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by on March 23, 2011 8 Comments

I Get My News Online

I love the sensations a printed newspaper offers. The scent, the feel, the look of it. It’s part of the nostalgia that is print. Nostalgia? Yes, nostalgia. A printed newspaper is the way we used to read our news. For the first time ever, more people read their news online versus in print. All the fit-for-print news is now fit-for-digital too.

This finding is from recent Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism surveys that found 34% read news online within a 24 hour period before the survey, compared to 31% read newspapers. I know, it’s a slim margin… but it’s still a margin.

For me, it’s a question of convenience. A newspaper isn’t that practical anymore for me. When I can access the world’s news on my smartphone or Kindle, wherever I am, it doesn’t make sense to have the paper dropped at the end of my driveway anymore. I know a lot of you will disagree, but sooner or later, you’ll have to let go. Print is dying, a long, slow death. Just like Morse code, bunny ears, and typewriters, advancements in technology push out the old. [Read more...]

Filed Under: newspapers Tagged With:
by on October 28, 2010 10 Comments

Top 5 Newspaper and Magazine iPad Apps

The iPad was supposed to be the demise of the print industry. Magazines and newspapers aren’t going down without a fight. Like technology, the good ones learned to adapt. The better ones learned to anticipate it before it was even created. While most of the major publications have developed an iPad version to keep afloat, there are a few who’ve stuck out from the rest that deserve a mention of their own.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: industry news, newspapers Tagged With: , ,
by on October 18, 2010 43 Comments

Top 25 U.S. Newspapers on Facebook

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):

  1. The New York Times - 781,655
  2. The Wall Street Journal – 140,515
  3. The Washington Post – 68,152
  4. The Denver Post – 30,690
  5. USA Today – 28,332
  6. The Los Angeles Times - 20,715
  7. The Chicago Tribune - 19,448
  8. The Arizona Republic - 18,002
  9. The New York Post – 8,087
  10. The San Francisco Chronicle – 8,051
  11. The New York Daily News – 7,376
  12. The Cleveland Plain Dealer – 5,996
  13. The Houston Chronicle – 5,486
  14. The San Jose Mercury News - 5,417
  15. The Detroit Free Press – 5,379
  16. Newsday – 5,092
  17. St. Petersburg Times – 4,538
  18. The StarTribune – 3,563
  19. The Dallas Morning News – 3,498
  20. The Seattle Times – seattletimes    3,112
  21. The San Diego Union-Tribune – 2,822
  22. Philadelphia Inquirer – 2,100
  23. The Oregonian – 1,890
  24. The Chicago Sun-Times – 1,837
  25. The Oakland Tribune - 1,132
  26. The Contra Costa Times – 971
  27. The Tampa Tribune – 625
  28. 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. [Read more...]

Filed Under: social media Tagged With: , ,
by on October 16, 2010 45 Comments

The Top 25 U.S. Newspapers According to Google

Clicks is one thing, credibility is another. When it comes to online credibility, Google PageRank rules over all. Few metrics illustrate true authority on the Web more than Google’s PageRank. PageRank is the accepted standard for authority on the Web. If you ranked the top 25 U.S. newspapers by PageRank instead of circulation, the list looks like this:

  • 9/10 - The New York Times stands alone as far as Google concerned – it has the highest PageRank of the top 25 U.S. newspapers
  • 8/10 – The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, NY Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle and StarTribune have equal authority at 8/10
  • 7/10 – The Dallas Morning News, The Chicago Sun-Times, Detroit Free Press, Houston Chronicle, The Arizona Republic, The Oregonian, The Star-Ledger, The San Diego Union-Tribune and Newsday are tied for third place with a PageRank of 7/10
  • 6/10 – The Seattle Times, The St. Petersburg Times and The Plain Dealer share fourth place at 6/10
  • 5/10 – The New York Post, The Oakland Tribune and The San Jose Mercury News are tied for fifth place at 5/10
  • 4/10 – Rounding out the bottom is The Denver Post and Contra Costa Times – each share a PageRank of 4/10

When comparing newspaper to newspaper, PageRank seems like a good measure of a newspaper’s authority. Once you get outside of an apples to apples comparison – or in this case, newspaper to newspaper – it gets harder to determine influence or authority. Take popular blogs like The Huffington Post or TechCrunch for example. Both blogs have a Google PageRank of 8/10 – do those blogs have the same authority as The Wall Street Journal or USA Today? As far as Google is concerned they do.

