Aug
05
2009

Kelowna Fires Spur Visits to Local News Websites

Posted by under Consumer Behavior

There is much debate about the need for and business model for local news providers. In looking at Hitwise Canada data on where Canadians have been turning for news of the forest fires in Kelowna BC, I noticed that Castanet.net, a local news website has served as a hub for BC residents looking for details of the fires and evacuations.
The top search term used to find information on the blazes is “kelowna fires”. The first week the fires burned (week to July 25, 2009) searches for “kelowna fires” accounted for just under 1 in every 400 Canadian internet searches sending vistis to News and Media websites.
Canadians as a whole turned to Google News Canada, Castanet.net, BC Local News, CBC News and other local news websites for up to date information. The increase in visits to Castanet.net pushed it to rank #17 among News and Media websites in the week ending July 25, 2009, up from 30th the previous week.
Looking more closely at Hitwise Demographics data, it appears that local BC residents relied on Castanet far more heavily than did Canadians from other provinces. Hitwise demographic data reveals that among BC residents, the top visited News and Media websites in the 12 weeks ending July 25, 2009 were Weather Network, Castanet, Yahoo! News Canada, Google News Canada and CBC News. While Canadians as a whole turned to Google News first and then to local news, BC residents went straight to local sources, in paricular Castanet.net. This indicates that Canadians seeking general information on the fires turned to Google News while locals who needed detailed information on evacuations and the fire’s progres turned to the local news website for details.
Some may lament the death of local news, but at least the residents of Kelowna BC seem to know where to turn for local coverage.

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CATS: Consumer Behavior

  1. Dear Heather,
    Noted an interesting trend that local Kelowna Twitter users were posting minute by minute news, and moderating information. #kelownafire became my news source – and listening to the fire scanner online through http://www.scanbc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
    I twitted out to #kelowna fire for comments, stories, photos etc. on how online social media has affected news gathering and access – the response was quite amazing.
    The blog post created by that ‘exercise’ is here
    http://www.wrightresult.com/blog/?p=150

  2. I live in Kelowna and agree that the fires have driven a huge increase in the need for fast news and information.
    However the news sites are still WAY behind twitter which has provided immediate/real time feedback in terms of fire updates and questions.
    I just followed search/tags for #kelownafires and #kelowna and got the latest from people on the ground (plus amazing video/pics)
    The news sites will need to adapt ….reporters are not the fastest nor the only source:)
    M

  3. Mark and Mark, Excellent comments – thanks. I looked at Twitter in creating this post. We’ve not seen an increase in visits to Twitter.com since the fires and Twitter.com is not getting much web traffic from searches for the fires. However, active Twitter users are certainly using Twitter for timely information on the fires.
    Twitter is a hugely important site in Canada, ranking 46th in the week to August 1, 2009 among All Categories of websites and 8th among Social Networks and Forums. (Note that we are only tracking Internet visits).
    I’ll try to do a post with some more Twitter data shortly.
    Again, thanks for the comments. Keep them coming!
    Heather

  4. Hi Heather,
    I think there’s a case to be made that local news is very much the future of online news. We see the increase in traffic driven by search every time there’s a breaking news story in Durham Region, east of Toronto.
    Writing a search-friendly headline goes a long way toward attracting readers using keywords to find coverage, and credible detailed coverage on the big local stories will keep readers coming back for the daily local news.
    Our emphasis on local even includes geo-coding every story — and the creation of a unique ‘NewsView’ page that shows the latest local coverage on a full screen user-customizable Google map.
    There’s no better way for readers to see what’s happening in their neighbourhood than to see stories pinpointed on a map.
    You can see our hyper-local approach at http://www.newsdurhamregion.com, and the ‘NewsView’ at http://www.newsdurhamregion.com/largemap.
    Regards, Ian C.

  5. I have already noticed a large shift in the way local news providers offer their news online. I think it will only get even more robust as time goes on.

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