Here’s another small example of how the Washington Post is demonstrating its leadership among daily newspapers, in this case on the web. The company has been largely immune to the industry-wide meltdown because of its diversification (i.e., Kaplan), its tech-savviness (i.e., video podcasts in HD), its renowned political reporting, and its fundamental understanding of how to leverage the web (i.e., Slate), among many, many other reasons. For the past few weeks, in honor of March Madness, washingtonpost.com has been running a bracket to determine the most popular character on ABC’s Lost. The interactive feature, which is based on reader voting, is housed within ‘Lost Central‘ – a dedicated section of the newspaper’s web site. I don’t have specific traffic numbers, but based on the number of votes that each match-up has garnered, I’d say the feature was a phenomenal success. As I’ve said before, there will be a handful of daily newspapers that will survive the massacre taking place these days, and the Washington Post will undoubtedly be among them. Let’s call these survivors the Oceanic 6.
P.S. – Desmond was the Lost Madness winner, beating out Sayid in the finals.