The Jon Stewart effect
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 6 August 2007 at 18:22
Tags: Journalism, Reddit, Slashdot, The Daily Show
Forget the Digg effect. Try the Jon Stewart effect.
Guess what was the most-viewed story on PressGazette.co.uk in July. No, nothing about Alan Johnston or Rupert Murdoch. No, it was this one about the New Zealand Parliament’s new standing orders making it a contempt of Parliament for broadcasters to use footage of the chamber for “satire, ridicule or denigration”.
It was a simple PA story which was virtually ignored by the world then we initially posted it on 23 July.
But then Jon Stewart mentioned it on the Daily Show, and it ended up on Slashdot, Reddit and several major political blogs in the US, drastically extending the usual 36-hour window when a news story usually gets all of its traffic.
