Digital Drivers - Deidre Depke

May 22, 2008

Deidre Depke
Editor
Newsweek.com

Deidre Depke has been Editor of Newsweek's website, www.newsweek.com, since March 2005. As such, she manages the day-to-day editorial operations of the site and its staff of editors and producers, coordinates editorial between Newsweek's editorial staff and the staff at NBC News, and also works closely with Newsweek.com's sales and marketing teams to develop advertising and marketing strategies. She joined Newsweek.com in 2000 as Senior Editor and helped relaunch the website as part of the alliance between Newsweek, The Washington Post Company, NBC and MSNBC. From February 1997 to December 1999, Deidre was Newsweek's Foreign Editor. Prior to Newsweek, she had been Senior Editor for News at BusinessWeek. Here, Depke discusses the use of "sonars," editorial commitment to the web, and plans for new mobile, video and interactive products.

Q. What area of your website generates the most traffic?

A. Our cover story usually generates the most traffic in any given week, though a strong original news story or mid-week coverage of a major news event can beat that. Political polls are huge stories for us. We release them on Saturday, so they become strong weekend news. Other than news, stories that do well for Newsweek.com are very similar to the stories that do well on Newsweek's cover: health and medicine, religion, and some of our franchises, particularly "Best High Schools." When an oddball story performs, it's usually because the blogosphere has taken an interest.

Q. In spring '05, Newsweek.com accelerated its web-only content on a daily basis with your "Every Day, Every Week" initiative, partly to bolster site traffic in the latter part of the week. How much of your web content is now exclusive to the site, and how has that changed since April '05?

A. We actually didn't increase the amount of original content Newsweek was generating for the web when we launched "Every Day, Every Week"—we were hoping to promote the idea that the stories were there. We developed the idea in collaboration with Newsweek's worldwide Publisher, Greg Osberg. His research showed that too many of our subscribers and other readers still thought Newsweek.com was comprised of magazine content alone. We really began building our original web content back in 2000, when Newsweek's Editor-in-Chief Rick Smith and Editor Mark Whitaker made the commitment to developing the medium editorially. At this point, roughly 60% of Newsweek.com's content is original to the web. What's really gratifying is that almost all of the web content is being generated by Newsweek writers. We recently moved off the "Every Day, Every Week" design in favor of an approach that emphasizes specific features, particularly our coverage of the news using audio and video technologies.

Q. Each week you send subscribers one or more email newsletters featuring stories from the coming issue of Newsweek, and web-only stories, for example, on the air terror plot uncovered in Britain—plus links to video, audio and photo galleries, among other things. Can you track how much of your web traffic is attributable to those emails?

A. We track click-through on our newsletters carefully. The numbers aren't gigantic—less than 5% of our total page views. But traffic isn't the primary goal with the newsletters. Our largest one is available only to Newsweek subscribers. We want to use these products to develop a strong interactive relationship with readers who are extremely brand loyal to Newsweek.

Q. Each Newsweek print issue is peppered with blurbs and an icon that calls attention to online video and audio features, photos, etc. at www.xtra.newsweek.com, where readers can also download daily podcasts of interviews with Newsweek editors and writers on Washington Post Radio. In addition, the magazine always has a "This Week Online" column, including a weekly excerpt from a web interview. Initially, was there some resistance from the magazine side?

A. We call the magazine icons "sonars." They're the latest evolution of efforts to alert print readers to the content available online. Magazine editors initially viewed them as sort of curiosities. They didn't resist, but they weren't involved much in generating the content. That's quite different now: The senior editors at Newsweek are all very engaged in helping us develop build-out—photo galleries, online talks with authors or with the subjects of stories, video and audio clips, book excerpts, quizzes and polls. That change is really gratifying in the sense that the magazine staff is fully engaged with the web product. At Mark Whitaker's suggestion, we now direct readers to a specific page where they can find links to all print magazine content. That's relatively new, and I think it will be a helpful tool going forward as we try to assess what build-out appeals to readers and what works as a way of promoting it.

Q. How popular are your weekly "Readers' Choice," whose online votes determine which of five celebrity photos gets into the next edition?

A. The Readers' Choice Newsmaker feature regularly draws between 10,000 and 15,000 votes in a 24-hour period. Here too, it's more of an effort to interact with print readers and draw them online.

Q. Given your presence as an anchor of the MSNBC.com site, how closely must you coordinate your content and staffs with theirs, especially when there may be a big breaking news story.

A. We work very closely with both MSNBC and the editors at the MSNBC homepage, including attending daily story meetings via teleconference. It's rare that MSNBC and Newsweek.com will duplicate coverage—our missions are quite distinct. MSNBC primarily aims to propagate news as quickly as possible (though its magazine-style, ongoing coverage of Katrina is an outstanding example of how it breaks style). While we love to break news, our main mission is to provide analytical coverage and opinion. We are truly an online extension of the magazine, not a Newsweek-branded news portal. Our daily coordination is meant to ensure that we are surfacing complementary content in a prominent and visually appealing way. On a broader level, we collaborate extensively on technology development, marketing strategies, design enhancements. It's really quite a robust relationship.

Q. In 2004, Newsweek.com's traffic rose 30% and ad revenues doubled. How about 2005 and the first half of this year?

A. In 2005, our page views increased by 50% over 2004 and our ad revenues doubled. The current year is also strong, with similar growth rates. We're seeing a real surge in our unique-user numbers, which is great, since more people are clearly discovering Newsweek.com. We had several months recently when we had more than 10 million unique users. That's serious traffic.

Q. Any plans to further increase the use of video and audio?

A. We're planning to roll out several major products after Labor Day, including a whole new video feature that's tremendously exciting, plus new interactive options for readers. We want to give readers a much stronger voice on our site. And we know video has got to be a very strong part of our future—for one thing, it's where advertisers want to go. We're already running some video advertising: Mark Walters, the site's Associate Publisher, has made real inroads in this area, landing big campaigns from both Nationwide Insurance and Microsoft. From an editorial perspective, we see video as a natural evolution for Newsweek since strength in images is a core foundation of newsmagazines. Online, we need to be able to use the technology to tell stories in a way that takes advantage of the medium. This year, we launched "Newsweek NewsMinutes," which marries audio and still images as a way of getting Newsweek-style news coverage online very quickly. Our correspondents phone in analytical reports, which we marry with photos. Now, we need to get to the next level and then populate it throughout the site in a very aggressive way.

Q. Do you also oversee Newsweek.com's web iterations on mobile and other digital platforms?

A. I do oversee other platforms, and we've also got an ambitious mobile strategy rolling out this fall—our first product will be related to the midterm elections. We're collaborating on these efforts with our colleagues at WashingtonPost.com, Slate.com and Budget Travel. You'll see a host of new products in this area from all of us.

Q. What's next? What would you like to do with Newsweek.com that you are not already doing?

A. I want to get these new products out the door and see how they do. Next, we really want to work with Newsweek's staff in the field to get them comfortable telling stories using video. I think our other big challenge is to give readers more of a voice on the site, make them connect with Newsweek.com much more directly. I'm not so much interested in "community journalism"—I think journalism is our job. But I want them to have forums to comment on what we're doing. And I want to do a better job of giving the Newsweek print subscriber something special.