Thursday, September 9, 2010

Newspapers' audiences way up, if websites count


In the most recent ratings study, newspapers' websites generated "unprecedented traffic," according to Nielsen, analyzing data for the Newspaper Association of America. That seems to show that content matters significantly,\ -- apart from whichever platform that has it.

In the first quarter of this year, newspapers' sites drew more than one-third of all Internet users: 74.4 million unique visitors per month, the analysis shows.

Elsewhere, 56% of Internet users say they consider newspapers' print editioms to be "important" or "very important" sources of information, according to a report from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism's Digital Future Project.

True, newspapers are behind television (68%) and the Internet (78%) in what Internet users value. However -- almost paradoxically -- a majority of Internet users also concede that they don't trust material online: 61% ssay less than half of the Internet's information is unreliable; 14% say that little or none of it can be trusted.