WeDundee.com, the local site supporting Dundee’s UK City of Culture 2017 bid, this morning revealed a fascinating insight into people’s interests.
Earlier this yearWe Dundeeinvited the public to say what they loved about the city, and its word cloud, shown above, gives a visual guide to the comments people submitted.
Four dominant themes emerged Light, People, River and Environment.
Taking the first, Light, we can see the subjects and concepts most often mentioned (the larger the word, the more it was discussed).
What fascinates me is how closely this correlates with what we see in the site statistics at www.thecourier.co.uk.
We spend quite a bit of time analysing what subjects attract the most attention online. This is obviously very useful information for the site, but we also feed it back to our newspaper colleagues to suggest topics that might be worth further coverage.
Some kinds of stories will always do well online… but we also see high levels of interest in areas that might not be immediately obvious.
It’s no surprise that concepts such as ‘Tay’ and ‘waterfront’ are prominent in We Dundee’s graphic, but two that jump out at me are ‘cycle’ and ‘buildings’.
I cycle to work every day, so I try to ensure my personal interest doesn’t result in a bias towards the subject on our site.
But it’s clearly a big topic of interest around Dundee. Every time we report issues surrounding bike safety or infrastructure, the articles attract a lot of attention from cyclists and drivers alike. It’s also a hot topic on the letters page.
The Courier carries an excellent cycling column by Scot Tares every Saturday now expanded in our lovely new magazine! but this might be further evidence that there’s room to do more.
Similarly, the popularity of articles about buildings and built heritage sometimes takes us by surprise.
Whether it’s poking about in the cellars of some of the city centre’s older buildings, or remembering the Law Tunnel, stories on what Dundee has built, plans to build (and what it has knocked down…) always seem to fascinate our readers.
My colleague Chris Ferguson’s From The Archives blogregularly touches on this subject, and his stories on nightclubs of the past and fallen landmarks have sparked much interest and debate.
So, what do you think? Do you want to see more on cycling issues? Or more on our towns’ and cities’ built heritage?
Or is there something else you think deserves more coverage? We’re always open to suggestions.