Sentinel Has most "Klout" among Santa Cruz Media, SLVNews #2

According to the social media monitoring service Klout, the Santa Cruz Sentinel has the most influence on the subject of “Santa Cruz” in the online world. With a 90 day average “Klout Score” of 65, the daily print publication leads all local media including TV, radio, print and online only. SLVNews with a score of 63 comes in second.

According to Klout, their scoring provides a representation of overall social media influence. They examine more than 400 variables on multiple social networks beyond just number of followers or friends or likes to come up with the score. The score represents an aggregate of multiple pieces of data about overall social media activity from a variety of online networks and takes into account information about who engages with content, who they share it with and how much influence the individual followers have.

For comparison, news organizations like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNN have the highest score possible 99. Fox scores at 94. The Sentinel’s sister publication, the San Jose Mercury News ranks slightly higher than the much smaller Sentinel at 68 but on the subject of Santa Cruz they do not rank among “top influencers”.

The current Klout ranking for local media:


Santa Cruz Sentinel 65
SLVNews 63
KSBW 59        
KION 55
KZSC 44
Good Times  44
Santa Cruz Patch  44
Santa Cruz Weekly 43
KPIG 41
KSCO 37
Press/Banner  29


The Sentinel is owned by Media News Group which has been aggressively pursuing a “digital first” strategy meant to accelerate the move by traditional print publications into the online space. Sentinel online editor, Tom Moore  has led the effort to move the 156 year old newspaper into the 21st century by facilitating and encouraging writers and editors to make use of a plethora of online tools and networks. He’s even got publisher Michael Turpin  and Editor Don Miller blogging and using Twitter but the Sentinel staffer with the most “Klout” is Felton’s Larry Cafiero aka "Larry the Software Guy".

Here’s how the Sentinel staffers with the most Klout stack up:

Larry Cafiero 62
Jessica M. Pasko 61
Wallace Baine 60
Julie Copeland 54
Christina Gullickson 55
Tom Moore 50
Jason Hoppin 49
Kevin Johnson 47
Jondi Gumz 45
Stephen Baxter 45
Michael Turpin 45
Shanna McCord 43
Donna Jones 43
Donna Jones 43
Don Miller 42

Among non-media people who rank high with the service local singer James Durbin has a score of 81 and Santa Cruz Mountain legend Neil Young carries an 88, same as Governor Brown.