Browsing: Stuff

News
Staff shuffle likely as Fairfax rethinks its newsrooms
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Fairfax has actively been tweaking its strategy to facilitate better digital storytelling. This has included a recent update of its content management system, training journalists on how to film video on their smartphones, investing in an experiential and events unit, running digital marketing campaigns, and purchasing stakes in Neighbourly and Pricemaker. Now, off the back of yesterday’s ASA report showing that newspaper ad spend had dropped year on year by $25 million, Fairfax has announced a series of changes that will introduce more digital-centric approach to its news service. And these changes include news of the proposed de-establishment of seven editors’ jobs and the introduction of 12 other senior positions.

News
Not just about the clicks: comparing Stuff and the Herald’s engagement stats
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It’s no secret that Stuff leads the Herald in terms of the number of pageviews, audience reach and unique user base it attracts on a monthly basis, but this is by no means the only metric that advertisers are interested in tracking. Engagement stats, particularly through social media, are becoming increasingly important in terms of determining the value of a placing an ad on a digital media property. So, in order to gauge the effectiveness of both publications in terms of engagement, Frank Feinstein, director at Feinstein Doaks, surveyed 2.5 million Facebook interactions on the flagship Facebook pages of both the Herald and Stuff.

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Esoteric or easy peasy: how readable are Kiwi sites?
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In a country as diverse as New Zealand, simplicity in writing is essential when it comes to large-scale publications that aim to reach readers of different backgrounds (not all native English speakers) and varying education levels. So, are Kiwi publications obeying this rule of simplicity and is it being reflected in the articles published on mainstream media on a daily basis? To find out, StopPress ran some of the nation’s websites through a readability test. Here’s how they fared.

News
Stuff invites Kiwis to create art in the dark
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Fairfax is starting to challenge the Herald’s dominance in Auckland with a series of campaigns that aim to draw the Super City’s denizens to its publication. The most recent effort involved an activation at Art in the Dark, which saw event attendees queue in long lines to enter the Stuff tent to get a shot at literally creating art out of light. Once inside the tent, Kiwis would be given LED glowsticks and were then told to draw or write in the air. These actions were then captured using long-exposure photography, resulting in a host of creative images that were tagged with the Stuff brand.

News
Stuff surpasses Yahoo in digital audience, sets sights on Trade Me
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Recently, StopPress ran a story in which Fairfax’s group executive editor Sinead Boucher said Stuff was working on a strategy to overtake Yahoo in terms of online visitor numbers. And this has now come to fruition with Nielsen’s statistics for October showing that the Fairfax-owned media property received more unique visitors over the course of the month than Yahoo.

News
A poor reflection
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It doesn’t take much to get a scolding on social media these days and the masses always smell blood when whoopsies like the AFR’s major front page gaffe, or the Herald’s mistaken identity (and mixed up movie quotes) are spotted. And here’s another (small) one from Stuff on a story about Dunedin.

News
When calendars get awkward
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Greenpeace has been left in the awkward position of inadvertently distributing the photography of Alain Marfat-Renodier, a man who was involved in the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand. This situation comes about after it was revealed that one of Marfat’s photographs taken of a variety of animals around a Namibian watering hole was included in the not-for-profit organisation’s annual calendar (image credit: Stuff).

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Chokes all round
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An unfortunate coincidence perhaps, but it was chokes from all quarters on the Stuff website earlier this morning as the lead headline screamed about Emirates Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup loss while further down on the front page there was a story about a US doctor saving a lady who choked on a piece of meat.

News
The progression of love?
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We had to wonder recently if Stuff’s website was trying to show us what happens when the honeymoon is over – as its wallpaper promoting a dating site shared the front page with a less romantic story.

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Beached as
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Last week Vodafone took out the awkward ad placement award, and we’ve got a contender for this week’s edition, with an ad on Stuff promoting ‘beach fale fun in the sun’ in Samoa running alongside a story warning of a tsunami. Pesky news, always wreaking havoc with those commercial messages.

