Multimedia trial coverage leads to record web traffic

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Mulitmedia coverage of a rape trial by Exeter's Express and Echo caused a record surge in traffic to the paper's website, the site's editor has said.

The trial coverage, which involved 11 video reports , hourly breaking news updates and a text message service, lasted two weeks and contributed to a total of 110,718 unique users for the site last month - a significant increase from its usual monthly average of around 70,000.

"It's been extremely popular - we had the biggest amount of hits last month we have ever had on the 'thisis' site, which has been going for 10 years, and it can only really be down to this trial," Sarah Elliott, the site's web editor, told Journalism.co.uk.

The success of the project overall, she claimed, was its commitment to cross-media coverage.

"We published breaking news online every hour that was filed directly from the court, but just a few paragraphs so as not to encroach on the newspaper sales," said Elliott. (Story continues below picture)

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"Similarly where our court reporter had written something for the print edition, a few hours later we'd put the whole lot online - it was a case of the two bouncing off each other. Video is the way ahead, but you can't lose sight of that original paper version - people want to see things in different media."

The area of site dedicated to the coverage was second only to the local news channel of the site for traffic in January, Elliot added, recording 3,871 unique users over the month, 1,379 of whom visited the site when the verdict was released.

The text alert service didn't prove as popular, it was only taken up by only 20 subscribers. However, Elliot said it was a useful layer to add to the breaking news process and would be implemented again in the future.