KATRINA SHUTS DOWN NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE PRINTING
PRESSES, BUT ONLINE READERSHIP BOOMS
Traffic to newspaper Web site Nola.com jumped 1,133% overnight
Nola's Missing Persons Database was top site visited after Nola.com
NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2005— Among the destruction left in Hurricane Katrina's wake were the printing presses of New Orleans' daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune. Despite setbacks in the ability to physically print the news, the organization rallied behind its Web site, www.nola.com, to provide continuous, in-depth reporting of the disaster and host other critical information services.
Traffic to Nola.com began skyrocketing on August 27, 2005 and peaked on Sept. 1, with its market share of total U.S. Internet visits up 1,133 percent versus the seven-day average before the escalation began.
As of Sept. 17, traffic to the site was still up nearly 200 percent versus pre-Katrina levels. This increase boosted The Times-Picayune Web site to number 13 in the Hitwise News and Media category for the week ending Sept. 3, 2005, up from 108 the prior week.
"Audiences to news sites tend to increase around major events, but The Times-Picayune's Nola.com is a unique story unto itself," said Bill Tancer, general manager of worldwide research at Hitwise. "Not only did the Web site succeed when the printing presses failed but the staff also adapted to the situation by adopting a blog-like format with continuous news and visual updates from staff reporters, citizens and other sources. The site also adopted various message boards, missing-persons databases and external links - community features that are more often associated with sites like Craigslist or Wikipedia, not traditional newspaper sites."
Nola.com Becomes National News Site Overnight
Nola.com's traffic increase occurred as the news site quickly transformed from one with a local and regional audience to one with a local, regional and national audience. While Internet users in the state of Louisiana represented 66.1 percent of visitors to Nola.com in the four weeks ending August 13, 2005, they represented only 23.9 percent of the total audience in the four weeks ending Sept. 10, 2005.
Meanwhile, the majority of U.S. States increased their share of visits to Nola.com by at least double. Among the U.S. States with the greatest traffic contribution and increases to Nola.com most often were those with the highest proximity to Louisiana: Texas' contribution increased from 5.3 to 10.9 percent; Florida 2.4 to 6.7 percent; California 2.6 to 5.6 percent; Alabama 1.7 to 3.5 percent; and Georgia 1.3 to 3.5 percent. Similar to Louisiana, the share of visits from Mississippi decreased - from 5.5 to 4.1, likely the result of decreased Internet usage caused by power failures and evacuation.
'Missing Person's Database' Nola.com's Top Downstream Site
Nola.com's downstream visits suggest the utility of its informational links and databases to assist in disaster recovery. For example, the most popular site people visited after Nola.com was its Missing Person's Database (people.nola.com), which received 5.1 percent of all downstream visits for the week ending September 10, 2005. Other downstream sites among the top 20 included: The National Geodetic Survey (alt.ngs.noaa.gov); The Federal Emergency Management Agency (www.fema.gov); The American Red Cross (www.redcross.org); The Saint Bernard Parish Government (www.stbernardparishgovernment.com); New Orleans Flood Map from C&C Technologies Survey Services (mapper.cctechnol.com); and The Jefferson Parish Hurricane Katrina Emergency Site (www.jeffparish.net).
Contact: For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com (212) 380 2910.
About Hitwise:
Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.
By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.
Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com
