And we thought writing 4.5 articles a day was a lot
Last week Streem published a list of the 25 most prolific metro journalists in Australia, which generated a huge response, including coverage on ABC Breakfast, The Australian, Guardian Australia, Mumbrella and Crikey.
Lots of people were interested in our methodology, and there were many questions about which brands we’d chosen for the analysis and why.
The answer was that we analysed the top eight news websites in Australia (as measured by Nielsen), plus any other capital-city news publication.
Several people wondered aloud how our list - which was topped by The Daily Mail’s Caleb Taylor with 1083 stories or 4.5 a day - would compare to writers at other publications, be that specialist websites, trade press, blogs or regional and community news.
- Lorraine Elliott, aka food blogger Not Quite Nigella, is one of Australia’s most prolific web publishers.
So this week we decided to throw open the doors to all comers and publish a list taken from across the thousands of Australian content websites that Streem monitors.
The results were fairly mind-boggling to say the least.
Number one on the list was TV Tonight blogger David Knox who put out an astonishing 5856 pieces in one year under his name. That would be 24.4 a day, or one every 19 minutes, if David was working a 9-to-5 job, five days a week with holidays. Something tells us he wasn’t, however, and that this was a labour of love. (It seems like he had his fair share of help, too, from TV station PR departments.)
We expected to see a few regional or rural journalists’ names crop up, but they were seemingly outgunned by the digital natives.
Like the first list, business remained a hotly contested category with sites such as Business Insider, Motley Fool and iTWire present. The Australian Financial Review’s Sarah Thompson was also welcomed back to the list, after being ruled ineligible last week due to the snippet-style format of her Street Talk column.
Three digital staff working for radio stations featured, with two from MyGC (linked to the Gold Coast’s Hot Tomato FM) and one from the Sydney-based KIIS FM.
Foodie Lorraine Elliott, aka Not Quite Nigella, was one of several bloggers sitting alongside writers from publications such as Mumbrella, New Idea and gaming site Kotaku.
Once again, we reiterate our original message - that quantity is no substitute for quality and that all lists of journalistic output should be taken with a healthy grain of salt.
Top 20 most prolific web authors in Australia
(Rank, name, publication, genre, story count)
- David Knox, TV Tonight, Entertainment, 5856
- James Mickleboro, The Motley Fool, Business, 2402
- Shanee Dobeson, MyGC, Local, 2186
- Lorraine Elliott, Not Quite Nigella, Food, 2156
- Jaydan Duck, MyGC, Local, 1820
- Phil Sandberg, Content + Technology, Media/Tech, 1754
- Sam Varghese, iTWire, Tech, 1733
- David Scutt, Business Insider, Business, 1702
- Daniel Tyson, Ausdroid, Tech, 1654
- Sarah Thompson, AFR, Business, 1558
- Paul Cashmere, Noise 11, Music, 1529
- Abigail Dawson, Mumbrella, Media, 1440
- James Wong, Car Advice, Motoring, 1360
- Nikki Black, New Idea, Lifestyle, 1351
- Alex Walker, Kotaku, Gaming, 1314
- Roma Christian, Channel News, Consumer, 1294
- Peter Dinham, iTWire, Tech, 1278
- Amy Flower, Stack, Entertainment (JB Hi-Fi publication), 1277
- Tristan Harrison, The Motley Fool, Business, 1271
- Olivia Esveld, KIIS 1065, Entertainment, 1258
About Streem
Streem delivers comprehensive and realtime Print, Online, TV, Radio and Social media monitoring and insights to Australia’s leading corporate and government media teams. Every day we help organisations to monitor, analyse and respond to media as-it-happens. Find out more.
Methodology: Dates analysed: March 1, 2018-Feb 28, 2019. Joint bylines were not counted. Because of the complex array of syndication arrangements across the thousands of websites monitored, we based entries only on the maximum number of bylines an author had accrued at one publication.