Last weekend, the second most-read article on The New York Times’ product recommendation site was its guide to the best bidets. The guide, which Wirecutter crowned the Toto Washlet C200 ($430 from Amazon) as the winner, has been published on the site for years, subject to recent updates. Traffic to the guide increase by 5000% compared with the same period the year before, according to the publisher. It’s a quirky but grim sign of the far-reaching impacts that coronavirus has on every aspect of peoples’ lives.
“The coronavirus pandemic is the story, it’s a topic with a lot of confusion, there’s a lack of clarity and misinformation,” said Ben Frumin, editor-in-chief at Wirecutter. “Our role is to offer clear-eyed, sober and actionable advice for people to get through it. It’s taken over really every aspect of peoples’ lives.”
For Wirecutter, who’s 100 journalists have published roughly 36 articles on how to prepare for the impact of the virus, reader interest over the last few months falls into three categories: How to stay clean and healthy, emergency preparation kits and working from home. Roughly half of the content on site is currently related to the virus but there’s no quota. Wirecutter is one of many publishers leaning into this type of content.
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