The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot Web site is a survivor. It’s one of the oldest newspaper Web sites out there, having launched as a so-called Gopher site in the pre-World Wide Web days of 1993.

The newspaper (daily, 200,055; Sunday, 234,508) added to its Web presence in 1998 when it launched community portal HamptonRoads.com. Site design and the corresponding back-end tools have evolved continuously over the years, and the last series of major site-wide design changes were made in spring 2004 as the migration to larger ad units was completed.

Overseeing the newspaper’s Web activities is Virginian-Pilot Interactive Media, a unit separate from the daily, said Chris Kouba, the site’s content manager.

The 55-employee subsidiary works in tandem with newspaper departments on many fronts, but makes its own changes as needed, Kouba said.

With almost a dozen years of online experience, The Virginian-Pilot has worked with scores of technology vendors, Kouba said. “Some are still in business today, while others didn’t survive the Internet bubble-bursting,” he said. “We were the first ‘proof-of-concept’ publisher to test the Internet access and hosting business model with InfiNet (now part of Gannett Media Technologies International), and among the first to launch Zip2 Yellow Pages and Olive Software’s electronic editions.”  

The paper’s electronic edition, ePilot, is offered free to home-delivery customers as a subscriber-retention tool. Nearly 20 percent of print subscribers have sampled ePilot since its October 2002 launch, Kouba said, and more than 1,500 others pay to access it as an online-only subscription.

Custom foundation

Pilotonline.com relies on custom-developed technology to support the site, basing it on a foundation of Microsoft SQL Server databases, Cold Fusion middleware and Windows and Linux Web server software. The Virginian-Pilot concluded a multi-year transition to Digital Technology International front-end software in late 2003.

To keep the newsroom and online content team in touch for 24/7 breaking news, the newspaper implemented a telephone hotline that routes phone, e-mail or pager messages to multiple staffers depending on the time of day.

The interactive media department maintains its own online sales teams for general commercial advertising and for online recruitment, automotive and real estate verticals.

The paper’s sales force, meantime, markets electronic classifieds as part of a strategy to get sellers to advertise both in print and online.

“We’ve experimented with print/online ad packages for a few specific projects - both four-legged sales calls and the print staff (acting) as a ‘value-added reseller’ of certain online products,” Kouba said.

To make it easier for sellers to place ads, Pilotonline.com added self-service placement in its CareerConnection, AutoGuide and RealEstate sections.

“Credit card sales for both print and online (classifieds) continue to grow and exceed expectations, thanks partly to strong promotion in print and a large base of online users for PilotOnline.com and HamptonRoads.com,” Kouba said, adding that more than 33 percent of all local adults and 51 percent of local Web surfers visit the two sites at least monthly.

Closely monitor

That extensive online audience leads Kouba and others to closely study metrics to determine which stories and features have the most impact.

Kouba tracks the sites’ stats dynamically, enabling him to see immediately how well a certain story performs.

“A local breaking story is viewed one-and-a-half to two times more than a typical ‘re-published’ story, and top stories regularly pull exceptional traffic, at five to 15 times the typical (page) views,” he said.

Recently, an incident involving the abduction of an infant highlighted the value of local news. The newspaper was the first to report the story and was also the first to say that the child had been found safe the following morning. Online traffic was unusually strong, Kouba said, with the site drawing readers throughout the day.

“Sometimes good news outperforms the bad,” Kouba said. “A memorable example of this came only two months after 9/11. Like most news sites, our traffic soared on the day of that tragic attack. But, that record was exceeded two months later on the day that Norfolk-based Navy ships returned home after patrolling in the Middle East.”

Other times, Kouba said, the Internet expands the coverage of an event because of what readers may contribute.

Case in point: PilotOnline.com ran online exit polls during the last two presidential elections and the online results more accurately reflected the final tallies than did the television network exit polls, Kouba said. To discourage ballot stuffing and to more accurately reflect local sentiments, PilotOnline.com required users to register before contributing their opinions and votes.

Keeping control

Registration carries over to the rest of the site as well. For the last five years, users have been asked to register before participating in online contests, restaurant and movie reviews and other opinion polls. Readers who frequently access news stories are also asked to register, although it’s not mandatory, Kouba said.

Since winning a host of Digital Edge awards from the Newspaper Association of America over the past several years, Kouba has some thoughts about what has given the Web endeavor its success.

“We believe the Internet is a disruptive business force, as described in the book ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ by Clay Christiansen,” he said. “Running a separate business unit helps you to better address its opportunities and threats.

“Even the strongest newspaper appeals to only part of its market, so we use newspaper-branded sites (PilotOnline and ePilot), plus new online brands (HamptonRoads.com) to appeal to a larger portion of the market.”