Newspapers Come Up With Data To Delude Themselves That Their Web Efforts Are Going Well
from the see-no-evil dept
While newspapers, on the whole, continue to flounder online, they've released some data at their trade group's national convention which seems intended to convince themselves that they're really doing a great job with this whole web thing. They claim that "the audience for newspaper Web sites is growing at nearly twice the rate of the overall online audience" -- which sounds really great, but is really pretty meaningless. First, the online newspaper audience grew by just over 5 percent last year, which isn't exactly staggering. Second, with the growth in total people online slowing (just 2.7 percent last year), screaming that your audience is growing more quickly makes it clear you're fishing for something to spin as good news. Also, as pointed out in the comments on the original post, it's quite possible that while the number of readers increased, the number of page views per reader (or, indeed, overall traffic) fell -- a scenario that seems likely given the way people use search engines to find information with little loyalty to specific sites. Given that the NAA didn't release any information on page views or overall traffic and focused instead on sheer number of visitors, making no distinction about how often they visited sites or how many pages they viewed, it's hard not to believe they just set out to find something they could spin to make it look like their members' online efforts are going well.
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been curious by William on May 7th, 2007 @ 8:41pm
iv always wondered what good does it do the company to make it look like they are doing great. It seems like a pointless act in many ways.
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newspapers by Jimmy on May 7th, 2007 @ 9:18pm
When radio and tv became popular most people thought... that would be the end of newspapers -newspapers are here to stay. I sell newspaper subscriptions for a living and sell 60-80 people per week. The majority are weekend subscriptions with the online edition.
By the way, I make over $100,000 per year, not bad for a paper boy.
Again, newspapers are here to stay. Eventually when WiMax is everywhere, newspapers will be offered on a wireless, foldable tablet that is updated continuously.
Ill see some of you next weekend.
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by Anonymous Coward on May 7th, 2007 @ 9:39pm
ok jimmy have fun masturbating tonight in your parents guest bedroom
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But they are doing well... by Shohat on May 8th, 2007 @ 1:47am
Every major newspaper that has online presense and a decent IS doing well, and using it's brand to bring in online visitors.
While blogging is a fad (remember podcasting ?), I don't see online newspapers going anywhere.
Cheers
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Re: by Jimmy on May 8th, 2007 @ 5:11am
Yes, I'm in bed...say hi to your Mom.
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Re: by Jimmy on May 8th, 2007 @ 5:11am
Yes, I'm in bed...say hi to your Mom.
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kevin rose is anonymous coward by wouldn't it be great on May 8th, 2007 @ 8:52am
wouldn't it be great if anonymouse coward was kevin rose.
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