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The editor of Stomp - the community website of Singapore's Straits Times newspaper - told an industry conference today (9 November 2006) that the site generates five million page impressions a month by going 'back to the basics' of story telling.

Speaking at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna, Jennifer Lewis said the success of the community-based website meant it now feeds stories back to the printed paper.

"We have gone hyper-local because that is where the stories are, we have offered a platform for them to be shared with us," said Ms Lewis.

"Newspapers have forgotten about stories and we have gone back to basics."

Stomp launched in June and, according to Ms Lewis, is now generating 170,000 page views every day - three quarters of which come from its 'Talk Back' community section.

Talk Back allows readers to start, and contribute to, conversation threads via email, SMS and MMS by entering the short code 75557 into mobile phones. The site makes money by carrying video adverts and carrying sponsored sections alongside these pages.

The 75557 service is similar to the recently launched 63000 service offered by the UK's Sun newspaper in that it allows readers to contribute news ideas.

However, Stomp publishes every post that's submitted. The posts are then moderated retrospectively.

"The whole idea of Stomp is not that it's a standalone website. It's owned by the Straits Times and we try to enhance the newspaper," said Ms Lewis.

She said the Straits Times now had an editorial policy of running at least one Stomp story every day and the Sunday broadsheet edition dedicates a whole page to the site's weekly highlights.

"People know they are being heard and they are excited by that, even if they don't read the paper," added Ms Lewis.

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Written by
Oliver Luft

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