Johnston Press
It’s 18 months since I left scotsman.com. I knew the new Johnston Press redesign was, to put it very, very, mildly, unworthy to lick the boots of the 2001-2007 model.
I also knew that traffic would tank. I warned Tim Bowlder, the JP chief executive, of this face to face saying the JP redesign would lose “millions of page views and hundreds of thousands of users”. My warning was ignored and a JP apparatchik later explained that I had not understood how good their plans were.
Well, we can finally see how good their plans were. Audited traffic figures for scotsman.com have finally escaped into the light of day. According to ABCe, the site I edited for seven years now gets about 2 million unique users a month.
That’s about half of the traffic it received in 2007. That’s the lowest audited traffic scotsman.com has had since January 2004.
It’s not like they weren’t warned. But the team that built scotsman.com into a sum far greater than its parts were ignored or removed. Of the team of 20 or so responsible for its success, just two remain at The Hootsmon.
It is widely believed that JP paid over the odds for The Scotsman Publications so they could get their hands on the website. When Tim Bowdler appeared on Newsnight Scotland just after the purchase he mentioned “scotsman.com” in nearly every sentence.
Why then did JP ruin the site?
9 responses so far ↓
1 Bobby S // Nov 17, 2008 at 2:33 pm
You’re not saying “I told you so”, are you?
2 Stewart // Nov 17, 2008 at 3:01 pm
That would be petty and beneath me. I don’t like to say “I told you say” but … actually I *love* to say “I told you so.”
3 Craig McGill // Nov 19, 2008 at 2:05 pm
The thing is with the share price where it is, you could now see someone buying JP for the Scotsman domain name and then selling off the bits that were profitable to recoup some cash. If Newsquest weren’t so hellbent on their own strategy for Herald, etc, they should snap up the Scotsman as long-term – as in five years – it would play well with their strategy.
4 Eddie Truman // Nov 19, 2008 at 2:12 pm
It is utterly woeful, they’ve got 3 that are identical now whereas before the SOS site had it’s own character different from The Scotsman.
And why oh why does the Evening News allow comments on stories that are a gift to the green ink commenters ?
‘Old lady beaten up by neds’, please leave your comments below.
It totally devalues the brand as they queue up to advocate the mass extermination of Scotland’s young people.
I see that the Herald have dealt with this by setting up a seperate ‘Opinion’ site, wise move.
Anyways, all the best to you, your web column was required reading when I worked for the SSP in the Scottish Parliament but thats gone now also
5 Local Heroes « corriganreid // Nov 21, 2008 at 5:59 pm
[...] at Sour Alba has already discussed the disaster that Johnson Press has made of the Scotsman websites, robbing its three titles of a [...]
6 The Week of the Fascist Fonebook (Phascist Phonebook?) - Scottish Roundup // Nov 23, 2008 at 2:43 pm
[...] with the MSM, Richard Thomson looks at the post-switchover options for local broadcasting, while Stewart Kirkpatrick notes that Johnston Press has presided over the number of visitors to scotsman.com being [...]
7 scottdouglas // Nov 29, 2008 at 12:30 am
The whatsman.com?
Should I have heard of this?
Tanked indeed.
8 Disaster lurks for The Herald’s new website // Apr 22, 2009 at 12:43 pm
[...] Scottish Roundup: The Week of the Fascist Fonebook (Phascist Phonebook?) [...]
9 Iain Macwhirter and the relationship between the media and bloggers « doctorvee // Apr 29, 2009 at 12:33 am
[...] to shreds and implement their own shaky template has effectively put a nail in their own coffin. Traffic has halved since they took over. The Herald’s web presence has always been dire, and signs for the future are not [...]
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