Finally, some good news for newspapers
Here's a desperately-needed sliver of cheery news for beleaguered newspaper execs: the Newspaper Association of America's data-rich fall readership report concludes that traffic to newspaper web sites jumped in the first half of this year. The average number of unique visitors to news sites shot up 32 percent, to 55.5 million, compared to the first six months of 2005.

The Reuters round-uphighlights the fact that not only are the web sites drawing more readers, they're drawing younger readers - a key point since advertisers covet this demographic most. The increases are encouraging because, as just about everybody knows, print editions are sucking wind.

Yet, for all the money and hopes poured into news sites, they're still considered junior varsity players trailing the all-star Internet pure plays like Yahoo, Google, or eBay. But in many local markets, newspapers still have the advantage: it's been difficult and costly for Internet biggies to try to crack local communities.

The key takeaway from the readership report: thanks to steady, if slowing, cash flow from print, local newspaper publishers might just survive to fight another day. This is particularly true for those that have been taking their web editions seriously. Perhaps the most intriguing stat from today's report (via paidContent): "80% of online newspaper visitors mix between the web and print depending on convenience." In other words, this is may not be a zero sum game.
Posted by Oliver Ryan 10:24 AM 0 Comments comment | Add a Comment

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.