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News Consumption is Changing

by Jon Henke | October 10, 2008 at 12:32 AM
in

The daily circulation of the top Newspapers in the country in 2008...


 

The daily circulation (visits) for Daily Kos...

 

 

 

The numbers are not perfectly equivalent, but they are striking, nonetheless.  This means something.

  • Top newspaper: 2.28 million

  • Top political blog: 2.68 million

 

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One story per visit

Submitted by timwindsor on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 06:18.

Take a look at the full chart at the link. Kos nets almost exactly one page per visit. That means one STORY per visit. Someone buying USAToday will certainly read a lot more than one story.

So these aren't even close to equivalent stats for measuring readership.

(Also, I'd suspect they're flawed. From what we know of the 80/20 rule, about a fifth of the readers of Kos are probably heavy users, meaning that for these stats to work. a good deal of the visitors to the site would have to view zero pages, an impossibility.)

Still, the growth of blogs as a medium is clearly eating into the audience that is reading newspapers less and less over time.

 

Take a look at the full chart

Submitted by Jon Henke on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 08:27.

Take a look at the full chart at the link. Kos nets almost exactly one page per visit. That means one STORY per visit. Someone buying USAToday will certainly read a lot more than one story.

No, it doesn't mean "one story per visit."  It means one page.  It looks like about 60% of people coming to Daily Kos land on the front page, so a majority of visitors are seeing many stories.

And of course, "circulation" does not necessarily equal "readership".  Both numbers are higher than the number of people who actually read the site/newspaper in real depth.

The 1 page view per visit statistic means that the vast majority of people who read the site either (a) read only the front page and do not click through to the comment section or diaries, or (b) reach the site by visiting a single diary/story and do not click through to read the front page.  That's interesting, but not terribly relevant to the post, any more than it would be relevant to discard newspaper circulation numbers because some people only read the sports section and don't also check the financial news.

I not sure what this means

Submitted by Big Ben 4 liberty on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 08:58.

other than anyone who gets their news from Daily Kos must truly be a Kool-Aid drinker.

Not to let facts get in the way of a good story...

Submitted by johnmeister on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 11:06.

But since you are talking about news consumption, don't you think you would want to do a simple google search and add this data to your totals???

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/10/nytimes-surges-cnet-slumps/

details, details...

Apples and Oranges

Submitted by Jim Dandy to the Rescue on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 13:30.

This goes back to the root frustration of Right-Wing ideologues:  WHY is it that my ideas are not catching on more?  Answer:  THEY ARE BEING UNFAIRLY SUPPRESSED BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA!!

Hence the growth of HateRadio and " New Media"  Like the National Review, NewsMax, and other organs of right-wing propaganda.

The corollary, of course, is glee whenever those hated " Mainstream Media" oppressors get theirs: Nothing so warms the cockles of right-wing hearts as much as learning that the NY Times or LA Times is losing subscribers.  The idea is that they are leaving the NY Times in droves and joining NewsMax or NewsBusters or National Review.

If you add the hardcopy subscribers to the page views on nytimes.com, as the poster above shows us, it is a wildly different story.  Turns out people are more and more accessing the Web for their news, and as Patrick Ruffini knows, they ain't going to NewsMax or the NextRight for their daily news.  They are going to Daily Kos, Eschaton, Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Firedoglake, and many other news sites and news blogs.

Oh, well.  Next theory, other than " Our ideas suck, and no one wants to hear them".  LOL!

 

Ahh, the minstrel show performer does his next act!

Submitted by Big Ben 4 liberty on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 20:18.

Sorry dude but conservative talk radio and conservative sites are strong and growing.  Your obnoxious presecence here being proof.  If they were irrelevant as you claim than your leftie ass would be on Daily Kos laughing at our irrelevance rather trying to convince us that we somehow are irrelevant.  Truly, the only hater here is you my friend. 

Where's the Conservative Daily Kos?

Submitted by Daltonsbriefs on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 18:00.

I'll even agree with the libbies above, there isn't a conservative Daily Kos ... yet.  We own the radio waves, they own the television stations.  The web will be fought out, and I think we'll end up with a couple strong contenders.  

Back to the point of the post, newspapers are in a solid decline.  I know I don't read one, why read a paper when you have an rss reader.  Heck, they waste paper.

 

Same stuff, different media

Submitted by Tom Desrosier on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 21:00.

I blogged about this very thing today.  Whats interesting is that content seems  pretty consistent between paper and web.

Take a look:  http://www.dare2believe.com

Tom