There is much discussion of the evolution of Nashville Is Talking, which looks to be going the way of the Dodo. I have no stake in the site anymore, so frankly I couldn’t care less what happens to it, so long as the archives are still available. If they take all my hard work down off the web, I’m going to be pissed off. Anyway, this local “blog coach,” who is going to get ego elbow from patting himself on the back all the time, says WKRN’s foray into the world of blogging was a failure. Well, what he’s really saying is “WKRN failed to meet my goals with their project, therefore they failed.” But the creator of the NIT project schools Bill on precisely why that blog was begun:
[W]hen NiT was created I can tell you it was launched with altruistic motives and not to make a fast buck for WKRN. I bought into Terry Heaton’s vision of using the station’s resources to create a meeting place for local bloggers that could eventually lead to an ad network that both the station and the bloggers could profit from. This is why you saw no ads on NiT to start. It was supposed to be a stand alone blog, not a promotional tool for the station and that’s why a local blogger was hired to run it and not someone in news or promotion. Her orders were simple: No ‘F Bombs’ and no porn. Otherwise write it like a blog. Her placement in the newsroom was intentional so she could see how the newsroom functions, warts and all and the newsroom benefited from having her there.
At its height there were twenty three separate blogs originating out of that newsroom and Brittney was the catalyst. There were news stories generated from blogs Brittney highlighted on NiT and eventually led to her semi-regular Friday on-air wrap ups of what Nashville’s Talking about. NiT was never about ROI’s or driving ratings to WKRN even though the latter would have been welcomed. It was about moving into the Media 2.0 world and finding ways of engaging an audience that didn’t think about watching a local newscast. We sponsored blog meet-ups where new friendships were forged and conducted classes just for bloggers on shooting and editing video. This really was the station reaching out in a unique way to the local community.
To people like Bill Hobbs, and perhaps the City Paper since they hired him, altruism and community building are “failures.” Because NIT didn’t pay for itself, it was a waste. I couldn’t disagree more. This is a myopic view, and one I think is being taken on by upper-management at WKRN, unfortunately. Good, authentic sites like NIT take time to show a monetary return, especially when pure greed isn’t the ultimate driving force.
Hobbs likes to tout his clients’ hits as something “out-of-the-box.” Frankly, I’m not sure he knows what that term means. He has a history of misprepresenting his own traffic numbers, something he at least admitted to after being called out for it. Taking a look at the City Paper’s blog stats shows nothing substantial for a site getting linked by local bloggers all over due to their debut. Those hits are sure to slack off in a big way. In fact, in addition to the inaccuracy of my job history, Bills Hobbs has overestimated the hit count of the City Paper blogs on the 6th of this month by 50%. He says, “The City Paper’s Nashville City Blogs have, combined, achieved 30 percent of the page-views of NashvilleIsTalking.com today, although the Nashville City Blogs are just a week old, and NiT is more than a year old.” This, according to publicly available stats, is a lie. Here’s the math comparing hits on 7/6:
Might I remind everyone that in Hobbs’ inflated percentage report he is comparing ALL of the City Paper blog hits to ONE of WKRN’s blogs hits? So, not only is the comparison completely unfair, it is completely wrong. Hobbs has yet again inaccurately reported inflated hit numbers for web sites under his supervision. This will not come as a surprise to many who have been keeping up.
The City Paper hired a spinster and a fact-fudger to consult for them on their blogs. II’ll admit, Hobbs has expertise on social networking and blogging, but he can’t stop lying long enough to let the good skills shine through. He truly has an uncanny ability to obfuscate any and all discussions so that, through paragraph after paragraph of semantics, he leaves people throwing their hands up in disgust. It’s a skill few have. He’s a master at it.
For Hobbs to pooh-pooh the genuine efforts of good men and women in order to boost his professional profile is shameful. And, sadly, par for the course.
CLARIFICATION: When I refer to hits, I am talking about unique visits.
