While Google PageRank is an accurate gauge of authority on the Web, it doesn’t tell us much about how much people ‘Like’ a newspaper. When it comes to ‘Likes’, Facebook is the authority. It took a little (okay, a lot of) trial and error to find the Facebook Pages for each of the Top 25 U.S. newspapers (you’d be surprised how hard some of the top 25 make it to find), but alas here’s the list of the Top 25 U.S. Newspapers ranked by the number of Facebook Friends (‘Likes’) each newspaper has (click the link to visit the newspaper’s Facebook Page):
- The New York Times - 781,655
- The Wall Street Journal – 140,515
- The Washington Post – 68,152
- The Denver Post – 30,690
- USA Today – 28,332
- The Los Angeles Times - 20,715
- The Chicago Tribune - 19,448
- The Arizona Republic - 18,002
- The New York Post – 8,087
- The San Francisco Chronicle – 8,051
- The New York Daily News – 7,376
- The Cleveland Plain Dealer – 5,996
- The Houston Chronicle – 5,486
- The San Jose Mercury News - 5,417
- The Detroit Free Press – 5,379
- Newsday – 5,092
- St. Petersburg Times – 4,538
- The StarTribune – 3,563
- The Dallas Morning News – 3,498
- The Seattle Times – seattletimes 3,112
- The San Diego Union-Tribune – 2,822
- Philadelphia Inquirer – 2,100
- The Oregonian – 1,890
- The Chicago Sun-Times – 1,837
- The Oakland Tribune - 1,132
- The Contra Costa Times – 971
- The Tampa Tribune – 625
- The Star-Ledger – 372
Once again, The New York Times demolishes the competition online, with five times the Likes as The Wall Street Journal. On the other end of the scale, it would appear Facebook is a low priority for The Star-Ledger, with only 372 Likes. Of course, this could be an error on my part – they could a more popular, but harder-to-find Page… but that seems unlikely.At least the The Star-Ledger has a vanity URL – that shows somebody at the newspaper is paying attention to social media trends. The Detroit Free Press on the other hand was the only newspaper from the top 25 that doesn’t have a vanity URL.
I was pretty surprised to see The Denver Post has more Likes than USA Today, but that’s probably because USA Today is one of the only newspapers to NOT have a ‘friend us on Facebook’ option on its homepage.
On this point, I was happy to see that most of the Top 25 have integrated social media into their homepages (again, surprised there’s not much on the USA Today homepage – but there is on the interior pages). Most of the newspapers have a link to Twitter or Facebook from the homepage, with many integrating several of Facebook’s tools into their website, giving users the ability to Like content or sign-in with their Facebook accounts.
Overall, it seems like newspapers have been slower to adopt Facebook when compared to Twitter. When it comes to Twitter, the Top 25 excel. Learn more about how top U.S. newspapers stack up when ranked by Twitter followers in our next post.
About Jeremy Porter
Your list is missing many newspapers.
The Beaumont Enterprise for instance has 7,658 Facebook fans:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/bmtenterprise
San Antonio Express-News – 6,358 fans
It’s not a ranking of top newspapers by FB fans, but rather a re-ranking of the top 25 newspapers by circulation (using FB likes as the measurement instead). Thanks for the additional information though.
Albany Times Union – 4,007
Connecticut Post – 1,575
Also, the Houston Chronicle has 2 FB accounts – one under chron.com and one other the Chronicle brand. The combined fans total more than 10,000
You also missed The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (ajc.com) with 7,458 fans. And that’s just the “main” account. http://www.facebook.com/#!/ajc.com. When you include our individual sports, business, and photo pages etc. the AJC has over 40k fans.
This lists the number of Facebook followers for the top 25 newspapers by circulation. None of the papers you mention is in that group.
Thanks Jimmy.
As I read the list of the newspapers by ABC audited ciruclation, The Boston Globe ranks #24 M-F and #18 on Sunday. Can you please include usin your analysis?
