Print papers see big online growth with complementary sites
The magazine Editor & Publisher has published a tally of the best-drawing US newspaper websites for the month of March and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which stopped its print edition March 17 has dropped out of the top 30 as a consequence of seeing its number of unique visitors fall by 23%.This adds fuel to the controversy over whether digital-only publishing can ever replace the power of print to draw or help draw audiences. Virtually all of the top 30 offer both print and online access and there is more and more evidence that print presence drives online use.
By comparison with the P-I's results, over three-quarters of the top 30 online newspaper sites experienced double-digit growth, said E & P, and the New York Times, which still leads the list, was up 7%.
posted by D. B. Scott at
1:54 pm
1 Comments:
Saw an interesting point raised in the Twitter-sphere (can't recall by who): yes Seattle's traffic is down--but so are the resources they're devoting to the overall operation. So, in considering the question of whether online-only draws as effectively at online+print, you have to consider the resources devoted to the platforms. Maybe online only doesn't draw as effectively, but if you shed costs on the print side, perhaps there is a place where the math actually works. Not that I'm in favour of killing print products, mind you, but I think the picture is going to end up being more nuanced than some of the coverage suggests right now.
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