Stanley Cup Win Gives N.C. Newspaper Record-Breaking Web Traffic

By: Joe Strupp Hockey may not be the most popular sport in North Carolina. But you wouldn't know it by following The News & Observer of Raleigh.

Thanks to the Carolina Hurricanes' Stanley Cup championship on Monday night, the newspaper's web site saw its busiest day ever Tuesday with more than 900,000 page views, according to David Feld, news director of Internet media. He said the previous record was just above 800,000 page views during the early days of the Duke University lacrosse scandal.

"We had a record day yesterday," Feld declared as he provided the data. "This is the first time that we had a major league sport championship and we have wall-to-wall coverage."

He also noted that the majority of the visitors were not referred to the site from another location. He said many of those who visited during the previous record day were referred via a link on the Drudge Report. "This was just a phenomenon with a team from North Carolina winning the Stanley Cup," he said. "It all went very smoothly.

Feld said the Web site on Monday night also had its quickest game story ever, reporting the Hurricane's victory over the Edmonton Oilers within a minute of the game's ending. "We had it planned and they put the story up as normal," he said.

On the print side, meanwhile, circulation executives saw a 60% increase in single copy sales on Tuesday, with 32,000 copies sold, a sharp jump from the usual 20,000. "It is comparable with Duke winning the [men's basketball] national championship in 2001 when we did about 26,000 for that," said Tom Kaspari, vice president of circulation. But he said it would not match the single-copy sales that occurred last year when the nearby University of North Carolina won the men's basketball title.

The N&O also increased today's single copy press run, which included a 12-page special section, by about 12,000.

Hundreds of miles away, in South Florida, daily papers there were taking advantage of a different championship as the Miami Heat won the NBA crown Tuesday night with a win over the Dallas Mavericks.

While local newspaper Web sites were still tallying traffic for today, The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale reported a 50% to 60% increase in page views during the first hours of Wednesday, according to spokesman Kevin Courtney. He also said single copy sales were already some 20% higher than normal.

"This is always a fun story to do, a boost to the community," said Earl Maucker, Sun-Sentinel editor, who said today's paper included a four-page wrap. He said the usual 11:30 p.m. deadline had to be pushed back to 1 a.m. to allow for the final game coverage. Sunday's paper, he added, will included a 24-page special section.

At the rival Miami Herald, which usually prints 90,000 papers for single-copy sales, 15,000 extras were printed today, according to Terry Whitney, vice president of circulation. He said the paper also gave away 3,000 posters with front page images and is planning its own Sunday special section.