Say the NYT’s online revenue is an even $150 million to make it easy. That implies that the Times only gets 5 percent of the industry’s online revenue. That despite the fact that it is by far the most dominant newspaper site, getting (again, according to Nielsen, which we pointed out above may have low-ball readership) about 20 million unique visitors a month. That means about 30 percent of the 67 million total online readership in the U.S. reads the Times in any given month.
Now, of course, most people read more than one newspaper site. But that would presume a lot of reading of several different newspapers for the average online reader. Plus, I assume the Times gets higher ad rates than just about anyone else.
But more intriguingly, Langeveld raises the possibility that newspapers have been fluffing their books to make their online divisions look better:
Or, dare I say it, is it possible that newspapers assigning, by accounting maneuvers, a disproportionate share of their revenue to their online divisions, for example when they arbitrarily assign to online a percentage of the revenue in combination print/web ad packages, or credit a revenue share to online revenue in instances where advertisers are merely bonused online exposure as added value to a print buy?
There’s a lot of wiggle room in accounting.
The bigger issue here is that we too often forget that newspapers are still a massive and profitable industry. Most of the blog commentary on the state and fate of the newspaper business comes from early adopters, tech enthusiasts—people who know their way around an RSS feed and who have a few dozen links on their blogrolls.
But I think we tend to forget that these (and I’m one of them) are extreme news consumers, far from the norm. Most people don’t use news like the top 1 or 2 percent do. I suspect they like to have an authoritative source they can go to that will keep them up on the world.
That’s why I think it’s not crazy to think they’ll pay for newspapers online—or on a Kindle-type device.
After all, forty million people a day already pay for an inferior product in the printed form. And charging online will slow circulation declines as the value equation changes from “I’m an idiot to pay hundreds of dollars a year for something that’s free elsewhere” to “I won’t get my newspaper unless I pay.”
And anybody who wants to leak me some real numbers so we don’t have to keep using these rough estimates, feel free!
(h/t Romenesko)
Regarding the difference between Nielsen and Journal numbers you mention: individual site stat meters can't really sort out a new unique visitor from a prior visitor who has cookies turned off. That inflates UV numbers -- a single visitor with cookies turned off can count for 30 UVs a month, unadjusted, but Nielsen probably has some ways to adjust for that. But a page view is a page view. I'd guess that Nielsen's PV count is not far off from the internal stat machine at the Journal.
#1 Posted by Martin Langeveld, CJR on Mon 13 Apr 2009 at 09:26 PM
If their arrogance didn't kill papers, their new conceit about their too-big-to-fail role in society might be the final nail in their coffin.
Exactly which page of the fish-wrap did they read? The comix? Real Estate? Travel? Lifestyle? what a waste of paper
#2 Posted by Damien, CJR on Mon 13 Apr 2009 at 10:25 PM
Do these studies ever investigate what kind of news is viewed online vs. in print?
I certainly know of people who continue to subscribe to newspapers out of habit, but tend to only spend significant time with the weather forecast and sports section.
Seems like a lot of the online news usage tends to focus more on "hard" news and human interest stories.
-Aaron Street
#3 Posted by Aaron, CJR on Mon 13 Apr 2009 at 10:28 PM
People have assumed that everything on the web must be free. Newspapers have been destroying their own revenue sources by encouraging the taking of their product for free.
One of the problems with the technologically savvy 1% to 2% is that they are invariably focused on national and international news. But newspapers focus the majority of their coverage on the local. While the NYT and Washington Post are being read by those interested in national and international news, they are not covering what is happening on the streets of small town USA or even average size towns like Pittsburgh or Dayton. The result is that news that is important to the average citizen could be lost.
Bloggers have been inflated in value by the same individuals that are hyper consumers of information on the net. Journalists have inflated their importance by referring to them and looking to them for story ideas on generally the same National and international news. Most of them are not doing original journalism, but using the works of others to comment on situations.
So who covers the local school board meeting? The County Commissioners in a county with 300,000 people? These are areas that newspapers cover well, but they must decide whether to give away the product for free or not. TV is about to do the same in its rush to present its shows on the net without advertising revenue tied to it. They are destroying their own position in a rush to "be first" and not seem a dinosaur to other that are all in the top 1%.
The British navy avoided being an early adapter of technology for a reason, it has pitfalls. They instead allowed the French to adapt and fail, while waiting for the innovation to work successfully before adaption. (other than the incident with the HMS Captain).
Regardless mediums are ways to deliver a product. AM Radio was declared dead (as was Radio), but it flourish when it found a niche. Cost drives decisions, hence the reason Radio has not died to Sirrus. Newspapers need to quit giving away their core product for free. When they figure out their mistake, they will flourish again in both print and the net.
#4 Posted by Cody Knotts, CJR on Thu 23 Apr 2009 at 02:48 AM
ost of them are not doing original journalism, but using the works of others to comment on situations.
So who covers the local school board meeting? The County Commissioners in a county with 300,000 people?
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#5 Posted by David, CJR on Thu 3 Sep 2009 at 06:30 AM
I really find that hard to believe. I only read the newspaper online, but I am not sure how they actually keep tract of that statistic. It's so much easier to just pull up the articles you want to read and not not mention is't free. I think that percentage will only go up in the future.
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#6 Posted by vera bradley, CJR on Tue 13 Oct 2009 at 12:48 PM