Magazine

Prime real estate: Who’s who on the Neilsen Online list

Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, recently analysed the Nielsen Online list of top 50 Internet news groups, examining the parent companies of outlets on the list. He attempts to examine how so-called dinosaur media companies fare on the Internet.

The list, which is looks at traffic from US-based visitors, revealed some surprising trends.

Broadcast media, including television and radio, took 20 of the 50 slots on the list. Print media, including newspapers and magazines, had 16 spots. News organisations that began life on the web, such as Yahoo!, Google and AOL, took up the remaining 14 slots.

While it appears that print and broadcast media are doing well, taking over two thirds of the slots, it is important to remember that none of the web-based companies were operating a mere 15-20 years ago. And despite an extreme disadvantage in resources and reputation, these groups were able to carve out a very significant share at the top of the online news business.

There is a great deal to be gleaned from these results. Much of it can be learned by looking at just the top 10 results.

The top 10

According to Nielsen, CNN took the top slot with over 38 million monthly visitors. The cable news station was joined by two broadcast networks, CBS and NBC. These stations took the fourth and fifth slots, respectively, each with about 21.5 million monthly visitors.

However, other than the television networks, there were no other mainstream media outlets in the top five. Instead, the second and third slots were taken up by Yahoo!, which saw its news and sports sites rank second and third.

The highest ranked print media site belonged to The New York Times, which had just over 20 million visitors. Next, at No. 9, was the Tribune Company, which manages 10 different daily newspapers and reaches 18 million visitors online.

Rounding out the top 10 were AOL News, a web-based company at No. 6; the cable television sports channel ESPN at No. 7; and Turner Sports, a broadcast network which includes several sports channels at No. 10.

This news bodes well for broadcast media on the web. These groups have managed not only to take the largest slice of top 50 slots, but also the bulk of the top 10. The web companies have also done well, especially Yahoo! and AOL, both considered underdogs in the global search market. But newspapers seem to be struggling, with only one national newspaper and one group of local papers reaching the top 10.

A rough time for newspapers

The trend away from newspapers continues throughout the top 50. Cox Newspapers, which owns 17 different dailies, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Austin American-Statesman only appeared at No. 36 on the list, well behind web startups such as The Huffington Post and IGN.

Clearly, where The New York Times has had success building a popular online presence, many smaller newspapers and media companies are struggling. While their audiences are inherently smaller than those of national newspapers and television networks, they still lag behind their counterparts even when grouped in large numbers.

Furthermore, other “national” newspapers including The Washington Post and USA Today, Nos. 17 and 19, respectively, also lagged behind both television and web startups. The news was even worse for magazines. People and Time ranked Nos. 26 and 30, respectively, despite very large print circulations and strong reputations.

It seems that, for the most part, the list of most popular US news destinations are dominated by television stations with web startups and newspapers sprinkled in, raising concern that web journalism may not displace broadcast media, but can have a drastic impact on newspapers and magazines.

Other statistics

Editor and Publisher recently compiled its own top 10 list for the most popular newspapers online. While its numbers were compiled differently, using pageviews instead of visitors, much of the results were the same.

The New York Times took the top slot, with over 764 million views, more than three times its nearest competitors, USA Today, which had only 136 million views. The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe rounded out the top five.

However, there is a clear difference between those at the top and bottom of the list. The Star Tribune, the No. 10 newspaper, had 54 million pageviews, less than one third of USA Today and less than a twelfth of The New York Times.

Though it is clear the Star Tribune has done very well for itself, faring much better than news papers in larger cities, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is ranked No. 24 overall, it is clear that there is a sharp divide between the newspapers that have large followings on the web and those struggling to grow their own.

Patterns

The difference between the struggling newspapers and broadcast stations and those doing well has little do with the age or resources of the particular companies. For example, CNN remains at the top, besting stalwart broadcast networks NBC and CBS, both of which have been around since the 1920s and before television.

What does matter more is the broadness of the potential audience. Of the top 50 news groups, the top 33 are all sites that have no geographic restrictions, are international news organisations or are groups of local newspapers. The first local site, boston.com, carries a strong national and world focus on its front page.

This creates a duality among sites that attempt to hone in on a specific geographic region, much like current daily newspapers, and sites that attempt to be broad in focus. Competition on the national/global scale will be fierce, but audiences will be smaller with a local approach. Which system will be more effective or best survive the transition to the web remains unclear.

What is clear is that with web advertising turning lower CPM than print, both local and national organisations will have to make cutbacks and sacrifices, something we are already seeing.

Conclusions

The proliferation of the web has brought difficult times for journalism. Sadly, not all newspapers, magazines and TV networks will survive. Many will not. Newspapers are particularly vulnerable and TV networks are well-positioned.

If an organisation has not developed an effective web strategy at this point, it may well be too late. The web audiences are becoming more and more entrenched and the choices they make now could have an impact for another five years or more. By the time audiences are more receptive to change, many of those left behind will already have closed.

In short, the web will not mark the end for journalism or journalists. But it may mark the end for many of companies for which journalists work. The companies that will be leaders in journalism 10 years from now have not all yet been born. What will they be like? How will they function?

—-
Flickr photos from users psd, leoreynolds, j.coppolo and limonada.

Tags: internet, new york times, news group, nielsen online list, nyt, online media, yahoo,

Related articles

• A critical mass for Public Service Media freedom in South East Europe
• Minority voices on social media networks
• The revolution will be televised, streamed and uploaded
• Facebook IPO – what it means for Zuckerberg and you
• One continent, one law, one data protection authority
• Story Hack: Beta – entertaining and engaging, the transmedia way
• Hungary sliding into censorship and media suppression
• Who likes your page? No, really - Navigating between likes and fakes in social media
• Journalist gaoled, beaten by Syrian authorities offers advice to others
• SOS - Save our serendipity

• Home |
• Seminars  |
• Events |
• Media Landscape |
• Newsroom|
• Media News|
• Resources

Terms of service and Privacy policy.

Copyright © 1992- 2011 European Journalism Centre. All rights reserved.

Valid XHTML and CSS.

European Journalism Centre

Sonneville-lunet 10
6221KT Maastricht
The Netherlands

Tel. : +31 43 325 40 30
Fax : +32 2 400 42 20

E-mail: info[at]ejc.net