It’s always interesting to be able to read specific examples of how a big media operation is mining the Web for operational and editorial direction.

Joseph Gordon joined U-T San Diego as director of research in 2011. He tells 1to1media.com senior writer Cynthia Clark that when he arrived, the newspaper was failing to take advantage of the raw Anametrix data. He was worked hard to help everyone dig deeper and cites this specific instance of how the metrics have helped:

Gordon uses the example of one particular reporter on the watchdog team who had one of the lowest numbers when U-T San Diego started leveraging analytics. By making changes, including becoming more attentive to the wording he was using for headlines, tagging them properly and leveraging social media, his pieces jumped from about 18,000 views per month to close to 100,000 monthly views.

Gordon also explains how the paper looked at the experiences of other newspapers with paywall traffic drop-off to help mitigate the phenomenon when they instituted their ownn. Read Clark’s full article here.