Today, before pdf-ing Tuesday’s paper (at 3:15 if you’re keeping track - not bad, not record-setting) and what I think is our best front page yet, we drew the winner of our online readership survey (running since late last semester) and we are happy to report the winner is John Gardner, CC ‘08. He wins the iPod Touch, but we’re grateful to everyone who filled out the survey.
All the many hundred responses were informative and helpful for both the business and editorial sides of the organization. For example, among the many questions we purposefully had asked our readers to consider the relationship between Bwog and Spec.
We were curious what readers would think of this, since Bwog and Spec are probably the two most mainstream and regularly updated sources of information on campus, and Bwog succeeds at blogging about campus life and reaching students particularly. Our missions may be different and the two organizations are definitely different, but we share a decent number of readers. Though its effects haven’t been researched, Bwog’s QuickSpec seems to help our paper (and possibly Bwog?) reach readers and stimulate dialogue about the content and presentation itself of the news we cover.
Much has been made of Spec’s inability to match Bwog in a popularity contest, but we think our format (including differently-envisioned blogs of our own) serves readers in its own way. The survey seemed to confirm this, and spoke sometimes to Bwog’s or Spec’s success as contingent on the specific editors in charge at a particular time.
In any case, as a few students have pointed out at times, you can read either one in class without a professor noticing…
Congrats again to John Gardner and thanks to everyone for helping us learn more about our readership. We will put this to good use.