The key to the dominance recorded in the online news sector by CNN.com? Pilates.
Pilates? Not the workout, but the online strategy CNN.com managing editor Meredith Artley discussed with Simon Owens for Nieman Journalism Lab. Artley said:
What that means, as someone who has friends who do Pilates but has never done it herself, is that it’s about strengthening your core
Advertisement(breaking news) and stretching into new areas. But that’s not enough; you can’t do just that alone. You have to go beyond that. To that end, you have to stretch into new areas and try new things and innovate and play and experiment.
Among initiatives spearheaded by Artley, as reported by NJL: the creation of an enterprise team to focus on longer-form content; the expansion of the site’s Opinion section, including the additions of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and LZ Granderson of ESPN; and content from the cable news network’s citizen journalism effort, iReport.
She also describes the lighter fare included within CNN’s blogs, citing as an example a post on food blog Eatocracy saluting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which ended up accumulating 480 comments and 875 Facebook Likes, according to NJL.