Online News Competition A Big Deal In Big D

According to a Media Audit survey conducted in November and December 2010, the area’s most popular news Web sites belong to its prominent daily newspapers, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and its four television network affiliates. But not one was named by even a fifth of survey respondents, who were asked which sites they had visited in the last month (WFAA.com, the Web site of the ABC affiliate, led the pack at 18.4%).

The survey figures indicate a fragmented online news market, in which many outfits thrive in their chosen subjects, however narrow. Even those that are part of Dallas-Fort Worth’s “Big Six” — the major newspaper and TV sites — display penchants for local and niche content.

“We almost want to make people sick with the amount of weather we can offer online,” said Doug Boehner, WFAA.com’s operations manager.

He explained that WFAA has embraced its identity as a weather center in the wake of its 2008 split from the Dallas Morning News. That year, their parent company, Belo Corp., divided its newspaper and television holdings into separate companies.

The schism meant WFAA and the Morning News no longer shared online content. For WFAA.com, the result was a loss of in-depth reporting formerly furnished by the paper. Initially, according to Boehner, WFAA tried to replace the missing material. It hired writers to produce Web-only articles, and in at least one way, the move paid off.

“It won us a ton of awards,” Boehner said, “but it didn’t drive traffic. So we’ve gone back to focusing on our core strengths, which are breaking news and weather.”

At Star-Telegram.com, which ranked third in the Media Audit survey, the emphasis is less on a particular subject area than on a geographic area.

“We really focus on the local markets and try to have things that appeal to people in Dallas-Fort Worth,” said Craig Diebel, the newspaper’s vice president for online content. “Most Web sites attract 60% to 70% of their traffic outside their market, and our goal is to attract 60% to 70% from within our market.

“There’s an assumption that local newspapers draw local readers to their Web sites, but if you look at the research, that’s really not the case,” he added.

Diebel cited sports coverage as an example of content that often draws non-local readers. News about the Dallas Cowboys, one of the NFL’s most popular franchises, drives traffic from all over the country, he said.

Such readership helps to pad the Star-Telegram’s statistics, but does not help to accomplish the locally oriented mission outlined by Diebel. So the newspaper’s online staff works to produce sports items that appeal only to hometown visitors. With the Dallas Mavericks in the midst of an NBA playoff run, for instance, Star-Telegram.com hosts not only game stories but also fan photo galleries.

“We pass out business cards as we take photos at the games,” Diebel said. “We advertise that we’ll have those kinds of pictures. And that’s the stuff that wouldn’t interest out-of-market readers but would interest in-market readers.”

In another display of local favoritism, the site requires winners of its online contests to be Dallas-Fort Worth residents.

Even as Star-Telegram.com aims to satisfy its local audience, Diebel acknowledges that “you can’t be everything to everybody.” So the paper has launched a series of spinoff Web sites designed not to pull in broad swaths of readers but to establish métiers.

The most successful is DFW.com, devoted to entertainment, dining and nightlife. According to the Media Audit survey, 4.5% of Dallas-Fort Worth Internet users said they had visited DFW.com in the last 30 days, three times more than visited TexasTribune.org and more than two times more than visited DallasBusinessJournal.com.

Other niche sites include DFWVarsity.com, a hub of high school sports news; DFWAutoFinder.com, a new and used car marketplace; and Mom2MomDFW.com, a source of advice and information for mothers.

One of the goals shared by these Star-Tribune offshoots, Diebel said, is to guard against competitors seeking to exploit coverage gaps in mainstream newspaper Web sites.

And there are plenty of competitors, especially on the Dallas entertainment scene. DFW.com faces formidable challenges from DallasObserver.com and DMagazine.com; all three offer local A&E coverage; restaurant, bar and club reviews; and party pictures that resemble professionalized versions of collegiate Facebook albums.

To a lesser extent, PegasusNews.com also plays in the entertainment realm, but its main function, in the words of its editor, Sarah Blaskovich, is to “cover topics that other outlets don’t.”

“So, for instance, I might not send a writer to the Dallas City Council meeting,” Blaskovich explained, “but I might send a writer to a small town school board meeting.”

Pegasus, an online-only outlet, doesn’t touch national stories, unless there’s a local tie-in, the editor added. With so many media sources crowding the Web, Blaskovich and her staff try to identify items to which they can devote unusual — if not exclusive — attention. One headline from May 18 illustrates their effort perfectly: “Male Labrador retriever is missing in East Dallas.”