While the Top 50 U.S. newspapers seem to be just starting to build up their fan base on Facebook, Twitter has been a priority for a while. If you were to rank the Top 25 U.S. newspapers by Twitter followers, the order would be much different than if you were to rank them by circulation.
When it comes to Twitter followers, The New York Times is the top bird with more than 2.6 million followers. To illustrate how impressive this follower number is, The Wall Street Journal only has 464,591 followers in the #2 spot. The New York Times is the ONLY newspaper from the Top 25 with more Twitter followers than print circulation.
Maybe The New York Times has such a huge Twitter following because it was the first of the Top 25 to join Twitter, way back in March 2, 2007. Probably not, since The Contra Costa Times, The Washington Post and The Oregonian all joined later that month.
How do the top 15 U.S. newspapers stack up when you rank them by Twitter followers? Here’s the list (click on the link to follow the newspaper on Twitter):
- @nytimes – 2,668,948
- @wsj – 464,591
- @washingtonpost – 204,514
- @latimes – 83,335
- @usatoday – 72,929
- @newyorkpost – 57,605
- @chicagotribune - 34,490 *
- @denverpost – 32,755
- @dallas_news – 24,726
- @seattletimes – 22,286
- @suntimes – 18,952
- @freep – 18,851
- @nydailynew – 15,744
- @houstonchron – 14,108
- @azcentral – 10,407
- @oregonian – 10,338
- @phillyinquirer – 9,819
- @SFGate – 9,508
- @clevelanddotcom – 7,943
- @MN_News – 7,008
- @NJ_News – 6,181
- @SDUT – 5,886
- @tampabaycom – 3,168
- @insidebayarea – 2,810
- @cctimes – 2,705
- @mercurynews – 2,536
- @newsday – 2,302
* UPDATE: it has been brought to my attention that The Chicago Tribune also has @ColonelTribune, a Twitter account that boasts a following of more than 845,000 Twitter followers. It appears this is their primary account, which would put them in the #2 spot on this list.
While we’re on the topic of newspapers and Twitter, I was surprised to see that only The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have Verified Twitter accounts – one two out of 25 of the top U.S. newspapers. As a credible source of information, you would think having a verified account would be a high priority for all the organizations on this list.
Note: these numbers are a little over a week old as of the posting date, but they were gathered within a one-hour timeframe to get the most accurate snapshot. I also realize newspapers have more than one Twitter account in some cases – I went with the primary Twitter account for the newspaper, versus any individual celebrity that might work for the paper.
About Jeremy Porter
The Plain Dealer’s main twitter account is @clevelanddotcom.
Adjusted accordingly – thanks.
Although I appreciate you putting the list together, I’d be more interested seeing this list (and the Facebook one) compiled by the number followers on the social networks, not by print circulation. The list would look a lot different. There are a lot of smaller papers who have bigger social media communities than many of the big papers. I realize that would be more difficult, but it would be more useful as well. Also, some papers have many accounts, which makes this list a bit misleading. For instance, Chicago Tribune’s @coloneltribune has 800k+ followers.
Cheers,
Robert Quigley
@statesman
Hey Quig, don’t be shy-Let ‘em know how many @statesman followers there are…(26,767 as of this posting)
Plus this list doesn’t include journalist that work for these publications that consider their accounts part of the each paper
The Detroit News main Twitter feed — @detnews — has 14,709 followers, which would place it as 14th on your list.
And the Baltimore Sun has more than 13,000 followers, too.
Don’t forget The Tennessean — 5,962 followers.
http://twitter.com/Tennessean
You also forgot the @ajc account – it has 21,258 followers, making it #11 on your list.
Canada has two national newspapers and 1/10 the population of the US, so on a per capita basis? …. @globeandmail 23,055 followers, @nationalpost 9,661 followers …. JB
You posted the National posts following, not followers.
But yes, the most interesting thing about this list is how these papers compare against papers in a market with 1/10th the population.
@MontrealGazette 28,311
@GlobeAndMail 23,054
@TorontoStar 21,015
@NationalPost 14,389
@VancouverSun 12,887
The comparison is great. If their circulation and geography put them in the Top 25 U.S. papers, they would be on this Twitter post. Thanks for adding this additional info though, I’m sure readers will appreciate it.
You also left @mtvnews off the list. We’ve got 112k!
See the comment above – it’s not a representative list of the top newspapers on Twitter.
The Chicago Tribune should actually be #2 on this list. http://twitter.com/coloneltribune
I find it awesome that if @TheOnion were listed, it would be #2 on the list.
I find everything about @TheOnion awesome.
Just wanted to stop by and say that having all of this information in one place is super helpful and valuable from a PR perspective.
Thanks for doing this.
Thanks Brad – nice to have one positive comment. I tried to pull together the most-accurate information I could find online.
This list neglected so many newspapers that it’s hardly worth it. You should take this down.
Ralph – this is NOT a list of the top newspapers on Twitter, it is a list of the top 25 U.S. newspapers (by circulation) ranked (better yet, reordered) by the number of Twitter followers each paper has for its primary Twitter account.
There are plenty of posts out there that list newspapers and their Twitter accounts – this was an analysis of how the Top 25 U.S. newspapers would fare if ranked by a different set of criteria, such as Twitter followers, Facebook friends, Google PageRank, etc.
If it were just a list, I would agree with your position.
