Newspaper Website Traffic Rank at 5-Year Low, Alexa.com
Newspapers are doing more and more online, but they are losing ground to other online news sources, social networks, and narrower niche websites. According to statistics gathered by Alexa.com (owned by Amazon.com), the largest newspaper websites have all been declining in online rank since January 2006. (see 5-year chart below)
Their page view rank is on the decline as well, noted in this graph below:
A recent study conducted by the Newspaper Audience Databank in Canada sheds some light on this ongoing problem for newspapers. It shows that boomers are still in love with their newspapers, 56% of 40+ year-olds read newspapers each day with 78% reading each week. On the weekend, boomers on average spend 105 minutes with the paper while those under 40 spend on average 67 minutes.
“Their readership habits have changed little over the past 20 years despite intense media fragmentation and technological innovation resulting in a ‘media everywhere’ marketplace,” the study found.
Which brings me to my point: people adapt their preferred method of consuming news at an early age and stick with it. As the boomers age and they become a smaller percentage of the population, newspapers will shrivel up on the dying vine.
We’ve been seeing a decline in newspaper distribution for the last five years and I’ve blogged about this phenomenon several times. The “Internet Generation” is not excited about a newspaper website offering journalist blogs, talk back features, or online extras. Their boomer base isn’t excited about it either. As a matter of fact, no one is excited about their online strategy which is reflected in their traffic decline over the last 18 months.
The general public is going online to get their news, not from traditional newspaper sources but from bloggers and citizen journalists. For the record, YouTube.com is now ranked 4th on Alexa.com right behind 1. Yahoo! 2. MSN.com 3. Google.
Comment by steve king on 6 June 2007:
It was repoted today, the Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis’ only daily newspaper) managers informed it’s newsroom staff that the paper’s business section no longer will be a stand-alone section beginning in late June of this year.
What a sad commentary on the state of affairs with this publication.
Indianapolis, the Colts, and Mayor Petersen in particular, just completed a bid for the Super Bowl and promoting our city as a “World Class City”.
Now, this “world class city” wont even have it’s own business section in it’s only local newspaper.
I guess the NFL owners that rejected our bid know something about Indianapolis that we don’t.
Picture this scenario: our pro-business Governor, Mitch Daniels, is hosting an event for a group of out-of-state business leaders. He’s extolling our state’s progressive approach in advancing it’s business climate. He’s hoping to attract new businesses and jobs to our state. Then, he’s asked a simple, reasonable question by one of his (and our) guests - “I noticed that your local (only) newspaper doesn’t have a business section…whassup with that?”
Clearly, this cut by The Star is all about costs. Business leaders and lawmakers need to pressure them to reverse their decision. This is not good for our city, as well as for all of Indiana. The publishers know this, they just don’t care.
Thank goodness that the IBJ (Indianapolis Business Journal) exists and that the Internet is now on computers.
Comment by TomBritt on 6 June 2007:
Steve, you are a smart man. You should be on the radio or something. I hear they have radio on the Internet, too.