As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’ve been in court for the past two weeks, so I’ve pre-loaded this sucker and hope that nothing really interesting happens between now and when it appears. Way later on Friday, when my brain is too thrashed to allow me to think about law, I’ll upload the stats for the week’s OC Register Dearthwatch. Sneak preview — the Register seems to be has continuing running, with increasing speed, from the top 6,000 towards not even being the top 7,000. If that was part of the wonderwall plan, it’s working!
In keeping with the theme of this Weekend Open Thread, wonderful and talented actress Susan Sarandon has played both an attorney *and* a cheating spouse. She has no other association with the story or OJB except for this: if I’m going to have to look at the front page of the Juice from time to time without participating in it, I’m going to make sure that at *least* I get to see a damned photo of Susan Sarandon!
Today’s reading is from Popular Science, about a prof who let students cheat (or at least “cheat”) on a test.
On test day for my Behavioral Ecology class at UCLA, I walked into the classroom bearing an impossibly difficult exam. Rather than being neatly arranged in alternate rows with pen or pencil in hand, my students sat in one tight group, with notes and books and laptops open and available. They were poised to share each other’s thoughts and to copy the best answers. As I distributed the tests, the students began to talk and write. All of this would normally be called cheating. But it was completely OK by me.
Your comments about that, or anything else you’d like within the bounds of reason and decorum, are welcome.
Things look like they’re largely starting to stabilize on the OC Register Dearthwatch, which tracks the inevitable decline of the Register’s online presence in the wake of its erecting a paywall and asks the question “which of 14 lucky contestants will capitalize on it?” Some websites have stabilized pretty much without moving, some stabilized in an oscillating pattern, and some are moving in one direction, period. The Register itself is one of the latter.
In discussing markets, there’s the concept of a “random walk,” meaning that the price of a properly valued stock is as likely to go up or down in the next day — because if it wasn’t, it would have already happened. Looking at rank performance isn’t exactly the same, but there are similarities. For example, would you bet equal money that the Register would be at about 6700 or back at about 6450 next week? If you would, I would like to bet with you that it’s more likely to reach 6700 — and that, by the end of the month, it is more likely to cross past 7000 than it is to regain the ground it has lost so far (and end up at around 6150.)
Who’s getting their readers? Well, the Juice had a good week, but we’re not one of the big winners. Those still look like the OC Weekly (though it’s tapering off), the San Bernardino Sun (which isn’t tapering off), local physical papers such as the Daily Pilot and the HB Independent, our friends at the Liberal OC and OC Political (though it’s easier to jump up spaces at their level) — but especially, though it didn’t change much this week, the Voice of OC.
As Dearthwatches go, this one is doing pretty well!
I am late in this game so…what is happening here? Why is readership down? Is it because of other online news sources? Isn’t it a good thing that OJB is 11th? And Susan Sarandon is a beauty . Remember her performance in Rocky Horror Picture Show?
You missed that the Register put up a paywall, $7 a week to read them online? It’s been the talk of the town for a month.
Those are ranks, not levels of readership, so the negative numbers are good. The LA Times, as of this week, is the web site with the 542nd most traffic in the world. The Register used to be #6000 or so, but it’s been falling regularly and precipitously over the past month, after it put up its paywall, now almost to #6600.
At the Register’s high ranking, a drop in a few ranks represents a big change in readership. Whereas OCPolitical, initially down in the #3 million range, has made tremendous increase in rank, that may represent not that many added readers. (No insult intended towards them; they had a good month.) Think of someone who’s the 3,000,000th best racquetball player in the world — they probably don’t need to improve that much to become the 2,500,000th best. The higher you go, the harder it is to climb further, in part because people are spaced further apart and it takes a bigger change in quality to pass others.
The OC Register’s readership is down, presumably, because they now have what some describe as the strongest paywall in the journalism business. You either subscribe to the printed version — or you pay by the day for access, etc. So step 1 is documenting how much they are slipping. Step 2 is asking the question “if people aren’t reading the Register online as much, where are they going for their online news (mostly about the County)? Those answers seem to be: primarily the Weekly, the Voice of OC, and various smaller county newspapers. (I’m sure that the Register has much better stats on this than I do; the virtue of mine is that — they’re free!)
OJB’s being 11th means very little; that’s just a function of what websites I chose to include (to get a sense of who’s picking up the Register’s online readership. That our rank tends to be stable is more significant. That we don’t seem to be picking up their readers isn’t so bad; it’s no insult not to be thought of as a substitute for the Register. We do something a bit different here.
Last night SNL had list of Fox News corrections. Good stuff.
Kentucky Derby losers are not turned into Ikea meatballs.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not accidentally blow up vowels in his own name.
The chupacabra does not deliver presents on Cinco de Mayo.
President Obama does not want to take away T-shirt guns.
Most women have only two breasts.
The Memphis Grizzlies are not a gay blues band.
Scientology was not founded by I Ron Man.
Bangladesh is not an 80s metal band.
Peeking at ladies’ butts is not a background check.
Actual crows do have feet.
Pot pie is legal in every state.
The California wildfires are not a soccer team.
Jason Collins was not turned gay by a Washington Wizard.
The NRA is not a branch of government.
Foreign visas do not let Russian students go on shopping sprees.
Rick Moranis was never put on death row for shrinking his children.
New York exists outside the mind of Billy Joel.
A French press is not lifting weights with your tongue out.
Lena Dunham is not a girl ventriloquist.
Number 2 pencils are not sad that they lost.
Plan B birth control is not masturbating.
Justin Bieber and Anne Frank were not an item.
President Obama did not just wake up in Mexico.
F.A.A. does not stand for “Fart A**, A**”
Croquettes are not female crocodiles.
Kanye West is not an African American vacation destination.
Syria is not Arabic for “serious.”
Rice and beans are edible. Ricin beans are not.
Casual Friday is not in the Bill of Rights.
Sam Adams was not too drunk to sign the Constitution.
The Gitmo prisoners are not working on their bodies.
Force feeding is not how Jedi’s eat.
Kevin Costner does not live in Watertown.
Smurfs are not elected.
Smurfs are not appointed.
Smurfs are cartoons.
Aretha Franklin and Patti Labelle have been in the same room together.
Anytime minutes don’t let you call the future.
4 and 3 are not basically the same thing.
Rock beats scissors.
Zach Braff is not the sound a trumpet makes.
SNL had a lot of lean years, but winter is receding.
It was unwatchable for a long time.
Either they are getting funnier, or I’m getting more easily amused.