… and we thought writing 4.5 articles a day was a lot
Following his research into the 25 most prolific metro journalists in Australia, Streem's Conal Hanna is back with an updated list, which this time includes thousands of Australian content websites.
Last week Streem published a list of the 25 most prolific metro journalists in Australia, which generated a huge response, including coverage on ABC Breakfast, The Australian, Guardian Australia, and Crikey.
Lots of people were interested in our methodology, and there were many questions about which brands we’d chosen for the analysis and why.
The answer was that we analysed the top eight news websites in Australia (as measured by Nielsen), plus any other capital-city news publication.
Some of the journalists featured on the original list
Several people wondered aloud how our list – which was topped by The Daily Mail’s Caleb Taylor with 1083 stories or 4.5 a day – would compare to writers at other publications, be that specialist websites, trade press, blogs or regional and community news.
So this week we decided to throw open the doors to all comers and publish a list taken from across the thousands of Australian content websites that Streem monitors.
The results were fairly mind-boggling to say the least.
Number one on the list was TV Tonight blogger David Knox who put out an astonishing 5856 pieces in one year under his name. That would be 24.4 a day, or one every 19 minutes, if David was working a 9-to-5 job, five days a week with holidays. Something tells us he wasn’t, however, and that this was a labour of love. (It seems like he had his fair share of help, too, from TV station PR departments.)
We expected to see a few regional or rural journalists’ names crop up, but they were seemingly outgunned by the digital natives.
Like the first list, business remained a hotly contested category with sites such as Business Insider, Motley Fool and iTWire present. The Australian Financial Review’s Sarah Thompson was also welcomed back to the list, after being ruled ineligible last week due to the snippet-style format of her Street Talk column.
Three digital staff working for radio stations featured, with two from MyGC (linked to the Gold Coast’s Hot Tomato FM) and one from the Sydney-based KIIS FM.
Foodie Lorraine Elliott, aka Not Quite Nigella, was one of several bloggers sitting alongside writers from publications such as Mumbrella, New Idea and gaming site Kotaku.
Once again, we reiterate our original message – that quantity is no substitute for quality and that all lists of journalistic output should be taken with a healthy grain of salt.
Conal Hanna has been a journalist and editor for the past 18 years. He is currently media and partnerships lead for real-time media monitoring firm Streem.