UPDATE: These stats show the influence of the CPBlogs this early in the game as being negligible compared to NIT, despite what others would have you believe, especially considering that NIT had two separate URLs.
Nashvilleistalking.com is ranked 6,876
News2wkrn.com/nit is ranked 9,746
Nashville Ballerz is ranked 624,806
The Style Arbiter is ranked 855,142
Political Animals is ranked 425,060
As you can see, suggesting that the CP Blogs have anywhere close to the amount of visitors or influence is ludicrous. I’m not saying they won’t one day, but it hasn’t even been a week since their launch. You simply cannot compete with an established site like NIT in that amount of time, no matter how hard you try to spin it.
AND ANOTHER THING: As Katherine Coble so succinctly notes, “It’s really easy to armchair quarterback all of this, though. Heaton and Sechrist didn’t really have any models to analyse before their architecture.” This point cannot be emphasized enough. While criticizing the efforts of WKRN, Hobbs is using their bravery and pioneering to his advantage. We were first, the rest are using us as a model, no doubt, whether it be “do this” or “don’t do this.” There is something to be said, hell, praised, for having the balls to put it on the line. What the CPBlogs are doing is really safe. Good for them. But this overt swipe at WKRN’s bold experiment without any recognition of their trailblazing in new media really burns me up. Especially considering the source.
26 comments ↓
[…] Brittney volleys with Hobbs about NiT To people like Bill Hobbs, and perhaps the City Paper since they hired him, altruism and community building are “failures.” Because NIT didn’t pay for itself, it was a waste. I couldn’t disagree more. This is a myopic view, and one I think is being taken on by upper-management at WKRN, unfortunately. Good, authentic sites like NIT take time to show a monetary return, especially when pure greed isn’t the ultimate driving force. […]
I think this blog is poised to get all kick-ass.
.
City Paper has a blog!??!!? Huh…I didn’t know that.
Your lie is easy to spot. I compared page views. You compared “hits.”
Those are very different things.
“Hits” are meaningless.
As for page views, when I wrote the post at MMS, the math worked out to 29 percent. Page views at both blogs later in the day may have changed the math, but for the 6th entirely now, it is 1,430 to 7,058, or 20 percent.
Hits are meaningless? Who says? Most bloggers and blog watchers count unique hits, not page views. That is what I thought you were counting.
But, since it is now 20% not 30% like you reported, you should make a correction. 20% is nothing to laud, especially since the hits mostly came from people linking because of the debut, not the content itself.
You didn’t say unique hits. You said “hits.”
Unique visitors is one key number. The other is page views.
The 30 percent figure was accurate when I wrote the post at 1:32 p.m. on July 6th. Shortly after that, I linked from BillHobbs.com to the post at MMS. BillHobbs.com is one of a number of Nashville blogs tracked by the aggregator on the homepage at NashvilleCityPaper.com.
NiT saw a surge in traffic later that day, changing the percentages.
I’ll be happy to update my blog post with the new math.
As for the NCP blogs’ traffic being because of its debut, the blogs actually debuted a week prior.
SiteMeter was installed on 7/5.
AsStats, which provides more interesting data, shows that through noon today, the total page views at NashvilleCityBlogs.com, including the home page and the four niche blogs, stands at 16,341 so far this month. Two of the niche blogs - Political Animals and the sports blog Nashville Ballers, are already over 1,000 unique visitors for the month.
The City Paper hired a spinster
I thought Hobbs was married.
[…] speaks and you just need to read it in it’s […]
Coble beat me to it.
Well, actually, I was going to point out that marital status shouldn’t be an issue, but I think the thought is the same. For someone who’s so wrong about so much, that Kat sure gets everything right. :-)
Britney–why so worked up over something you quit? And, you’ve yet to let us know what your previous jobs were. Just some advice, you can make friendly corrections without spewing hate in such an odorous way.
