If there’s anything happening here that you need to know about while you’re soaking up the sun (or watching Netflix in your childhood bedroom), you can count on us to be your source of Athens and OU news.
Breaks in the academic calendar present perennial questions for us here at The Post.
What types of stories do we publish online, and when? How sizable of an audience is there for our content? Are we tormenting our (mostly unpaid) student employees by asking them to populate thepostathens.com from afar?
Our standard protocol is producing at least one story per editorial staff per day, in addition to breaking news coverage. With four editorial staffs — sports, culture and local and campus news — we have a sizable wave of new content published on thepostathens.com each day, keeping readers informed while we pause our regular printing and online publishing schedules.
As one would expect, our web traffic generally dips while students are away from campus. The reason for this, I surmise, is two-fold:
- We publish less content than usual during these times.
- Our primary audience, students, tend to be more attuned to their vacation plans than campus news while they’re away.
Our online readership figures, measured in terms of overall page views, back up that notion.
- Traffic on thepostathens.com during Ohio University students’ most recent four-week winter hiatus was about a fourth of what it was during the first month students were back on campus.
- The Post’s coverage of the Union Street fire garnered more online attention than our cumulative summer 2014 online efforts. (This is equally a testament to our staffers’ comprehensive fire coverage as it is to overall readership trends.)
- Last year’s spring break traffic amounted to a bit more than half of what our website saw the following week.
We will keep you informed over the coming week with a timely mix of campus and local news, features and sports coverage while also permitting our staff a brief break from the rigors of extensive daily news work. Several of us are traveling to New Orleans for a couple days of exploring, fine food and drinks; others are road-tripping to Atlanta for a journalism conference; and many are heading home for a well-needed week of rest.
If there’s anything happening here that you need to know about while you’re soaking up the sun (or watching Netflix in your childhood bedroom), you can count on us to be your source of Athens and OU news.
As always, thanks for reading.
Jim Ryan is a senior studying journalism and political science and editor-in-chief of The Post. Contact him at jr992810@ohio.edu or on Twitter at @Jimryan015. His column will return March 13.
