News is New Again

By Daniel Wood

The year 2008 first reported the “death” of print newspapers. Then in 2009, especially in North America, more and more newspaper companies saw an increasing reliance on online versions of their paper for readership and revenue, if not completely shutting down their print versions to focus fully on the electronic versions.

The only thing that was not clear then, was whether or not this also signalled the death of traditional newspaper companies to news websites or news portals, such as Yahoo! News. But those in the newspaper business can probably breathe a little easier now, as there are clear indications in recent times that it is not the case of people switching to alternative news sites or portals but merely switching media. Instead of pieces of paper to bring around, people are now preferring RSS (really simple syndication through any and all devices connected to the Internet.

In June 2009, Nielson Online conducted a custom analysis for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), and reported that more than 70.3 million unique visitors went to newspaper web sites each month on average, equal to about 35.9 per cent of all Internet users. In total, newspaper web site visitors generated 3.5 billion page views during the month, spending 2.7 billion minutes browsing the sites over more than 597 million total sessions. More than 230,000 panelists took part in the survey.

The data from six months latercontinue to show a rising trend: by December 2009, the average monthly unique audience of newspaper web sites increased to more than 72 million, representing 37 per cent of all Internet users – more than a third of the Internet population. People were also found to be visiting the same sites more often, and were spending more time on the sites than half a year ago. For the top dogs, the numbers were even more impressive: nine out of the top ten newspaper companies recorded positive growth rates in unique readerships, with 16 per cent increase recorded for the top ten companies alone.

The NAA attributes these strong and consistent Nielson figures to more and more newspaper companies transitioning into multi-platform content providers. Clearly, as the American economy continues to find its legs, newspaper publishers are in position to leverage their trusted brands to reach a highly engaged audience and deliver maximum value to advertisers.

More positive news behind those numbers lie in the demographics of the people who use these newspaper web  sites. It appears that newspaper web site users are more desirable to advertisers and more online intensive than other users of the Internet and newspaper web sites provide an efficient channel for reaching this attractive audience. In addition, these users go online more frequently as they are always looking for fresh news updates, and spend more time online, especially during work hours. At home, these users are also very likely to subscribe to high-speed Internet broadband.

The studies also show that people who visit newspaper web sites are younger (between 18 and 34 years old), have better education and are more affluent than the other two-thirds of Internet users. They very strongly lead non-newspaper web site users in online research and shopping. Lastly, users of newspaper web sites are Internet veterans: having used the Internet or been online for an average of five years and up.

Despite the growing numbers of people using newspaper web sites, there do appear to be some stumbling blocks, according to a similar NAA study on user-generated content (UGC) and Web 2.0 tools. Awareness and familiarity are the main challenges to growing usage of UGC on newspaper Web sites. As familiarity and awareness increase – through aggressive promotion – so will Web site visitors’ contributions and usage of newspaper UGC features. Another challenge for newspaper publishers at this time is to learn how to capitalize on this active and growing online readership and translate their increasing engagement into revenue. Ultimately, newspaper companies can only survive by revenue generation acitivities such as advertising and sponsorship, and they need to tap into these huge numbers of active readers.

The story is not so much different in Malaysia. While there aren’t any specific studies as yet (partly due to the fact that there aren’t that many newspaper web sites locally), it is no surprise to find that two newspaper web sites are listed as the Top 15 web sites most visited in Malaysia: The Star Online and Malaysiakini. Locally, only Maybank2u (banking website) and Mudah.com (portal) rank above these two newspaper web sites in terms of unique audience.

So while there will always be people around who still want to buy and read print newspapers, just so that they can fold it and read it in the toilet, use it to swat flies or maybe just for the hard feel and grit of print, most people will prefer to go online and read their news on their mobile phone, PDA or computer. But this will not spell the death of news. News lives on, but in more vibrant, real time, active formats.