Talking Biz News turns five

Talking Biz News, the daily blog about business journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is five years old today.

During that time, there have been massive changes in business journalism, from the sale of The Wall Street Journal/Barron’s/Marketwatch.com/Dow Jones Newswires to the closing of Business 2.0 and the start and closing of Conde Nast Portolio to the shift in coverage dominance in many cities away from daily newspapers, many of whom have cut their standalone business sections, to weekly business newspapers and sites.

Through it all, Talking Biz News has covered the ups and downs, with:

1. 8,962 posts, or about 4.9 per day. Since daily blogging began on Jan. 1, 2006, the average is 5.4 posts per day.

2. 1,871 approved comments, or slightly more than one per day.

The months with the most posts were May 2007 (248) and June 2007 (259), primarily due to the coverage of News Corp.’s takeover of Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Marketwatch.com, Dow Jones Newswires and Barron’s. Both months saw an average of at least eight posts per day.

The post with the most comments — 59 — remains the one from 2006 reporting that CNBC anchor Ted David was moving to radio. David has a lot of fans.

The post with the most unique visitors is the one from May 2010 about Bloomberg editor in chief Matthew Winkler and his opinions about the quality of Twitter posts from his staffers. It has been read by more than 4,580 unique visitors.

Two posts — one in 2007 and another earlier this year — were removed because of inaccurate information involving the business journalists involved. Talking Biz News apologized in both cases.

The best month in terms of traffic was April 2010, which reported 42,527 unique visitors and 70,999 page views. That’s an average of more than 1,400 visitors per day and more than 2,350 page views per day.

Every month since October 2009 has seen an average of more than 1,000 unique visitors and an average of more than 1,475 page views per day.

“Job changes” and “The Wall Street Journal” are the two most popular subject topic categories, with each averaging almost one post per day in the past five years.

Talking Biz News received a “Best in Business” award in 2009 from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in the small blog competition. It has 425 fans on Facebook and more than 750 followers on Twitter.

Lastly, Talking Biz News is independent. It receives no advertising revenue (the ad revenue it previously generated was donated to SABEW) and is not used to advocate any personal beliefs. Its content is sometimes syndicated on Forbes.com, and its content is syndicated on newsonnews.net and beforeitsnews.com.

Thanks for reading. Your feedback is always welcome.