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Ferald takes claws to news reading
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With only so many minutes in the day (1440 to be precise) there’s not much time for lolly-gagging about when looking for which news articles are worth reading and which are not. Ferald is an extension for the Chrome browser which takes the hassle out of this equation for New Zealander news consumers.

News
Fairfax Digital looks to harness the wisdom of the crowd—and its data—with user-generated content hub
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Not surprisingly, the relaunch of the New Zealand Herald as a tabloid and the redesign of the nzherald.co.nz website have dominated most of the attention in the newspaper sphere in recent weeks. But Fairfax has a few tricks up its sleeve as well and it has announced the launch of Stuff Nation, a repository for user-generated content and a more personalised news experience that promises to “transform the landscape of New Zealand journalism”—and the way Fairfax Digital delivers media packages in New Zealand.

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Stuff this, what’s on the other channel?
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The race for convergence means hitherto distinct media entities are cutting each other’s lunch. TV and radio stations now have their own news websites, while news sites are increasingly moving into TV’s realm with video content. We wrote about it a few months back, and now the country’s most popular news site is now officially available on the big screen, as Fairfax Digital launches its Stuff IPTV Channel on Sony Internet TVs (smart TVs).

News
Eye gauging: RWC inspires massive online traffic increase, visual and interactive content leads the way
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New Zealand’s passion for the RWC has already been shown through the massive TV ratings. And, not surprisingly, the major online publishers are also sitting pretty, with Nielsen Market Intelligence data showing the aggregate average daily unique browser numbers for all New Zealand websites in the sports category in September increasing by 58 percent to 332,837 compared to September 2010 (210,408) and 62 percent compared to March this year (205,688). 

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TV3 and Stuff remove paid search listings
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As a trade publication, there’s not much more we can add to the comprehensive media coverage of the earthquake being offered by New Zealand’s television, radio and print/online media outfits (Vicki Anderson’s take on events is particularly vivid). Obviously, industry issues are the least of everybody’s concerns when there have been so many fatalities in Christchurch and our families, friends and colleagues are going through utter hell, so first and foremost the thoughts of everyone here—and the thoughts of the industry as a whole—are with our embattled countryfolk. But the fact that TV3 and Stuff bid for Google search terms around the earthquake does raise some interesting ethical issues, particularly when the practice is frowned upon overseas. Judging by the comments on the story, some felt it was reprehensible, some felt it was kosher because the information was relevant and some even felt we were giving favourable treatment to TVNZ and nzherald.co.nz. But as of this morning, Tower was the only remaining advertiser on Google search and Stuff and TV3 had removed their paid listings, which seems to be an acknowledgment from the companies or their media agencies that doing so in the first place was bad form.

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Acceptable or reprehensible? TV3 and Stuff buy Christchurch earthquake search terms
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When it comes to increasing eyeballs, natural disasters are, rather perversely, usually good news for media owners. But where does the line get drawn? Is it acceptable for TV3 and Stuff to bid for search terms around the Christchurch earthquake? When TVNZ has committed to commercial free broadcasts from 6pm through to 12pm tomorrow and promised to make good on any campaigns impacted by the event and Google has set up a people finder (although it also benefits from the search purchasing), it seems awfully cynical to try and benefit from the disaster. As one media insider says, “this is not a time to increase traffic through to a website through paid means”.

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Fairfax makes the internet even bigger
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The NBR gave Stuff’s digital billboard promotion a bit of grief this week after it suffered from a few technical difficulties. But the glitches have obviously been ironed out and Fairfax is now using arbitrary capitalisation to trumpet the arrival of “New Zealand’s First Interactive News Billboard” in Aotea Square in Auckland.

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Stuff gives people more power, representatives of people shudder
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Fairfax Media is harnessing the raw power of the crowd to try and weed out a few more dodgy financial dealings from our elected officials, giving the public the chance to trawl through the thousands of pages of credit card transactions and receipts from 2003  to 2010 that were collated by The Department of Internal Affairs and review them online.

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