Etats-Unis : l'audience des sites de presse en hausse de 20% Une bonne nouvelle pour la presse : les sites de journaux américains ont enregistré une hausse de 20% de leur audience entre septembre 2010 et septembre 201, annonce la Newspaper Association of America. Toute une autre série d'indicateurs sont aux verts pour les journaux en ligne : leur audience quotidienne a grimé de 21%le nombre de pages vues a progressé de 10%le temps passé a augmenté de 9%Plus étonnant : "ces fortes croissances d'audience ont coïncidé avec l'introduction de sites payants chez de nombreux journaux", a noté la présidente de la NAA.
Son explication : "les consommateurs donnent beaucoup de valeur aux contenus créés par la presse - et ils cherchent des sites de journaux pour y accéder. " Autre analyse possible : à la faveur de ces lancements de versions payantes, les journaux ont investi massivement en communication, à l'instar de l'agressive campagne de publicité pour le site du New York Times qui fleurissait dans le métro new-yorkais. WSJ Social, For a World Where Facebook Is the New Internet. Study shows female readership dominates 8 of the 25 top news sites. The number of women reading newspapers has steadily grown over the years. They have become "the fastest-growing, most advertised attractive audience in town. " A study from ComScore noted, "They're embracing the internet in a way that men are not. " A new survey by Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that they also make up the majority of readers for 8 out of the top 25 news sites.
The 8 websites are (in order from highest percentage to lowest) Topix, Aol News, Examiner.com, Bing News, Yahoo, MSNBC, ABC News, and Huffington Post. Poynter posted a chart of the numbers here. Many of the top sites like Aol News, Bing, and Yahoo are multi-service providers. Also at the top were local news aggregators Topix and Examiner.com.
Online news sites attracted a more educated audience. 25 to 29 percent of top news site users had a bachelor's degree. This same study also showed that Google is the biggest news site referrer and that many news sites depend on casual viewers. The State of the News Media 2011. New York Times experiments with perverse incentives. The New York Times paywall (don't call it a paywall? Right...) is a strategic error, and not even a very complicated one. So there's some science behind it, and the number of articles you can see before you have to pay (20) has been calculated from actual traffic data rather than just pulled out of the air, which is a good start. And it's always good to see a news org putting in some serious R&D, which at $40 million just to develop NYT's paywall definitely counts.
It's not as if there's nothing about the move to like - it's considerably more thoughtful and nuanced than TimesSelect or the other, many, failed experiments in charging for (non-porn, non-finance) content that have failed over the past decade and a half. But the problem here isn't with the pricing model or the numerous potential technical work-arounds but with the fundamental strategy and what it says about what the New York Times thinks it is and thinks it is for. 2010-2011: Etat des lieux des médias américains. WNN - Home Page.