Newspapers not dead, 16% increase in online readership
Monday, February 2nd, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-RunkleNielsen Online reports a 16 percent year-over-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper web sites. This represents 40.1 million unique visitors in December 2008, up from 34.6 million in December 2007.
To top online newspaper site was NYTimes.com, with 18.2 million unique visitors. USATODAY.com and washingtonpost.com took the second and third spots. See the table below for more.
Here are the top ten finishers, courtesy of Nielson Online:
Dec-08 UA % Change
Top 10 Online Newspapers 40,093 16
1. NYTimes.com 18,187 6
2. USATODAY.com 11,420 15
3. washingtonpost.com 9,470 12
4. LA Times 7,963 73
5. Wall Street Journal Online 7,235 34
6. Daily News Online Edition 5,883 99
7. Chicago Tribune 5,235 35
8. New York Post 4,557 60
9. Boston.com 4,086 -6
10. SFGate.com 3,503 26
Of the top 10 online newspapers, nine experienced positive year-over-year growth. No small contribution to this jump was the weakening economy, election cycle and new administration.

