Newspaper Web sites grow in popularity as circulation drops.NEWSPAPER circulation is on the decline, but a new study by Nielsen//NetRatings suggests a bright spot for large papers, and especially the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Morning daily newspaper. Established in 1881, it was purchased and incorporated in 1884 by Harrison Gray Otis (1837–1917) under The Times-Mirror Co. (the hyphen was later dropped from the name). : Web sites. The redesigned LATimes.com saw a sharp jump in its number of unique visitors A count of how many different people access a Web site. For example, if a user leaves and comes back to the site five times during the measurement period, that person is counted as one unique visitor, but would count as five "user sessions. , a key online measurement standard. The rise in October was 23 percent, to 3.9 million, from the like period a year ago, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Nielsen//NetRatings. That compares to an average 11 percent year-over-year growth among the 10 largest sites, giving them 39.3 million unique visitors, or about one of every four Internet users in the U.S. While the number of unique visitors to LATimes.com is dwarfed by the visitors to NYTimes.com, which had 11.4 million visitors that month--the local site ranked fourth on the list. The site caught up to its more established Northern California Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the state capital, Sacramento; as well as the substantial natural beauty of the redwood forests, the northern counterpart, the San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden Chronicle's SFGate.com, which had around 3.9 million visitors, up 4 percent from a year ago. Robertson Barrett, the Times' general manager for its interactive services, says that the paper's internal measurements show 40 percent monthly traffic growth since the site's redesign in May. "We've seen traffic growth ahead of the rate of many newspaper sites in their markets, in part because we've started diverging from the print story lineup, with more emphasis on breaking news and Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, stories," Barrett said. Gerry Davidson, an author of the report and a Nielsen//NetRatings' senior media analyst, says that the fastest growing sites have recently expanded their offerings to include breaking news, blogs, podcasts and streaming video A one-way video transmission over a data network. It is widely used on the Web as well as company networks to play video clips and video broadcasts. Computers in home networks stream video to digital media hubs connected to a home theater. and audio. "These interactive features, combined with Internet users' thirst for up-to-date information, make newspaper Web sites an increasingly appealing choice for news," Davidson said in the report. In the past two months, LATimes.com has added several new blogs and podcasts. The Nielsen//NetRatings report concluded that among adults nationally who read either a print or online newspaper, 22 percent have shifted their preference from offline to online sources, while 71 percent still prefer print and the remaining 7 percent divide their time between the two sources. Those most likely to visit online newspapers had incomes between $100,000 and $150,000 and a bachelor's or postgraduate degree, the study said. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion