Statistics are definitely needed to give substance to claim that readership is increasing as a result of these videos. It is not true that, as Moor suggests, it’s not possible to track where users come from when they follow a link. Tracking users from one site to another is commonplace online. Sites typically track HTTP referer addresses or post links that lead into an on-site tracking system, which in turn takes visitors to the actual content. (for instance, passes a GET variable that tells your site where this particular click is coming from)

You could even go one step further and track the conversion rate (say, subscribing to the paper) of video viewers. Another valuable thing to track would be how long video viewers stay on the paper once they arrive. This would be a good measure of the “stickiness” of the videos.

Without these data, it’s difficult to speculate on how and why these new and valuable convergent news forms are working.

Posting a video on Saturday to lead into a Sunday print version may not be adequate time for a sizable number of viewers to find it online. Responses to viral videos take time to propagate, especially when posted through channels that don’t yet have a large readership.

It’s important not just to get content on video sharing sites, but also to seed it out to sites and get it seen. Otherwise, you’re going to put a lot of effort into an emotional, coherent video that isn’t going to be seen.

For instance, the “unequal justice” videos have a few hundred hits each, while the music video has over 200,000. Why? I can only speculate, given lack of tracking data, but it probably has a lot to do with the music video being featured on the main Politifact site. I’d imagine numbers would be significantly more for the “unequal justice” videos if they were propagated out to sites focused on social issues and equality, or if they were timed and tagged to coincide with events such as MLK day.