Online News Readers Keep Growing
Where are all the newspaper readers going? Why, to the Internet, of course. In many cases, newspapers are gaining readers online as fast or faster than they're losing them in print.
Below are the numbers of visitors to online editions of major daily American newspapers as of March 2008, and increases compared to a year earlier. (Source: Nielsen, Editor & Publisher magazine)
| News Source | Readership | Change |
|---|---|---|
| NYTimes.com | 18.8 million | up 30% |
| USATODAY.com | 10.7 million | down 2% |
| washingtonpost.com | 8.9 million | up 13% |
| Wall Street Journal Online | 6.9 million | up 99% |
| LA Times | 5.7 million | up 22% |
| New York Post | 4.7 million | up 31% |
| Boston.com | 4.2 million | down 1% |
| Chicago Tribune | 3.8 million | down 31% |
| Newsday | 3.2 million | up 44% |
| Village Voice Media | 2.8 million | up 139% |
| DallasNews.com | 2.7 million | up 96% |
| Atlanta Journal-Constitution | 2.3 million | up 28% |
| Chicago Sun-Times | 2.2 million | up 8% |
| Detroit Free Press | 1.5 million | up 38% |
| Cleveland.com | 1.5 million | up 89% |
| MiamiHerald.com | 1.5 million | down 17% |
| The San Diego Union-Tribune | 1.4 million | down 19% |
The Vanishing Newspaper
Is the daily newspaper dying? Or just catching its breath for a new competitive sprint in a different format? The Pew Charitable Trust's annual report on American media says people appreciate journalism perhaps as much as ever. But mass communications is reaching a pivot point in accelerating changes.
Online Journalism Booming
While newsrooms are shrinking alarmingly quickly, many major daily newspapers are seeing mushrooming growth in online readers, according to Editor and Publisher magazine and the Nielsen research company. As of 2008, some newspapers have seen a doubling in numbers of online readers in just a year.
Moms Mad for the Web
Parents are among the highest users of the Internet, significantly outpacing couples and singles without children, according to a variety of sources.