I note from a piece on the latest ABC figures by Tim Luckhurst in today's Independent on Sunday the following remark: "Online readers of The Independent and Independent on Sunday rocketed in 2007."
This may be true. Almost all news websites are reporting increasing traffic. But there are rockets and rockets. Independent News & Media has been noticeably slow to engage with the digital world, so its rocket has a long way to go before it rises to the levels achieved by rivals.
The Independent website rocket took off late because its owners adopted a reactionary attitude towards the digital revolution, trying to ignore its onward march. They insisted on maintaining a pay wall for too long. We don't see why people should get out material for free, they said. No-one listens to podcasts, they said. Newsprint newspapers are the ultimate browser, they said. Result? No investment in The Independent website.
Naturally enough, therefore, few people have bothered to access the site. The lack of confidence in new media hampered development of the site while rivals were enthusiastically pioneering this new form of news transmission. It meant the Independent site has long been a clunky, reader-unfriendly place. Its search engine is poor. Its blogs are laughable. It carries almost no visual material.
INM has obviously had a change of heart, announcing last month that its site is to be relaunched with improved search, navigation and more video. More video? Where was it before?
Anyway, while we wait for the new-look website - delayed, evidently, due to technical difficulties - I am amazed by Luckhurst's claim about the rocketing audience figures. On what basis does Luckhurst make his confident assertion? Unlike The Times, the Telegraph and The Guardian, the Independent does not make public the results of its official monthly web traffic audit conducted by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic.
So has Luckhurst seen figures hidden from the rest of us? Or is he simply accepting the word of the editor for whom he files his copy? I suspect his rocket is, in fact, a rather damp squib in comparison with those of other papers. But, of course, we cannot know until the Indy lets us see its ABCe results. Why should anyone hide a success story?
