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Studies

by Carlo Longino

Mon, May 7th 2007 7:40pm





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.

7 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    William, May 7th, 2007 @ 8:41pm

    been curious

    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.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Jimmy, May 7th, 2007 @ 9:18pm

    newspapers

    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.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, May 7th, 2007 @ 9:39pm

    ok jimmy have fun masturbating tonight in your parents guest bedroom

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Shohat, May 8th, 2007 @ 1:47am

    But they are doing well...

    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

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Jimmy, May 8th, 2007 @ 5:11am

    Re:

    Yes, I'm in bed...say hi to your Mom.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    Jimmy, May 8th, 2007 @ 5:11am

    Re:

    Yes, I'm in bed...say hi to your Mom.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    wouldn't it be great, May 8th, 2007 @ 8:52am

    kevin rose is anonymous coward

    wouldn't it be great if anonymouse coward was kevin rose.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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