But enough about the PageRank stuff – how popular are the top U.S. newspapers on social media? My next post will focus on the top U.S. newspapers’ Facebook Pages and the number of Facebook Friends (‘Likes’) each newspaper has.

What do you think? Is PageRank a good gauge of a newspaper’s authority? How do you determine the authority of a newspaper?

(Image Credit: Google Classic by dullhunk)

Filed Under: newspapers Tagged With: , ,
by on October 15, 2010 27 Comments

The Top 25 U.S. Newspapers by Website Traffic

Following up on my last post about how newspapers stack up online, I wanted to explore whether or not the newspapers with the largest circulation also have the most website traffic? If you look at the total unique visitors to each newspaper’s website over the past 12 months (as estimated by Compete.com), the top five U.S. newspapers remain the same – though using this measure, USA Today does climb into the top spot.

Does offline popularity translate into online popularity? It would appear so at first glance. When you remove the limitations of physical distribution, some newspapers expand their influence online. Here are the top 25 U.S. newspapers ranked by total unique monthly visitors for the past 12 months:

  1. USA Today - 239,425,560
  2. The New York Times - 217,513,400
  3. The Wall Street Journal – 122,397,004
  4. The Los Angeles Times - 94,889,543
  5. The Washington Post – 9,1758,837
  6. New York Daily News – 82,225,690
  7. The San Francisco Chronicle – 46,696,844
  8. The New York Post – 45,903,055
  9. The Chicago Tribune – 33,230,030
  10. The Star-Ledger – 31,836,326
  11. The San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and The Oakland Tribune - 28,391,971 (combined)
  12. Chicago Sun-Times – 27,351,047
  13. Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News - 23,797,570
  14. The Houston Chronicle – 23,203,975
  15. The Dallas Morning News - 22,858,507
  16. Seattle Times – 21,878,532
  17. The Arizona Republic – 20,598,071
  18. The StarTribune – 20,537,048
  19. The Denver Post - 20,058,704
  20. The Plain Dealer – 18,755,471
  21. The Oregonian - 17,421,959
  22. The Detroit Free Press – 15,522,009
  23. The Tampa Tribune – 13,280,440
  24. Newsday - 11,443,807
  25. San Diego Union-Tribune – 10,928,313

While traffic is a good measure of a newspaper’s reach online, it’s not necessarily a direct correlation to how much authority a newspaper has. A better measure of online authority is Google PageRank – which I’ll explore further in my next post.

Image Credit: U-g-g-B-o-y-(Photograph-World-Sense)

Filed Under: online journalism Tagged With: ,
by on June 22, 2009 9 Comments

Will Your Newspaper Be Around in Five Years?

Will your newspaper be around in five years? I don’t think anyone knows for sure what will happen, but I think it’s a safe bet you won’t have the same number of newspapers in your market in five years (and I’m not saying there will be more). I know there are a lot of people who will continue to get their news from print, just as there are people who still continue to buy their music on vinyl. It’s the experience and nostalgia of it all. [Read more...]

Filed Under: journalism, media trends Tagged With: ,
by on May 2, 2009 4 Comments

The Impact of Dying Newspapers on Older Readers

old-manWhere Will Seniors Get Their News?

I recently read an article in Editor & Publisher, “How to Use the Web to Prevent Remaining Print Readers From Fleeing,” where Steve Outing makes some great points about what newspaper publishers can do to preserve the remaining print readers they have, particularly in regard to many publishers ignoring older audiences. While many media companies work to preserve their future with digital strategies aimed at younger audiences, they are simultaneously alienating themselves from their older (and often most loyal) readers.

He’s right. I don’t know about you, but most of the seniors I know get most of their information from the newspaper tossed in their driveway each morning. While many older generations are quickly adapting to the electronic world, they are mostly using the Internet for email, shopping, health information and watching online videos. When it comes to their news, they still want to get it from their newspaper. [Read more...]

Filed Under: journalism, media trends Tagged With: ,