Top 15 newspaper sites of 2008
The data is in, and we’re ready to declare the top 15 newspaper websites of 2008! It was a hard-fought battle in a year that saw visitors to all newspaper sites rise by 12.1 percent from the year prior. We’ve ranked the top 15 by average monthly unique visitors, according to Nielsen Online, which is the source of all our data (via Editor & Publisher’s monthly reports). Analysis, charts, and fancy interactive graphics will follow later today and tomorrow, but first, let’s see the list:
1. The New York Times
19,503,667 average monthly uniques
Increase of 33% from 2007
Peak month: 21,340,000 uniques in March [Eliot Spitzer]
2. USA Today
10,845,000 average monthly uniques
Increase of 12% from 2007
Peak month: 12,314,000 uniques in January
3. The Washington Post
10,260,167 average monthly uniques
Increase of 19% from 2007
Peak month: 12,956,000 uniques in September
4. The Los Angeles Times
7,886,250 average monthly uniques
Increase of 54% from 2007
Peak month: 11,136,000 uniques in November
5. The Wall Street Journal
7,169,333 average monthly uniques
Increase of 60% from 2007
Peak month: 9,047,000 uniques in September [Lehman Bros.]
6. The Boston Globe
5,211,083 average monthly uniques
Increase of 22% from 2007
Peak month: 8,610,000 uniques in September [Red Sox]
7. New York Post
4,335,583 average monthly uniques
Increase of 30% from 2007
Peak month: 5,000,000 uniques in October
8. Chicago Tribune
4,271,833 average monthly uniques
Increase of 34% from 2007
Peak month: 5,235,000 uniques in December [Blagojevich]
9. New York Daily News
4,226,083 average monthly uniques
Increase of 68% from 2007
Peak month: 5,888,000 uniques in November
10. San Francisco Chronicle
4,158,000 average monthly uniques
Increase of 10% from 2007
Peak month: 5,129,000 uniques in September
11. Newsday
3,163,000 average monthly uniques
Increase of 7% from 2007
Peak month: 3,911,000 uniques in February
12. Politico
3,113,000 average monthly uniques
Increase of 132% from 2007
Peak month: 4,565,000 uniques in October
13. Chicago Sun-Times
2,884,417 average monthly uniques
Increase of 26% from 2007
Peak month: 3,982,000 uniques in October
14. The Houston Chronicle
2,808,750 average monthly uniques
Decrease of 10% from 2007
Peak month: 3,414,000 uniques in May
15. The Dallas Morning News
2,647,500 average monthly uniques
Increase of 52% from 2007
Peak month: 3,777,000 uniques in September
A few quick notes: We’re only looking at the websites of news organizations that also print a newspaper here, because they face a special challenge in transitioning from print to the web. And while it seems clear that increasing traffic alone won’t solve the business problems of newspapers, it’s all they’ve got right now. (For comparison, here’s a top-30 ranking of all news sites in December.) Politico makes our list because it distributes a small-circulation print edition when Congress is in session. Also keep in mind that Nielsen’s web stats, like its television ratings, are frequently disputed estimates that may be more valid in relative terms such as comparing a site’s traffic to its competitors. Fortunately, that’s what we’re doing here. And finally, we’re looking at monthly unique visitors, which advertisers prefer, while ignoring time spent per visitor because that data is all over the place and difficult to compare.
In another post, we take a closer look at patterns among the five national newspapers that top the list. Tomorrow, we’ll do the same for the regional newspaper sites.
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Seems like the headline should be “Most trafficked newspaper sites of 2008.” These are not necessarily the best.
All these “uniques,” and yet newspapers still derive no more than 10 percent of total revenue from online.
Maybe it’s because “uniques” are uniquely misleading:
http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/unique_visitors.htm
Here’s why: If I visit a site from work, I am seen as one unique visitor based on my IP address. If I visit from home I am seen as yet another unique visitor. So maybe these numbers are off by a factor of 50 percent.
