As much as a third of article-page traffic generated on the Webby award-winning U.K. online newspaper site, Guardian Unlimited, is from articles that are more than a month old. Speaking at the Ifra/WAN/FIPP “Beyond the Printed Word” conference in Madrid, the digital director of the Guardian Newspapers Ltd Group, Simon Waldman,
again emphasized that one of the key competitive advantages that the
Web as a content medium has to offer is its “permanence.” An article is
published online and then it is there to stay, to be accessed,
recycled, re-used over and over again ideally through to infinity.
Websites essentially extend the life of newspaper content. Unlike a
newspaper, online articles don’t end up in the dustbin or in some dusty
archive, but are being constantly revisited and used — and what could
be more powerful than that? Waldman says that some newspapers that are
skeptics of the Internet have failed to grasp this key advantage of
“permanence” that the Web brings as a medium to a publishing operation.
CORRECTION: This item was changed to indicate that one-third of
article-page traffic (excluding visits to the homepage and
section-front pages) at Guardian Unlimited is from articles more than
one month old.
