Publisher and journalist Dave Pellegrin suggests that it’s time for Civil Beat to become more transparent.
Last week Andrew Sullivan announced he was separating his blog (The Dish) from The Daily Beast and taking it independent — to be supported by paid subscriptions. Within a couple of days after making his first appeal, he showed his readers the results.
We know how many paid subscribers Sullivan has, the average subscription amount, even the break-down state-by-state. That transparency should be applauded.
Contrast that to Civil Beat, which, going on three years, still has not released its number of paid subscribers — even, apparently, to its own staff. That means CB employees have no idea of the revenue of the company they work for, nor of its profitability.
It’s an outmoded way of doing business. Loyal subscribers and employees alike would benefit from having such basic information. Long overdue for CB to be more open.
– Dave
Subscriptions and readership have been important metrics in the publishing industry, where these data are important indicators of value for advertiser and readers as well, it seems. But with Civil Beat pursuing an ad-free business model, they haven’t been under the same pressure for disclosure.
How portable is Sullivan’s independent, subscription model? Here’s another view (“The Dish Goes Indie: Big Change for Blogging, or Just for Andrew Sullivan?“).
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It is none of your business, Dave. CB can also block subscribers who introduce subjects that they don’t wish to fact check.
recent Web analytics from Alexa (owned by Amazon.com)
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/civilbeat.com
Statistics Summary for civilbeat.com
Civilbeat.com is ranked #284,405 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Compared with internet averages, the site’s audience tends to be between the ages of 45 and 55; it also appeals more to childless college graduates and women earning over $60,000 who browse from work. Visitors to the site view an average of 1.9 unique pages per day, and search engines refer approximately 21% of visits to this site. We estimate that 77% of Civilbeat.com’s visitors are in the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 84,901.
Alexa Traffic Rank:
284,405 Global Rank 84,901 Rank in US
968 Sites Linking In
Statistics Summary for staradvertiser.com
There are 19,421 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Staradvertiser.com. This site can be found in the “Hawaii” category of sites. Visitors to it spend roughly 48 seconds on each pageview and a total of four minutes on the site during each visit. Staradvertiser.com has a relatively good traffic rank in the cities of Honolulu (#21) and Santa Barbara (#915). Approximately 85% of the site’s visitors are in the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 3,161.
Alexa Traffic Rank:
19,422 Global Rank 3,161 Rank in US
3,938 Sites Linking In
Statistics Summary for hawaiinewsnow.com
There are 47,181 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Hawaiinewsnow.com. The fraction of visits to the site referred by search engines is approximately 15%. Visitors to this site view an average of 1.8 unique pages per day. Compared with all internet users, this site’s users tend to be over the age of 45, and they are disproportionately childless women earning over $60,000 who have no postgraduate education and browse from home. Hawaiinewsnow.com is relatively popular among users in the city of Honolulu (where it is ranked #80).
Alexa Traffic Rank:
47,182 Global Rank 9,646 Rank in US
2,806 Sites Linking In
Statistics Summary for khon2.com
KHON2 is ranked #102,309 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Approximately 61% of visits to the site are bounces (one pageview only), and the site has been online for more than nine years. Compared with all internet users, the site’s audience tends to be over the age of 35; they are also disproportionately moderately educated, childless women earning over $60,000. KHON2 is based in the US.
Alexa Traffic Rank:
102,309 Global Rank 22,141 Rank in US
1,753 Sites Linking In
Statistics Summary for thehawaiichannel.com
Thehawaiichannel.com is ranked #106,980 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. It is located in the US, and visitors to the site view 1.9 unique pages each day on average. The time spent in a typical visit to Thehawaiichannel.com is roughly three minutes, with 69 seconds spent on each pageview, and the site is relatively popular among users in the cities of Honolulu (where it is ranked #116) and Burlington (#6,418).
Alexa Traffic Rank:
106,980 Global Rank 20,816 Rank in US
2,404 Sites Linking In
That’s a very interesting site. Interestingly, HawaiiReporter.com was ranked higher than Civil Beat. Do these rankings rely on cookies or merely IP addresses?
Good question.
The answer: “Alexa looks at traffic patterns across the web as a whole. Our traffic data are based on the past three months of global traffic according to our data sources, primarily our community of Alexa Toolbar users. This helps us get an excellent portrait of how traffic is shaped across the web. It’s a great “big picture” analysis, like using a satellite in orbit to look at weather patterns across the globe. It is an excellent tool for comparing sites and understanding them in relation to one another, but it is not meant to serve as a tool for analyzing visitors’ behavior in depth at a particular site in the manner of Google Analytics.
This is especially true for sites that are ranked worse than 100,000. We have limited data available for such sites, and because of that, our traffic estimates will not be as robust or reliable as they are for sites approaching #1 on the list. The closer to #1, the more data we have, and that means the better our statistics.”
Isn’t this the same organization that thinks it is vitally important, in the name of transparency, to publish the salary of every janitor, clerk-typist, and adjunct professor who works for the state?
AND further….this is the same organization that when John Temple was running things regularly blasted the SA about their circulation numbers. Yet, then as is now, not a peep as to how many of what they have. Even if they release, how would you verify their claim? Tim at least provided a basic snapshot of most of the local media players…
when CB launched they were way more into challenging established “truths” and providing different ways to look at things. They don’t really write like that anymore. Perhaps it was when John left, but I’m surprised, as that was the one thing that set them apart from he said she said journalism like the rest. that was their brand and they lost it imo. i mean, how are they covering the tesoro story any different from the other news organizations?
the old CB would have been diving into the cost implications of the HCEI as state policy on rate payers. now, they don’t seem interested in that type of coverage. i can’t see them being relevant long term unless they get that edge back. did they get some brush back on being so aggressive in a small town?? did they just give up on HPD? inquiring minds what to know!
“They don’t really write like that anymore.” Agreed. They wrote many stories about problems with ORI Anuenue, but now that the final report was received from HUD, there hasn’t been a peep out of them.
It seems like Civil Beat is not evolving. When it was first launched, it seemed like a radical model. But a year after the launch, public disappointment was evident. For example, it was pointed out repeatedly that the layout seems to come from an earlier generation, and the CB seems very wedded to this layout. There is no experimentation. They found a format, and they became very settled in their ways. There lies the irony. In a town that resists change, finally there was something that emerged from the fringes that seemed to challenge everything. Now it seems just like another local online news source no different from any other. It’s all so very Obama-ish.
It’s also very Punahou-ish. That is, there seems to be an immense sense of pride at an institution that outshines all others when it compares itself to the local competition. But that’s silly because there never was any real local competition. It’s like UCLA regarding itself as an elite university. Yes, UCLA is elite in terms of the west coast of the United States, but in terms of the east coast its comparable with Boston College.
This false pride leads to decline. Punahou was never as great as Phillips Academy or any other elite east coast prep school. It was excellent, but never great. But since the 1990s, Punahou has been slipping. Among other things, it’s curriculum has disintegrated. It’s still a good school, but no longer excellent. In fact, there are probably quite a few schools now in Honolulu that are better. What Punahou still has is an immense sense of self-satisfaction, centering around their superior physical plant and largely imagined academic superiority. We see a remarkably similar self-satisfaction in Civil Beat, and its lack of willingness and desire to re-think its layout, advertising policy, subscription policy, etc.