DG, don’t waste your time. We all know that Brittney had no actual education, and only got the job at WKRN because she fell asleep in the dumpster and the General Manager took pity on her. Really, her life is like a Dolly Parton single, and is now at the part where it just repeats itself over and over, desperate and close to the exit groove. I suspect that she soon will be getting a third piercing and asking to pose for Suicide Girls, and with that sort of record of sexuality and unorthodox media, how would she ever expect to get a job asking questions at the White House press briefings? It’s best that you and I move on, DG, to the sort of place where we can talk freely without worrying about this cunt.
What a Clintonesque performance, Bill.
Well done.
Ron’s spot already has an audience? What about stylesfree, man? Abandoned me already?
“Just some advice, you can make friendly corrections without spewing hate in such an odorous way.”
I rarely take unsolicited advice, and now is no exception. Friendly corrections are made for friendly people. Bill Hobbs has never been a friend to me or NIT.
“Britney [sic] –why so worked up over something you quit?”
I get upset when, as I said, “the genuine efforts of good men and women [are pooh-poohed] in order to boost [a] professional profile.
“And, you’ve yet to let us know what your previous jobs were.”
Read Bill’s comment thread for the answer.
I’ll be in a much better position to comment on such things in about a year, but for now, I will just agree with JP.
Though I will say, as a marketing executive who buys online advertising, I might suggest to anyone who wants to measure a blog’s success (if the goal is to make money) that they should ask people who buy the advertising what’s important. So far, the only media site I’ve been impressed with in that regard is the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Wonder if it was Hobbs or Clint Brewer that called you the “c” word? Classy, very classy.
I would hope to high heaven that it wasn’t Mr. Brewer who used that word, and would actually be quite alarmed. Because if so, I will have a very interesting conversation with him the next time I see him.
[…] of reaction that includes former GM Mike Sechrist, NashvilleIsTalking’s former blogger Brittney Gilbert, architect Terry Heaton and much of the Nashville blogosphere. NashvilleisTalking itself does a […]
[…] of new reaction that includes former GM Mike Sechrist, NashvilleIsTalking’s former blogger Brittney Gilbert, architect Terry Heaton and some of the Nashville blogosphere. NashvilleisTalking itself does a […]
[…] of new reaction that includes former GM Mike Sechrist, NashvilleIsTalking’s former blogger Brittney Gilbert, architect Terry Heaton and some of the Nashville blogosphere. NashvilleisTalking itself does a […]
when i moved away from nashville, The City Paper was bird cage liner that people picked up in the lobby of their favorite restaurant. has that changed?
i follow nashville through the internet, from afar, and so i know who bill hobbs is by reputation, although i have only looked at his website a couple of times. i do remember two things about him: i remember him getting into a fight worthy of a 13-year-old girl with South Knox Bubba about who had the higher internet traffic, and i remember him throwing some fit about how his site was becoming an “online magazine” instead of a “blog.”
i would not be able to tell you if bill hobbs is an adult or not.
So is NiT dead? No posts today. I sometimes wonder whether TN will ever have a blogging community hub like NiT again. Miss ya Brit.
The City Paper blog page is a joke.
Hot damn. Cussing and no-punched-pulled commentary.
Skip the c-worders, Brit. And Bill Hobbs? Like, who the bleep cares about that self-stroker? I’ve been reading his crap and I must say it’s even less interesting than even 7th Meat or DG. And I suspect both of them are Bill Hobbs.
It’s too bad about NiT, Brit. You were an interesting read there. And that’s saying something considering that I am nowhere near Nashville. I hope you don’t mind if I keep on reading your words. I might even comment here and there.
ciao!
and meow. :-)
Re. measuring the success of NiT or any other MSM blog, it seems to me like there are lots of intangibles such as goodwill, PR and promotion, brand building, reader/viewer buzz, customer loyalty, etc. that you can’t measure in ad revenues, page views, click-thrus, etc. etc.
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