Few Advertisers Desert Newspaper Web Sites

By: Carl Sullivan Updated at 11:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, March 21

Many newspaper Web sites remade their home pages often on Thursday as they struggled to keep up with fast-moving news events about Iraq. Visits to dozens of large newspaper sites Thursday revealed no apparent bandwidth problems, as pages loaded quickly and were updated frequently.

When the war began Wednesday night, The New York Times on the Web turned off its registration wall, "to get the news out to as many readers as possible, as quickly as possible," said Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman for New York Times Digital. The site was experiencing increased traffic, but was loading fine on Thursday afternoon. Mohan said the paper has contingency plans in case of an overwhelming traffic spike, including a streamlined home page.

Similar online emergency plans are in place at washingtonpost.com, Tribune Co., E.W. Scripps Co., and other papers. But for the most part, online newspaper executives were confident that their servers could withstand the onslaught.

Chicagotribune.com moved its war coverage outside of its registration area, but latimes.com has kept everything behind the registered-user wall.

There were no reports of huge advertiser pullouts on Thursday, but "there is still a high amount of uncertainty," said Christine Hennessey, a spokeswoman for Tribune Interactive. "A few national brands within the travel industry have said they will temporarily suspend campaigns," she said. Other sites reported similar requests from their travel advertisers, including the airlines.

The Chicago Sun-Times had two advertisers (one travel, one financial) suspend their online advertising campaigns Thursday, one for the first 48 hours of the conflict and the other for the first 72, said Jack Metzger, sales manager for Chicago Sun-Times Online Publications. On the plus side, "the print side actually picked up a very large campaign [Thursday] from a major auto manufacturer whose television advertising has been pre-empted by the war coverage."

"90% of our online advertisers have not asked for any kind of 'out' clause," said Brigitte Trafford, a spokeswoman for The Wall Street Journal Online. "Of the remaining 10% that have, we are not expecting them all to exercise it. ... Every indication is that the suspended advertising will resume if the conflict is resolved swiftly."

Amy Dalton, a Knight Ridder Digital spokeswoman in San Jose, Calif., said, "To date, no advertisers have cancelled. Also, while we do have emergency procedures to ensure site performance during heavy traffic loads -- such as striking ads from the home pages and news channels [including pop-unders, pop-ups, floating Flash/Dynamic HTML ads] -- these plans have not been activated."

"We have seen no direct impact on sales
due to the war," said Eric Christensen, vice president and general manager of Dallas-based Belo Interactive Inc. "By direct, I mean an advertiser specifically saying they did not want to engage in an online campaign during hostilities. We are, however, subject to the same indirect impact as everyone else: advertisers reducing spending due to poor business conditions brought about by customer concerns over the war."

Belo had no plans to change its online advertising strategies or user registration requirement, but would continue to monitor site performance and traffic, and make adjustments if necessary, Christensen said.

Most newspaper sites were still running ads on Thursday, but some restrictions were in place -- more out of concern for taste than bandwidth. LATimes.com and ChicagoTribune.com both temporarily suspended all pop-up ads when the war began, Hennessey said. Washingtonpost.com planned to continue running its pop-under ads, but would the decision under constant review, said Don Marshall, a spokesman for the site. He said a few advertisers on Wednesday requested temporary suspensions of their ads, usually 24 to 48 hours, from the moment hostilities began.

Ads were not running on the home pages of MSNBC.com or CNN.com Thursday.

Most papers were busy updating the special Iraq Web pages that were built weeks ago, including multimedia packages. Many chains were relying on the continuous coverage from the Associated Press, often in automated XML feeds. Allowing the AP to cover the breaking news means that newspaper reporters in the Middle East can focus on localizing the story for both print and online, said Steve Yelvington, vice president, strategy and content, for Morris Digital Works in Augusta, Ga. The Morris chain is supplementing its online AP coverage with reports from its own reporters in Kuwait, photo slide shows, and its own maps created using Macromedia Flash software.

A number of online resources are available to smaller newspapers who wish to do their own reporting on the war. Examples include AScribe's university experts, the "Covering the War" section at Poynter.org, and CyberJournalist.net.

In Minneapolis, startribune.com's Iraq-related multimedia pieces are generating two to three times the typical number of accesses, said Editor Ben Welter. "Star Tribune photographer Mike Zerby, embedded with a Marine unit, is shooting, editing, encoding, and uploading some great video, using a $1,500 mini-DV camera, a laptop, and a satellite phone," Welter said. Four other Star Tribune journalists in the region are contributing audio and photo galleries to http://www.startribune.com/stories/1762/3720265.html.

NYTimes.com/iraq includes Times content, plus stories from the International Herald Tribune, FT.com, BBC World News, Der Spiegel, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Web producer Naka Nathaniel is in Kuwait to assist Times correspondents and photographers file multimedia features, including audio pieces, according to Mohan. And the paper's chief military correspondent, Michael Gordon, continues to write a weekly column that's exclusive to NYTimes.com.

Washingtonpost.com's "War in Iraq" section has been updated frequently with photo galleries, audio reports, and video reports from Travis Fox, who is in the Middle East. The site also offers live video of press conferences and government briefings.

WSJ.com is running stories that the print Journal can't accommodate fully or at all, Trafford said. The site will also run dispatches (sometimes in first person) from the war zone and the home front, "along with a daily compendium of tidbits that don't fit within the confines of traditional stories but that reporters and editors think ought to be seen," she said.

At Scripps, newspapers are sharing a great deal of war-related content, said Bob Benz, general manager, interactive media. "After the shuttle accident, we set up an internal listserv for our editors to discuss content," he said. "Our content management system makes it easy to share content across Web sites. I've seen tremendous cooperation and sharing of resources."

And the great blog trend is getting a boost from the war. The Ventura (Calif.) County Star is running its first Web log, with updates on war coverage.

Jimmy Guterman, a media columnist for Business 2.0, urged newspapers to make sure their pages continue to load quickly. "I'm not sure what is gained by running a jerky tiny video clip on your Web site," he said. "Bandwidth is precious during times of peak news. I think most readers would be just as happy to get a really good news story in text."
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See E&P's complete coverage of Iraq and the Press.