NT News’ digital gurus move on. In the past year and a half, the NT News’ social media followers have doubled, while its web traffic has tripled. That’s largely come down to a radical rethink of its digital approach about a year and a half ago, led by digital editor David Krantz and deputy digital editor (and columnist) Corey Sinclair.

But both men are now moving on to other roles. Sinclair has been promoted to News Corp HQ in Sydney, while digital editor Krantz, who also managed social media, is soon to join theDaily Mail Australia as homepage editor.

“Dave and I have been managing the social media accounts and website for about a year and a half,” Sinclair told Crikey. “Before we took over, the Twitter account was just used strictly for branding with an occasional tweet, but we made the conscious decision to expand it and make our presence more known.” This has taken the form of tweeting only in all caps, starting tongue-in-cheek Twitter wars with other outlets, and doing all they could to reflect the irreverent tone of the print NT News.

Asked what they’ll miss the most about running the accounts, Sinclair nominated developing the paper’s online larrikin persona. “There’s not many places where you’d be able to create cheeky mischief and write dick jokes or innuendos as part of your job.”

Krantz says he’ll just miss the power. “I’ll miss starting pointless Twitter wars with other media outlets like The Guardian and having a platform to denigrate ‘freelance writer’ J.R Hennessy.”

J.R. Hennessy is a freelance comic writer from Sydney. Your correspondent has never met, read or had anything to do with him, but it’s fashionable in some media circles to pay him out for some reason. — Myriam Robin

Update (next Monday)… Crikey appears to have ruffled a few feathers with our media brief on Friday citing the success of the NT News’ departing digital team. While they didn’t say this to us, your correspondent wrote that the NT News’ recent digital success during the tenure of digital editor David Krantz and deputy digital editor Corey Sinclair (traffic has tripled, social media followers have doubled, etc.) was partly due to their strategy of tweeting in ALL CAPS.

But the all-caps strategy actually predates Krantz and Sinclair — it goes back to the former digital editor James Dunlevie (now at ABC News Darwin), who was understandably rather miffed about his successors being given the credit.

Dunlevie also objected to Sinclair’s comment to us saying under Dunlevie’s tenure, the Twitter account was used “strictly for branding with an occasional tweet”, telling Crikey that was a “load of croc”. He pointed us to this story, which details how the publications’ larrikin social media strategy, which includes the all caps, goes all the way back to 2012. For what it’s worth, it was Dunlevie who created the Twitter and Facebook accounts, and he was the first to start playing around with how to best represent the paper online.

It appears like many good ideas, the NT News’ online persona owes its birth to a few different people. Sinclair says Dunlevie built a “solid foundation” that he and Krantz expanded on. — Myriam Robin