RSS Updates
Email UpdatesThe war for newspapers to stay profitable, and, perhaps long-term, to stay viable has become a race between the fall-off in their print advertising and the increase of their online sales. Based on a look at the numbers from publicly traded companies in the industry, things are going badly. The sole exception may be The New York Times Company, where online revenue is now well over 10% of the total.
One of the critical sections of most online newspaper sites is the financial and business area. Marketers tend to be willing to spend higher rates on business readers because they have money that the readers of the sports sections may not.
24/7 Wall St. looked at the business and finance sections of the online editions of the top 25 newspapers in the US based on their circulation as of March 31, 2007 taken from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The sites got ratings of “A” through “F” based on: 1) strength of content, 2) ease of use and navigation, 3) use of new web technology including comments sections, message boards, and multimedia 4) lay-out, and 5) presence of a strong set of current advertisers.
The Wall Street Journal and USA Today were not rated. They are national newspapers. The business content of WSJ.com is well beyond the reach of any other daily. USA Today has a very modest business section based on its desire to keep the news hole of both the paper and the website small. These are two of the 25 on the list.
The list of websites below runs from largest to smallest based on print circulation:
1. The New York Times. It would be hard for any other metropolitan daily to compete with the Times. It has substantially larger editorial resources than any other metropolitan operation. Its most significant drawback is that it runs a reasonable amount of copy which is duplicated elsewhere, particularly by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. NYT.com makes impressive use of blogs, charting, video, and other interactive features. Perhaps the best content run in the section on a regular basis are the “DealBook” area which covers the financial sector and “Bits” which covers technology. Ideally, the NYT business section would not have to run such a large amount of copy which overlaps with other sources, but being complete trumps that. Grade: A
2. Like most of the other online financial editions on this list, the LA Times runs a great deal of copy from sources like Bloomberg and the AP. As might be expected, entertainment and real estate news are overrepresented in the paper, but that is almost certainly in the interests of the readership. Except for the standard buttons for Digg and Facebook after each story, the section does a fairly poor job of engaging readers. The stock and investing tools portion of the site are weak. “The Biz” section on entertainment and “Money & Co.” parts of the site are very good. Grade: B-.
