New York, NY, September 23, 2005 —-Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in Internet media and market research, reported today that online readers in nine out of the top 10 local markets were loyal to the city’s top newspaper Web site in July 2005.
On average, the top local newspaper Web sites reached 19.5 percent of a city’s active Internet audience across the top 10 local markets. The findings were derived from the new Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Local service.
The MegaView Local report ranked the No. 1 newspaper Web site within each of the top 10, out of approximately 100, local markets available in the service. The report compared each newspaper site’s local and national reach, or site penetration in the active Internet universe.
WashingtonPost.com reached 30.1 percent of the D.C. area Internet users, followed by Boston.com and AJC.com capturing the attention of 28.3 percent and 26.4 percent of their local Internet audiences, respectively. NYTimes.com and ChicagoTribune.com rounded out the top five, attracting 21.9 percent and 21 percent of the area’s Web surfers, respectively.
Philadelphia was the only exception to the trend, where USATODAY.com, a national newspaper site, reached the most online news readers, with 9.6 percent of the local active Internet audience. Philly.com, the site for Philadelphia Inquirer, was the second top newspaper site viewed, attracting 9.2 percent of the local audience.
“City newspapers have successfully built an effective online presence as the source for local and national news,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice president, client analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Newspapers have broadened their reach by growing their audience’s news consumption from a print-only readership to an online edition, knowing that Internet-savvy users are sometimes only consuming news online.”
In June 2005, Nielsen//NetRatings reported that a fifth of Web users who read newspapers rely primarily on Web editions, according to the @Plan Summer 2005 release. Seven percent of online users who consume newspapers split their time evenly between the online and offline editions, while a majority, or 72 percent, of online users still access print editions.
In examining the online newspaper consumption habits of the top 10 local markets, Nielsen//NetRatings found that NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com and LATimes.com had the greatest national reach out of the No. 1 local market newspapers. National reach measures the overall site traffic in comparison to the active Internet audience in the U.S.
NYTimes.com attracted more than nine percent of the national active Internet population, relative to its 22 percent penetration in the New York local market during July 2005. WashingtonPost.com reached nearly six percent of the national audience, compared to LATimes.com, which attracted more than three percent of the national audience.
