Bloomberg Businessweek’s code issue was a massive hit

The Bloomberg Businessweek special issue on coding has sold more copies than any other issue to date this year, reports Gabriel Arana of The Huffington Post.

Arana writes, “The online response, though, has dwarfed the reception in print. The digital package is accompanied by supplementary multimedia and interactive elements — a retro-looking avatar guides readers through the piece (and tells them to slow down if they’re scrolling too fast), and readers can try out coding as they go along. In the three weeks since the online version of the story went live, it has generated more traffic than any other article since the launch of Bloomberg’s business site, according to the spokeswoman.

“And lest you think readers are simply navigating to find out what all the fuss is about before clicking off to read about, say, the ‘13 Things You Didn’t Know About Nutella,’ ‘What Is Code?’ is also number one in terms of (non-idle) time spent on the page.

“‘I’m just completely floored by the reaction,’ said Bloomberg Digital Editor Joshua Topolsky, who worked with two other editors, two developers and a designer to present the piece online. ‘We knew it was a great story and put a lot of time and effort into Web execution, but it would have been hard to predict such a strong reaction.’

“Online publishing often involves guesswork; for everything that’s neither breaking news nor clickbait, it’s a gamble. The sheer scope and ambition of the coding essay, which Tyrangiel described as ‘taking an entire civilization and boiling it down into a story,’ are enough to raise eyebrows on their own.”

Read more here.