1 WALL STREET JOURNAL 2,092,523
2 USA TODAY 1,826,622
3 N. Y. TIMES 951,063
4 L. A. TIMES 616,606
5 WASHINGTON POST 578,482
6 N.Y. NEWS 535,059
7 N.Y. POST 525,004
8 CHICAGO TRIBUNE 452,145
9 HOUSTON CHRONICLE 366,578
10 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER (a) 356,189
11 PHOENIX REPUBLIC 351,207
12 LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY 334,809
13 DENVER POST (a) 333,675
14 MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE 295,438
15 ST PETERSBURG TIMES 278,888
16 CHICAGO SUN TIMES 268,803
17 CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER 267,888
18 PORTLAND OREGONIAN 263,600
18 SEATTLE TIMES (a) 263,468
19 DALLAS MORNING NEWS 260,659
20 DETROIT FREE PRESS 252,017
21 SAN DIEGO UNION TRIB 249,630
22 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE 241,330
23 NEWARK STAR LEDGER 236,017
24 BOSTON GLOBE 232,432
25 KANSAS CITY STAR 216,446
The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan has 4,958 fans and growing…
facebook.com/grpress
Regards,
Meegan Holland
Online Editor
The Grand Rapids Press
The Columbus Dispatch would make your top 25…
Don’t forget Christian science monitor
Thanks for compiling these stats. How did you find the overall likes for a specific news site?
I just looked for each newspaper’s primary webpage (the way any user would). From there, I looked at the number of Likes each page had – I did it all within the same hour, to have as close a comparison as possible. Thanks.
I think you meant the The Detroit Free Press was the only one without a vanity URL, not the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Thanks Nathan – sorry for the error (I fixed).
Would be interesting to see a list of top newspapers on Facebook, regardless of print circulation. Several smaller papers, including the one I work at, would be on this list.
Cheers,
Robert Quigley
Social media editor
Austin American-Statesman
Any interest in taking on a guest post on that exact topic? I’d love to see that too. I wonder if such a list already exists?
At 7404 The Detroit News out preforms several larger circ newspapers. I think what might be interesting is to look at how successful newspapers are engaging an audience through social media. Maybe as a percentage of circ.
The link that you put for the Tampa Tribune is actually Tampabay.com or the St. Pete Times. I was wondering if you just used the wrong link or misidentified the newspaper?
You are correct. Could I make more mistakes on this post? I’ve made the correction – I thought I was pretty thorough on this one.
I wonder how these sites are monetizing these fans/likes from Facebook? Any advertiser sponsored posts yet or just driving traffic?
It’s not a newspaper, but a news website (so it wouldn’t be on the list), but GlobalPost, an international news startup has 101,000, which would make it #3!
Great list! Just so you know, the St. Petersburg Times has 16 Facebook pages. Here’s our full list.
Our shining star is PolitiFact.com with 22,994 fans!
What is Denver doing that makes it a social media star? That would be news I could use.
Sam
Jeremy,
This is interesting, and a nice confidence boost for some medium- to small-sized papers who have more followers than the “big guys.”
A side-by-side comparison of Top 25 by circ v. Top 25 by Fans would be interesting follow-up. The Palm Beach Post (10,700+) and our sister paper in Austin, as noted by Rob above, would likely be in the running. Allison from the AJC makes a good point, too, that many papers have multiple pages.
Unfortunately, that just makes your job harder.
Thanks,
Michelle Licudine
Digital Audience Director
The Palm Beach Post
Even though the El Paso Times is not even in the top 100 newspapers by circulation, we have over 30,000 fans and would rank 5th in this group. How about them apples?
For those of you interested in this topic, I just came across a better post on this topic that has a more extensive list of Newspapers on Facebook. Check out Chris Snider’s post here: http://chrissniderdesign.com/blog/2010/10/01/top-newspapers-on-facebook-october-2010/comment-page-1/#comment-1757.
Dear Journalistics: I posted this on our Facebook page (Gain-Stovall, Inc.) and received the following comment from a reporter with the Colorado Springs Gazette:
Omitted: The Gazette, which would be 24th on the list with nearly 1,700 friends. http://www.facebook.com/springsgazette
Just thought I would pass that along.
I’ve addressed this a bit, but this is not a ranking of all newspapers on Facebook – rather, it’s the top 25 by circulation, resorted by Facebook. Thanks.
The Vallejo Times-Herald in Vallejo, CA now has nearly 4,100 Facebook fans and about 2,200 facebook friends. Our newspaper circulation, by contrast, is about 16,000. Our totals are higher than most of California’s larger newspapers (San Diego, Sacramento, Oakland, etc…. ) Our page has been up for just over a year, compared to some that have been up for twice as long. check out facebook.com/timesherald
Thanks for sharing the information Ted. The Facebook and Twitter posts both looked at the Top 25 Newspapers (by circulation), reordered by Fans or Followers.
Many smaller circulation papers have more “likes” than those in your ” top 25. For example, The (Alton, IL) Telegraph has more than 3,500.