Are online newspapers under, rather than over performing?
Over at the Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab, there’s an interesting post which goes through the latest Nielsen / Newspaper Association of America statistics with a fine tooth comb.
By inverting the June statistics, Martin Langeveld challenges the received wisdom put forward by a lot of people (myself included) that newspapers have never been so popular thanks to the Internet.
Instead, Martin’s interpretation of the figures show that there is a good case to be made that online newspapers are under, and not over, performing. Two findings in particular jump out (note, these are US figures but I think of wider interest):
1 – Nielsen says 70.34 million US unique visitors visited a newspaper website, equating to 35.89% of the total. Or looking at it another way: “On the other hand 64 percent got their news elsewhere.”
2 – US Internet visitors spent 45 million hours visiting newspaper websites. Martin works this out at “less than 1 percent of all time spent online, or 0.56 percent”
Indeed the 70 million total US online newspaper audience is less than any of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Microsoft, You Tube, AOL, Facebook and Fox Interactive.
Though perhaps an overly negative interpretation of how newspapers are performing online, it does yet again raise the question: If newspapers start snatching the free toy away from its readers (and I see on BBC News Online Rupert Murdoch is yet again sounding off about it), will said readers care?
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thanks for the comments, and I agree – straight news is a commodity that you can just as easily get from BBC News Online et al.
And thank you for the link, will definitely check it out
Having worked in the online newspaper industry for 15 years, I am convinced that for pay content schemes won't work because newspapers (specifically dim C-level executives) are not business/strategic minded. Many times they've ascended from the ranks of the newsroom and know little about the Web outside of scrutinizing balance sheets for ROI. Getting to that ROI requires innovative thinking beyond their skill sets.
If Rupert Murdoch et al are going to put together for-pay content schemes they have to answer one key variable: Value. Straight news is ephemeral and people will refuse to pay for it. However, rich special sections may offer a strategy to leverage the best technologies and deeper content to justify an end users micro/subscription payment. It also plays to a "long tail" strategy.
For a deeper analysis, read my article entitled "There Be Treasure."
I tend to agree. There is a real challenge facing publishers – and I don't think anyone has quite figured out the answer.
I have a feeling that the best approach is small scale testing. I am looking with interest at what publishers like The Spectator are doing.