'CS Monitor' Web Site Sees Massive Traffic From Jill Carroll Series

By: E&P Staff ?Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story,? an 11-part multimedia series for the Christian Science Monitor, has millions of readers flooding the Web site.

According to WebSideStory?s HBX Analytics, the Christian Science Monitor?s Web site analyzer, the reporter?s series had more than 450,000 unique visitors on its first day of publication (Aug. 14), more than 1 million page views on that day, and 1.5 million page views the following day. Normally, the Christian Science Monitor?s Web site attracts an average of 121, 247 page views per day in July.

The Web Analytics firm also noted that much of the traffic toward the Jill Carroll series was coming from major news outlets and ?consumer portals,? such as CNN, AOL, and Yahoo. These sites are excerpting Carroll?s posts and then linking to them via their Web sites.

Additionally, the Christian Science Monitor has experienced an influx of new visitors to its site due to the Carroll series. During the first two days that ?Hostage? was online, the Web site had more than seven times the average daily traffic for the month of July.

"Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story" includes online videos, image galleries, RSS feeds and podcasts, as well as Carroll's own accounts of her 82-day experience as one of the many kidnapped journalists in Iraq. At the time of her kidnapping on Jan. 7, Carroll was a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. She was released on March 30 by her abductors, who had demanded the release of all female Iraqi prisoners.