« Home | A Look Back to Last March's CRS Conference For Rad... »
Study: Metro Papers' Sites Build Following
(contributed by Adweek's IQ Interactive) A new report by Internet media and market research firm Nielsen//NetRatings finds that the country's major metropolitan newspaper Web sites have built up a loyal following in their local markets.
On average, the top local newspaper Web sites reached 19.5 percent of a city's active Internet audience across the top 10 local markets studied during July 2005.
WashingtonPost.com led the way with a 30.1 percent reach of its local Internet users, followed by Boston.com (28.3 percent) and AJC.com (26.4 percent). NYTimes.com and ChicagoTribune.com round out the top five, attracting 21.9 percent and 21 percent of their area's Web users, respectively.
Out of the top 10 local markets studied, Philadelphia was the only exception to the trend of local newspaper dominance.
USAToday.com reaches 9.6 percent of online news readers in Philadelphia, barely edging out Knight Ridder's Philly.com, the Web site for the Inquirer and Daily News, which attracted 9.2 percent of the same audience.
"City newspapers have successfully built an effective online presence as the source for local and national news," Charles Buchwalter, Nielsen//NetRatings' vice president of client analytics, said in a statement. "Newspapers have broadened their reach by growing their audience's news consumption from a print-only readership to an online edition, knowing that Internet-savvy users are sometimes only consuming news online."
Additionally, the study found that NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com and LATimes.com had the greatest national reach out of the No. 1 local market newspapers. NYTimes.com has a national reach of 9.3 percent, followed by WashingtonPost.com's 5.7 percent and LATimes.com's 3.1 percent. USAToday.com reaches 7.1 percent of the national audience.
The study's findings, released Thursday, were derived from the new Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Local service, which combines survey results with actual surfing habits.
posted by Unknown @ Friday, September 23, 2005,
