Curation an important focus for news sites

A couple of interesting comments from Telegraph Media Group digital leader Edward Roussel about his focus for telegraph.co.uk growth.

He says speed and volume are only part of the equation when it comes to building a robust news site. Another key factor is curating content – tagging, SEO, organising stories and adding context.

His comments came in a Guardian PDA blog post earlier this year. Here’s a taste:

“The mistake we all made early on was thinking it was all about speed and volume, and really that’s wrong. Speed does matter, but as good as that is it’s the quality of your curation of content that makes you a good news organisation,” Roussel said.

“Twelve or 18 months ago it was all about getting stories out but now it’s about how we tag, organise and curate those stories, how you combine them with info-graphics or SEO. That’s the key to the future of news on the web, and how you build the long tail.”

Telegraph.co.uk has also been working to set up jargon-busting pages, he said, particularly to add context to the terminology of the economic recession. That context, he said, is another essential element for news sites.

Roussel singled out the intersection of media and technology as a key area of growth for them and said they have recruited a new reporter to build up their coverage in this area. Tech traffic is up 10 fold from last year, albeit from a low base, he said.

“The nexus of media and technology is an important area for us as an organisation because it’s about understanding how people are communicating. It’s also important for our coverage because it’s very hot – there’s enormous demand, so we will be steadily ratcheting up this area.”

Tech, politics and business are all prioritised for growth, he said.

Telegraph.co.uk has recently taken top spot in the UK news site rankings with 27,708,274 unique users. Here’s the April 2009 round-up from the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss:

The Telegraph website surged ahead during March to record 27,708,274 unique users, making it the most popular UK newspaper website, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic.

Telegraph.co.uk added more than 1.5 million unique users from the short month of February to March this year, equivalent to an 8% month-on-month rise and 63% increase over March 2008.

Last month’s number one UK newspaper website, Sun Online, recorded a dramatic drop-off of 6 million unique users, falling 22% month on month to 21,248,552. The site had experienced a huge increase during February to become number one for the first time on the back of stories about Jade Goody and Alfie Patten.

It has now dropped down to fifth most-accessed site but still recorded year-on-year growth of 54%.

The second most popular UK newspaper website in March was guardian.co.uk, which rose 4% month on month to record its second-highest unique user figure at 26,238,539. Year on year, traffic for the guardian.co.uk network, which also includes MediaGuardian.co.uk, increased 40%.

Mail Online reached its highest unique user figure yet at 23,768,358, up 32% from March last year and 9% from February.

Times Online saw an unexpected fall from February, down 2% to 21,614,273, although unique users have grown 34% year on year.