its readership is predominantly white with 86% of its 6.1million global audience being classified as caucasian. Outside of the USA, Canada hosts the second largest readership with Great Britain, australia and India providing the rest.
The way The Huffington Post combines news, opinion and aggregated content appears to appeal to those with an interest in a variety of news content and ease of navigation, allowing particular focus on business and sports. This is backed by figures showing other sites Huffington Post readers visit, including NBCSports.com, Sportsnetwork.com, Wonkette and Democracynow.org.
So what do these figures tell us about The Huffington Post as an exclusively online publication?
We could argue that many office based professionals would prefer to gather their news whilst at their computers or on the move, using Smartphones and other such devises. This kind of approach would suite the Posts' layout and model as 'Dailyme' style news can be got at with ease using the subject drop down menus as apposed to traditional newspaper layouts.
However, although over a quarter of global and American audiences access The Post from their place of work, the other 75% (approx) are reading from home, suggesting that not only does it fulfil the important, hard news, needs of its readers but the entertainment and lifestyle content is also popular with websites such as Rolling Stone, TMZ and The Superficial also showing to be popular among readers.
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