Newspapers Brag About Online Traffic While Wishing They Got Less Of It
from the they-really-don't-get-it dept
The Newspaper Association of America is trumpeting results of a new study showing that unique visitors to newspapers' websites climbed over 20% in 2005, as 55 million Americans turned to them for the news. The data sounds okay, and the newspapers will certainly use it as evidence that they're doing a good job of leveraging the internet. However, the traffic gains have come in spite of, not because of, the newspapers' actions. They're still complaining about search engines and news aggregators driving traffic to their sites (Chicago Tribune article: bugmenot, appropriately, required). It's not clear what part of the traffic=ad sales equation they don't get, though they insist that sites like Google News are destroying their business model -- a statement that belies any idea that they get the internet. The only hope for the newspapers is that they can find a new business model. If they don't kill of the old one of stuffing spam into dead trees, someone else will.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Be Careful What You Wish For
I wonder how quickly we would see these papers change their tunes.
Personally, I think Google News should blacklist any site that requires registration to use, but I'd be happy just to see Google let the complainers shoot themselves in the foot. There is enough great content out there that Google doesn't need these troublemakers as a source. If it was up to me, I'd replace the papers with Techdirt and then see what kind of tune the established players whistle.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Be Careful What You Wish For
One problem: Most Techdirt "articles" are just links to news stories on actual newspaper Web sites. Same with Google News. It's difficult to replace the organizations that are doing the news gathering, even if their ideas around revenue generation are antiquated.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Execs wont change their business model until it is clear to them how to make MORE money than they are now. Or until their current business model crumbles beneith them (as it is doing).
Perhaps the new model is millions of blogs / independant writers and our publishers are the techdirts, slashdots, boingboing type crowd. Couple that with on demand printing for those that want to read on the can and you may have something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The problem I have with a new industry that is purely blogs is.. well, credibility. No offense to TechDirt or any others, they have their legitimate place. But when I want investigative reporting, done on a budget with a team of reporters that traverse the nation, or the world, to get contacts, whistle blowers, or the next 'deep throat', along with the facts and preferably only a slight bias (hard to be entirely neutral even if they want to be), I don't come here, and sure the HELL not Slashdot and some others. No, I consult BBC, CNN, Christian Science Monitor, and other 'professional' news orginizations to get the best estimation of the matter.
I've yet to see 'blogs' like this and most others reach that level of seriousness. Anandtech and other tech sites, they're serious about what they do -- Anand doesn't seem to mind leaving his wife and going around the world ten times to chase down one little detail about an upcoming product from AMD, Intel, ATI, Nvidia or the tier-one motherboard manufacturers. HardOCP tends to tell the truth even if it earns them scorn from those that dont want to hear it. Still yet, one-off bloggers who have no one but themselves and whatever they may have as a conscience to check themselves professionally I wont trust in the same way I would a real news orgnization, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. And if bloggers came together and checked, edited, scrutinized each other before things were published, and gathered funds and went on investigative reporting trips to where ever the news was or may be, then they wouldn't really be mere bloggers any more, would they? They'd be professional reporters just like one working for Fox News or CNN, not a blogger. Bottom line; if that ever DOES happen, where we're reduced primarily to bloggers (CNN and Fox and BBC will never die; people like TV too much) on the local level and niche news areas, then it'll be sad day. It's far too easy for a single blogger to 'spin' articles and get ignorant masses believing ignorant things, where at least if the masses stick with real news groups, then at least they're only slightly politically biased, and can easy get the other side of the story by changing channels from Fox to CNN, etc.
Again! Not to say they don't have their place; they do. Just not as our primary source of information.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Michael's comment
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I don't have time to read "millions" of writers -- I read two papers every morning, have a Yahoo! and Google home page, and check out a *few* blogs that I like.
Newspapers could get it, if they weren't addicted to the classified ads as their main profit source.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Holy. Crap. I'd of been better off throwing them in a dumpster. Went back to ebay. I can't recall how much they wanted, but a simple ad was like $300 I think. Stupid, unless it's far more effective then I think it is.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't forget about anonylog
( Conceptually, it's about the same as bugmenot )
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Implication for Search Engines
If more traffic were coming via search engines, you'd expect these people to read very few pages, perhaps only the one that the search engine found. In contrast, you might expect people who visit a site directly for their daily news to read all the interesting news pages.
Page views are increasing faster (43%) than unique visitors (21%) which suggests that a smaller proportion of visitors are coming from search engines. Perhaps that's why this article doesn't complain about them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Implication for Search Engines
Thank you for the information.
Peter
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
the trouble with bloggers
Independent people writing their opinions on the internet are never going to be able to take the place of a real, trained reporter. Opinions do not equal news.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Information Technology
[ link to this | view in chronology ]