Remember our 2010 Reader Survey? We’ve (finally) compiled the results for you.

Survey results.

Readers want more of everything, especially more coverage of transportation projects and what goes on behind the scenes at Metro.

As 2010 was winding down and The Source was celebrating the end of its first year of Metro blogging, we put together a poll to find out more about our readers and what they thought about Metro’s Web 2.0 venture.

We closed the survey in January of this year and were left with a messy spreadsheet of data. We went through the data at the time, but our day-to-day blogging duties got in the way of compiling an honest-to-goodness report on the results.

I’m happy to write that even though we’re well on our way to 2012, we’ve compiled the report and you can download it right here.

Keep in mind this wasn’t a scientific survey. It was a purely voluntary poll of our readers (hello self-selection bias) meant to give us an idea of what folks are thinking. We received 208 responses, a fraction of our daily readership.

But that slice of readers (mostly guys in their 20s and 30s) seem to really like what we’re doing – good news for us. Most who took the survey are regular L.A. transit riders. Some of the survey respondents don’t even reside in L.A. County.

We’ve also earned the trust of those readers who took the survey. On a sliding scale – 1 being “No I don’t trust The Source” and 5 being “Yes I really trust The Source” –  76 percent of respondents answered with 4s and 5s. Another interesting revelation: 53 percent of respondents trust the information from government websites more than from traditional media websites. We have no idea if that trust just involves transportation issues or extends beyond that rather limited sphere.

Our regular features (Transportation headlines, Twitter Tuesdays, Art of Transit, etc.) got mixed reviews. Some survey takers look forward to these features and some don’t read them at all. Enough do read them that we’ll likely keep posting them.

Our decision to allow comments seems to have been the right decision with readers, with 78 percent of respondents telling us they read the comments and 56 percent saying they feel comments make the blog better.

My favorite part of the results are the loose ends where we let readers tell us exactly how they felt. The positive words are flattering but the constructive criticisms and suggestions are where those of us responsible for The Source have found real value.

Thanks again to all who responded. We really appreciate the feedback and will do our best to continue to make The Source worth reading. And if you want to look through the raw spreadsheet to see every bit of feedback we got, you can view it here.

 

Categories: Feedback, Surveys

2 replies

  1. I like the survey.

    For me, I thought the staff of this blog could be a little more discriminating when selecting good photos. Some are truly great. Some others have me scratching my head.

    When I visit here, it is learn more about the projects. I am in that majority. Insights to each project would be great, but, I would be interested in reading an interview with a Board member and learn about their perspective on project x or y. Or, their vision and how to implement their vision.

  2. I am surprised Twitter Tuesdays, Art of Transit and other non-news features are not well liked. I think those features add tremendous value to a blog without them would be a bit banal.