It is a market fact that consumer preferences change as folk’s age and that audience/consumers could be lost if their market needs and demands are not met.

The Stranger’s audience is 78% single, 79% straight, are Gen-x’s, is read by 2% more men than women. Over half the audience graduated college, ¾ of its audience votes. And ¾ of the audience owns pets (an aside: why did you pay for that stat, stranger?)

Contrast this to the PI (JOA combined stats)… it’s not known if the readers are married or single, straight or gay. But more of them are college educated than not. Close to 3 times the number of its readers owns a home than rent. More than half of its readers have a household income greater that $75k. The PI is read by more people between the ages of 45 and death. 6% more men than women read the PI.

The Stranger knows that nearly 700,000 unique individuals read it online and 400,000 will grab a copy of the paper. The PI reaches 1.4 million readers weekly, with 1 million grabbing the physical paper 5 days a week.

These numbers exist for one reason, to generate revenue from advertisements. Subscription revenue for each is not a reportable figure. I would guess at The Stranger the subscription revenue is slightly above nil and the PI it's too embarrassing to put next to the 1.9 million possible readers.

What makes money? An interest in the content of the written word gets folks' eyeballs, but that interest alone will not keep the paper (news org) open. Neither would all the Pulitzer winners with all the best prose that ever existed, if advertisers and by extention consumers, found it to be of no value. I doubt The Stranger could afford the cream of the PI crop of reporters (the ugly truth is, in the long haul, neither could Hearst or the PI). But, there is talent that wants to write, that want the freedom to be wordsmiths, that want to work in this market but need somesort of income.

If it were my wish list, I would go with sports (weekly stats and some of those great first person Stranger interviews with sounder & storm players. Those string players that are often overlooked by other organizations, but who want their name in print) (and not too mention, adult league soccer). What does what it take to get another syndicated column or two? talent would be a start, then longterm audience appeal.

Oh, while its on the table, how about a column targeted at that pet audience? That’s an awful big number of eyeballs that is going to waste, isn’t it?

Posted by Phenics]]> Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:27:13 -0800 The Stranger
It was a fine story, but I think the reason Sloggers were so overwhelmed by it was that it did something unusual for a staff-posted Slog:

Eli actually went out and did interviews and placed how the people he wrote about first, instead of his opinions.

What he did was what reporters are supposed to do, as opposed to linking to a newspaper story that somebody else researched and then making snarky comments.

If you looked through the back issues of both The Times and The P-I for the past year, you'd see plenty more such stories, on plenty more subjects.

So perhaps this might be something for The Stranger's editors to consider.

That is, tell the staffers they can link away to the mainstream media stories, and post away with snarky comments.

But that, also, half of the time, they cannot post something unless they have left the office, done some interviews, made phone calls for independent research.

And that, after that, they let the people they're writing about tell their stories in their own words and actions.

It's kinda of a rad idea for The Stranger, I know, but look at the reaction that such a story by Eli got.


Posted by Mr. Astonished]]> Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:02:54 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Ballard Man]]> Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:32:14 -0800 The Stranger