Monday, May 14, 2007

Newspaper Assoc. of America NAA is touting new research that shows news sites are popular. What can we do with that?

Take this as you will: On May 7, the Newspaper Association of America announced the results of new research which found that the "newspaper Web site audience is growing at nearly twice the rate of the overall online audience." And also, this study found that "newspaper Web site visitors have higher incomes and are more likely to shop online than other Internet users."

According to this Nielsen//NetRatings NetView study, "An average of more than 59 million people (37.6 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites each month during the first quarter, a record number that represents a 5.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago. ...During the same time period, the overall Internet audience grew just 2.7 percent."

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Hmmmm... 5.3 percent vs. 2.7 percent? with numbers that small and close, I have to wonder what the margin of error was.

But enough quibbling over numbers. I'm not surprised that newspaper sites are popular among net users. For the time being, our culture still generally perceives newspapers as "the place to go" for news and information.Before we lose that edge (and we well might, eventually), I hope news organizations start getting serious about trying radically different approaches to advertising, customization, and distribution for both print and online products. We could be handling the business that supports journalism very differently. Until we do, I doubt our popularity online will do much to help us survive.

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