FYI:
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has 4,554 followers on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stltoday
The Kansas City Star has 8,485 followers: http://twitter.com/kcstar
For perspective on smaller-circulation papers and their Twitter accounts, here are some of the other Tribune-owned properties:
The Orlando Sentinel has 13,668 (http://twitter.com/orlandosentinel)
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has 9,683 (http://twitter.com/sunsentinel)
The Hartford Courant has 4,892 (http://twitter.com/hartfordcourant)
The Morning Call has 2,958 (http://twitter.com/mcall)
The Daily Press has 2,947 followers (http://twitter.com/daily_press)
Those counts are only for their main Twitter accounts, not their departmenal/topic accounts or their individual reporter accounts.
Thanks for sharing the additional information Amber.
Missing from the list
@HoustonChron 14,390
@mySA 5,859
Houston Chronicle is on the list (and has been all along). San Antonio doesn’t make the list, because they’re not in the Top 25 by circulation.
I wonder if any papers on the list besides the NYT made Twitter’s Suggested Users List when it was still around. That list drove a lot of followers to whomever was fortunate to be on it.
Also @nydntransit should be counted with the @nydailynews main account, not to mention other minor accounts.
Very interesting post, I agree with the fact that they should verify their twitter accounts.
You forgot the Boston Globe:
http://twitter.com/BostonUpdate
Here are all the twitter accounts:
http://www.boston.com/tools/twitter/
AnnArbor.com’s twitter feed
http://twitter.com/annarborcom
has 4089 followers at last count.
Seattle Weekly: 12,561
http://twitter.com/seattleweekly
http://twitter.com/seattleweekly
Twitter has suspended it’s verification program since at least August, so nobody’s getting verified these days. It was likely offered to those biggest accounts early on in Twitter’s beta program, but it has not been made available to everyone. I’ve tried several times to verify @TBD and @Cincienquirer (my former employer).
See here for more: http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/119135-about-verified-accounts
This interesting, but I think the key is not how many followers a paper might have, but the ROI and engagement that a Twitter presence creates. The Bivings Report graded the United States’ top 100-circ papers’ Twitter presence last year. It’s easy to just post links to stories, but there’s more to taking advantage of social media than that empty gesture. Who cares how many followers you have if you don’t do anything with it?
I love this topic, but it’s highly misleading. I doubt the 25th most followed paper on twitter is only at just over 2,000. And what about the Detroit News? That’s one of the biggest papers in Michigan, not to mention it has over 14,000 followers, and it isn’t even on the list!
Regardless though, very, very cool idea if it were done properly.
What about Women’s Wear Daily? WWD has 1.7 million Twitter followers, and was one of the first over 1 million….
The Times-Picayune (http://twitter.com/NOLANEWS) has 13,405 followers and should be #12
The Birmingham News, Hunstsville Times and Press Register (http://twitter.com/aldotcom) has 6,904 followers and should be #20
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has more than 21,000 followers on its main news account.
http://twitter.com/ajc
Combined, the AJC has 135,000 Twitter followers across multiple accounts (about 80)
Thank you for sharing this list. You have @sdut listed at 22. It was interesting to see how our marquee account compared to others, but The San Diego Union-Tribune has more Twitter followers than that. Our @sdutChargers feed alone has more than 8,000 followers. If you add up the number of followers on all our Twitter accounts, you’ll find we have more than 27,000 followers. (Of course some people follow several of our accounts. The number of unique followers would be less.) It would be interesting to see a list that took into account all the Twitter accounts the top 25 newspapers run.
Best,
Rob Hopwood
Social Media Specialist
The San Diego Union-Tribune and SignOnSanDiego.com
Thanks for sharing the additional information. I stuck to the primary account for this one, since a lot of newspapers have dozens of Twitter feeds. @ajc for example has about 80 feeds – it’s a tall order to find all those accounts, add them up and see how the newspapers are doing across the board on Twitter (then again, maybe I’ll have some time this winter).
For now, I think it’s a fair comparison between papers – at least as far as how they value their primary feed is concerned.
For obvious reasons, Twitter feeds focused on Sports, Entertainment or Deals related to the newspaper tend to have more followers.
This list omits the @PioneerPress with 6,156 followers. I’m looking at the other comments here and concluding the research on this needs a redo. At least, there should be a parallel list ranking papers by number of Twitter followers regardless of the papers’ size, not just a misleading list of the “top papers” and how many Twitter followers each has.
@Indystar — Indianapolis Star twitter account has 11,698 followers. It would’ve ranked 15th based on your published list but I see others have chimed in, so I’d say it’s definitely top 25, though!
For those who are looking for just a straight list (not based on print circulation), I put one together:
http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/newspapers-on-twitter-ranked-by-followers/
The US case is interesting.
But, if you look outside the US, you will see a lot more innovation in news on Twitter than in many US markets. Kompas in Jakarta would be in your top 5 – with over 200,000 followers, The Star in KL would also rank pretty high with over 30,000 followers, and then there is the Straits Times in Singapore who is always trying new things – with close to 30,000 followers. In many cases these media companies also have a full set of other speciality Twitter feeds, that allow better targeting. …
You forgot @theonion http://twitter.com/#!/theonion which should be NUMBER TWO, ahead of the WSJ.
You missed us! The Salt Lake Tribune should land squarely in your top 2o. Our account is @sltrib. Or am I not understanding the criteria?
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review would make the list with its 9,869 followers at @TribTotalMedia.
Hello. The main San Jose Mercury News Twitter account is @mercnews, not @mercurynews. Thanks!
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