Or, as Morris’ Steve Yelvington said, “This may be the most measurable medium in history, but the measurements all suck,”
Why did you choose to use the Nielsen measurements for this?
@ Alan…
Uniques can fail in the other direction as well. Proxies and firewalls often report as just one IP, as do shared public terminals, such as those found at libraries.
The only truly reliable measurement would be an audited repository of actual server logs from the top sites. Everything else is inaccurate. The only hope is that each particular service is inaccurate in a consistent manner, allowing at least meaningful comparisons among sites.
Thanks for the early comments. I’d encourage everyone to check out part 2, which has more rigorous analysis, and tomorrow’s part 3, which will expose all the underlying data.
To answer your questions: Mindy, I definitely don’t think these are the 15 best newspaper sites, though there’d definitely be some overlap with such a list. This is about traffic and traffic growth, which are crucial the business model (scale) that most of these papers have chosen to pursue (for now). As for Alan’s concern, I don’t think uniques are a perfect metric, but they are a very strong measure of relative traffic, which is the concern here.
And, Howard, I chose Nielsen only because that was the data most easily available to me. E&P publishes Nielsen’s stats for newspaper sites each month, so I could go back and collect those reports from 2008 and do some extrapolating for 2007. (A little more on that in tomorrow’s post.) That wouldn’t have been possible with Quantcast, Compete, or other web analytics firms. This seemed like the best way to get a two-year look at traffic to these particular, but I would very interested to hear alternative methods and compare the results.
—Zach
Sorry, may I ask one not very right in this theme question? Is it true that “USA Today” is the 1-st newspaper in the world representing in the internet by its own site? The 1st web-page had “Chicago Tribune” if I am not mistaking…
Suggest correction for your headline and/or text.
Should read: Top 15 US-based Newspaper Sites
There’s some fantastic online newspapers beyond these shores! (Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Le Monde, Dagens Nyheter)
I visit four of these newspaper websites daily via my mobile phone: NYT, WP, Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times.
Ironically, even though I worked for USAT, its mobile site isn’t as feature- or content-rich, so I rarely visit to get my news updates.
JustReading: I agree that USA Today’s mobile site isn’t so spectacular, but you should try out their iPhone application. It’s really great. Sadly, I don’t have an iPhone, and I assume you don’t, either, but definitely take a look if you get a chance.
Thomas: Fair point. I don’t have the same data for newspaper sites outside the U.S., so this is strictly limited to American newspaper sites.
—Zach
Average monthly unique users counts are only one facet of a multi-dimensional picture. Looking at that alone, how do you discern what’s a facade, what’s a Potemkin Village?
A simple example: if one site has 10,845,000 average monthly uniques and another 10,260,167 average monthly uniques, is the former site more heavily used if its average user visits 4 times per month but the latter’s site visits 7 times per month?
Ranking DAILY newspaper sites by MONTHLY unique users, without taking into account how often or infrequently each site’s average user visits per month, is meaningless — a superficial measurement by people who don’t understand the underlying dynamics. Frankly, that describes most of the newspaper industry today.
journalism
…The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.
mostly oped rags on this list
Aren’t three of the above listed (LATimes, Newsday, and Chicago Tribune) all owned by the same company, Tribune Media Services?
I don’t mean to be snarky — oh wait, yes I do — but data are plural. It just seems so illiterate to have this kind of mistake on this venue about this topic.
We are all struggling with the future of our industry, but I noticed today somewhere on the Web that Web hits were flat for February, according to Nielsen.
I am noticing, at least locally, some Internet fatigue, at least reflected by comments on stories responses to blogs. Of course, I do not have my competitor’s data.
George Schwarz, publisher and editor
The Amarillo Independent
Amarillo, Texas
George, I would argue that data is plural — or singular, depending on the context. Grammar on the Internet isn’t necessarily poor, it’s just progressive. —Zach
What about The Onion? It may not be straight-up “news” but it’s still a paper and has a site, a site that’s first-rate I’d say.
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Heading should be US based Newspapers and how much time people are spending in a website is important factor too.