Spitzer and the blog economy
Spitzer’s public admission of links to a prostitution ring is a boon for the bloggers who yearn for page views, and for readers with and endless appetite for salacious updates. But mostly it’s a win for the traditional media that does the tough reporting in the first place. Because while blogs will add their own view, and no small amount of snark when called for, the links to the original stories are a huge part of the appeal.
On an otherwise indifferent day for Gawker.com, page views on just the that the Spitz was about to hit the fan reached over 17,000. The second most popular posting, about a new book on finding love in New York, garnered a comparatively puny 6,176 page views.
The dilemma for those in the traditional media is how much to cultivate the blogosphere’s yen for sexy links by creating content and stories that feed that particular beast. The more traffic your Web site gets, the better it looks to readers and advertisers, obviously. So throw together some rehash of the Saga of Britney and you’ve got yourself some respectable numbers, courtesy of the gossip blogs.
