The Wardman Wire

At the weekend the Independent on Sunday published a long article examining the Audit Bureau of Circulation (Electronic) - ABCe - readership figures for national newspaper websites. Joy Lo Dico argued that newspaper websites get a good proportion of their traffic by running material considerably downmarket from that run in the papers.

This is an audit of “celebrity” stories in that day’s Independent on Sunday.

Celebrities in the Independent on Sunday 29/6/2008

First let’s skirt the page 1, 8, 9, and Editorial “Top Tories have shares in Tesco, BP and Shell shock horror!” (i.e, just like the rest of the country) hatchet job - perhaps they could examine the Independent’s parent company next.

The non-celebrity entirely serious news from the rest of the paper included:

• Page 2. Wendy Alexander. Car Tax. Fair enough.
• Page 3. Glastonbury. Including main photo of girl blowing bubbles. Others of girl screaming in crowd, and another girl screaming in crowd.
• Page 4 and 5. Wimbledon off-court Diary - “News” in the paper. Including unnecessary model-girl-tennis-player photos of Anna Kournikova (knocked out in the 2nd Round) and Maria Sharapova (knocked out June 26th).
• Page 6 and 7. News. Fair enough.
• Page 8 and 9. People of Zimbabwe become political football in hatchet job on Tories. Shame.
• Page 10. Ad.
• Page 11. “Treasure Island” prequel.
• Page 12. “News” in the paper, “Fashion” on the website. Double-page spread about the “hairlength index of economic confidence” (cue photos of seductive Veronica Lake in short skirt, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Joanna Lumley, Jenny Howarth, Jennifer Aniston and Agyness Deyn). “Fellow celeb Pixie Geldof” gets a mention too. Cue - also - all the famous celebrity names in the search engines. To give them their due on this one, the Kinky Boots stayed in the shoe cupboard.
• Page 14. News. Fair Enough.
• Page 15. “News”. Uma Thurman and Arpad Basson. Photo of happy, sexy, couple. Mentions to Uma Thurman and Arpad Basson (obviously), and lots of juicy exes and films for Google fodder: Pulp Fiction, Gary Oldman, Elle Macpherson, Farrah Fawcett, Walk-on parts for Gianni Versace, Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, Elton John, Timothy Leary, Dali Lama, Zyklon-B, IG Farben. Two celeb pictures in the paper (nice low cut dress plus a tender - aaaahhh! - kiss), 5 celeb pics on the website.
• Page 16-17. News. 60 years of the NHS. Fair enough.
• Page 18. Ad.
• Page 19. News. Cancer Trial. Fair enough.
• Page 20. Ad.
• Page 21. Janet Street-Porter. Gokspeak, and probably catflaps. Lots of celeb name-checks, but I can’t face the JSP test today.
• Page 22. A full page about PITA’s “I’d rather go naked” campaign. Cue pics of Sophie Ellis-Bextor (Holding lunch for my dog. Yum.), Dennis Rodman, Alicia Silverstone and Eva Mendes (Score one for the Sindie - they don’t censor buttocks. How would we discuss Robert Mugabe if we banned the word “arse“.) And Jessica Simpson in a “Real Girls Eat Meat” T-Shirt. Cue also - in the text of the article - Carrie Underwood, Tony Romo, Jonathon Rhys Meyers, Paul McCartney. A pretty good celeb keyword percentage for 453 words.

• Page 23. News. David Davis. Fair enough.
• Page 24-25. Ads.

I’ll stop there and ignore p40-41 (Sooty and Nelson Mandela), p43 (Celeb Breakups) and p47 (UFO alert).