To: Jeff Perlman 
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	Actually, it's not useless, Jeff.  It demonstrates that a lot of
people read The American Reporter and that they don't read the LA Times!
That's not to say we have more than a fraction of your print readership,
but I hear very little about your site now that the launch is over.  By
contrast, the New York Times site is prominent in discussions everywhere, 
as is Reuters.
	There are important differences between the LA Times and The Am-
erican Reporter that a popularity poll is quick to recognize.
	You are only on one Web site, remember; we are on our own and more
than 100 (sson to be 230, with add-ons being ISPs) in 16 states and
Canada.  Yours is a local paper with national news; ours is a national
paper with international news.  We are a small, almost personal newspaper
that carries no advertising and comes in the email each day to subscribers
who request and pay $100 a year ($5 Web-only) for it; yours is free and
full of ads, and one has to come to the site and read it with the right
browser (my lynx version can't view it). Yours cost hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of dollars to develop; ours cost nothing.  You have a
dozen or more full-time employees, yet no dedicated correspondents, I
would bet; we have 40 contributing AR correspondents and columnists in the
states and abroad, and most of their work is exclusive to us.  You don't
break stories the Times itself has broken, but republish them; we break
original news stories that no one has published.  There are important and
appealing differences that the popularity poll really does recognize.  I
think the Times is a great newspaper, but I doubt that it has much appeal
online because it so much like the off-line product.  Ours is a Net 
original, a hybrid of the old and the Net.

Best,

Joe Shea
Editor-in-Chief
The American Reporter
joeshea@netcom.com
http://www.newshare.com/Reporter/today.html


On Wed, 28 Aug 1996, Jeff Perlman wrote:

> Joe, the plain simple truth is that the data are worthless. Get over it. 
> 
> --Jeff
> 
> At 02:52 PM 8/28/96 -0700, Joe Shea wrote:
> >
> >	As Eric said in his last post on this topic, Jeff Tindall's 
> >assertion about our readership has no basis in anything he said.  In 
> >fact, Jeff made it up out of whole cloth.  
> >
> >	We first publisshed the poll, and as is the custom in rpint, we
> >distinguish our own paper's name in any list of others.  WIRED's list
> >stopped at The American Reporter at no. 10; in response to Jeff Perlman's
> >comment, they did not make the WIRED Top 10, because at the time the poll
> >was taken last fall, the Prodigy disaster overtook the LA Times site; they
> >have now regrouped are doing a little better. 
> >
> >	Eric's gobbledygook aside, there were 25,000 responses to the poll
> >published in WIRED, and it was done by the University of Texas Mass
> >Communications Dept.; Eric's had "well over 2,500" responses and was done
> >by him.  I think a university's methods are probably pretty sound.  That
> >is not to say Eric doesn't know what he is talking about; only that I have
> >no idea what he was talking about. Polling methodology is not an area of 
> >interest for me.  Shocking, huh?
> >
> >
> >Best,
> >
> >Joe Shea
> >Editor-in-Chief
> >The American Reporter
> >joeshea@netcom.com
> >http://www.newshare.com/Reporter/today.html
> >
> >
> >On Wed, 28 Aug 1996, Jeff Tindall wrote:
> >
> >> >>We're really hearing a promotional pitch...<<
> >> >>Here is the Top 10 and beyond poll that was published in WIRED magazine
> in March...<
> >>    9. Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
> >>    10. THE AMERICAN REPORTER
> >>    11. Clarinet (newsgroup based)...
> >> >>Best,
> >> Joe Shea
> >> Editor-in-Chief
> >> The American Reporter<<
> >> 
> >> Hmmm, I wonder if Wired Magazine used them ALL CAPS on the #10 group, or
> >> if a little "editorial licence" was practiced in reposting this. In
> >> fact, Eric's top ten list says the AR got "less than 0.3% of the total
> >> vote."
> >> 
> >> Speaking of a "promotional pitch"... I wonder who's pitching and who's
> >> catching?  :-)
> >> 
> >> Jeff
> >> +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >> This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html
> >> 
> >+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html
> >
> >
> 
> 
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To: "John N. Walston" , online-news@planetarynews.com