I love the tag on this one.

Have you ever actually gone to NYUnews.com? The site is too cluttered, which is ironic considering it used to be littered with banners asking how the readers liked the new site layout.

Now I am a student who usually reads the paper everyday at NYU, but I am studying abroad right now so I figured I’d get them delivered to my e-mail so I could continue reading them. Well a month goes by and I am not actually reading them, so I click on one of them and hit the unsubscribe link.

This takes me to an NYU page prompting me to “log in” to change my “profile preferences.” But guess what? I don’t have a profile on their site, nor is there any place for one to actually “log in” to change their “preferences.” The way I see it they just don’t want people unsubscribing from their paper.

I went over to their contact us page, where there is a nice little box where you can leave your name and post a comment, kind of like what I’m doing on this article right now. There are 9 comments on that page, 7 of them are asking NYU news to unsubscribe them from their newsletter. I think this comment sums it up the best.

“please cancel my email subscription to your newsletter; my son has graduated. I cannot find the place to “log in” as suggested.”

If the Compete stats aren’t telling enough, you should consider the stats from Quantcast (I use both but still can’t figure out why its numbers usually differ so much from Compete’s - either way, Quantcast is thorough) In other words:

nyunews.com - 1,435 (estimated) people per month visiting the site; visitors are only from the U.S.; “The site attracts a middle aged, more male, more educated audience”; AND almost 100% of the visits consist of “passers-by,” as opposed to “regulars” or “addicts.”

http://www.quantcast.com/nyunews.com#traffic

vs. nyulocal.com - 37,611 people per month visiting the site in the U.S.; 45,469 people per month visiting the site GLOBALLY (i.e. where are the other 8,000 or so coming from?); 36% of the visits to the site come from “regulars,” 63% from passers-by, and <1% from addicts.

http://www.quantcast.com/nyulocal.com#traffic

And if you really want to smile, Cody: http://www.quantcast.com/profile/traffic-compare?domain0=nyulocal.com&domain1=nyunews.com&domain2=&domain3=&domain4=

Okay, and now I’m done with my research report.

““The site attracts a middle aged, more male, more educated audience””

How does it know that?

Magic, Henry.

in defense of WSN, probably 75% of the people I know grab the print edition habitually.

I only take it for the sudoku and crossword, and most people I see holding WSN is for that same reason. Thus the more we blog about addicting internet games the less reason I have to pick up the paper…

I haven’t been at the school here long, (3 months) but I can tell you that the majority of my friends and I read the washington square news in the hard copy, at minimum, two or three times a week.

they provide tight, accurate articles, it seems, and there web site isn’t bad. it could use a more attractive story presentation and a better way to display there photos, which are good.

nyu local has a large photo based blog site, and some fun international news-based topics (and I like the Spotted section), but the level of journalism here is lacking, lets be honest. pound for pound, concerning the written word, there isn’t a serious comparison between what is being offered.

i wish the wsn had some sort of calendar or guide to tell students what’s going on, on campus during the week, and in manhattan in general for the weekend. the WSN seems to be a paper that does some things well, but falls short of following through on giving the student body the total experience of what a “campus hub” paper should be. crossword and sudoku helps with the good journalism.