I’ve seen this blog post from Nieman’s journalism lab Twittered and otherwise repeated in the blogosphere the last week or so. Basically it argues that only three percent of newspaper reading occurs online. That doesn’t really pass the smell test for me, but Martin Langeveld has some decent arguments. So I thought I’d use his methodology to look at the Missourian and Vox magazine.
For those of you who don’t want to read the whole post, here’s the nut graf: Langveld’s findings on a national level didn’t play out at the local level, with either the Missourian or Vox magazine. Of 4 data points I tested, only 1 was predicted by his research.
I’ll start by mentioning that even if the study holds and only 3 percent of newspaper reading actually occurs online, we should be pretty careful about drawing conclusions from that. The real question for newspapers isn’t the percentage of newspaper reading that occurs online; it’s the percentage of online reading that happens at newspaper sites. Like I’ve said before, newspapers need to realize that their competition is no longer the folks down the street, it’s the entire rest of the world.
Let’s take the Missourian first. Langeveld’s study starts with some assumptions about total newspaper readership, from the NAA. We don’t need to mess with that because we have our own circulation figures: our most current rate card quotes 6,333 daily readers. The study assumes a multiplier of 2.128 readers for each daily copy, and 2.477 on Sunday. We publish Tuesday-Friday and Sunday, so we can do a little math:
6,333 weekday copies x 2.128 readers per copy = 13,508 weekday readers.
6,333 Sunday copies x 2.477 readers per copy = 15,687 Sunday readers.
Simple enough, right? Next we have to calculate how many pages each reader views. Langeveld assumes 24 per reader, which runs us into our first problem: the Missourian generally only publishes 16 pages per day. Langeveld’s educated guess was that a reader looks at about half the published pages, so we’ll assume 8 “pageviews” a day. More math:
13,508 readers per weekday x 8 pages = 108,064 pageviews per weekday
15,687 Sunday readers x 8 pages = 125,496 pageviews per Sunday
108,064 weekday views x 4 weekday papers = 432,256 weekday views.
432,256 weekday views + 125,496 Sunday pageviews = 557,752 print pageviews per week.
557,752 print pageviews per week x 52 weeks = 29,003,104 print pageviews per year
29,003,104 print pageviews per year / 12 months per year = 2,416,925 average pageviews per month.
Okay, so now that that’s done we can look at the Web numbers. Langeveld’s numbers came from Nielsen Web tracking via NAA, which I don’t really care for. At the Missourian, we use Google analytics to track our stats. So let’s look at our most recent data: from March 20 to April 19, we had 697,900 pageviews. That may be a high number (we got Fark‘d last week for about 20,000 extra views) so let’s look at the annual numbers. Back to the math:
From April 19, 2008 to April 19, 2009, Google reports ColumbiaMissourian.com had 7,101,991 pageviews.
7,101,991 / 12 months = 591,832 pageviews per month.
Clearly, the trend is upward, but let’s go with the lower average number here, just like we did on the print side. To the math again:
591,832 monthly pageviews online + 2,416,925 monthly pageviews in print = 3,008,757 total monthly pageviews.
(591,832 online / 3,008,757 total) * 100 = 19.67 percent of the Missourian’s monthly pageviews are online.
So at least on the Missourian side, we’re well above the 3 percent Langeveld claims for the national average. Some of that could be the fact that the Missourian is in a college town with a high penetration of broadband; some of it could be that we’re the smaller paper in a two-paper market. But at least on the face of it, Langeveld’s study doesn’t work for the Missourian.
But wait, there’s more: He also looked at time spent with print versus online. Using the same Nielsen numbers, he figured that people spend about 43 minutes per month looking at Web sites, and made a guess that print readers spent 25 minutes with the paper Monday-Saturday and 35 minutes Sunday. Given that we had to cut our page views by a third, I’m going to do the same with time spent for the paper (seems reasonable, right?) and assume 8.3 minutes weekday and 11.7 Sunday. Again, we don’t have Nielsen numbers for the Missourian Web site, but we have time spent per visit. Back to the math again:
From April 19, 2008 to April 19, 2009, the average visitor spent 00:02:27 on our site.
So we take (2.45 minutes * 365 days) = 894.25 minutes yearly /12 months = 74.52 minutes per month on the Web site.
8.3 minutes weekday * 4 weekday papers = 33.2 minutes weekly. Add 11.7 minutes Sunday = 44.9 per week.
So (44.9 per week * 52 weeks) = 2,334.8 / 12 months = 194.57 minutes per month in print.
74.52 minutes online + 194.57 minutes in print = 269.09 minutes total
(74.52 minutes online / 269.09 total) * 100 = 27.69 percent of all time spent with the Missourian is online.
Let’s do the same thing for Vox magazine. This one’s a little bit easier because the magazine is only published once a week and prints 12,500 copies. They’re generally 20 pages, so let’s assume an average reader reads 10 pages:
2.128 readers per issue * 12,500 copies = 26,600 readers per week
26,600 * 50 weeks of publication = 1,330,000 yearly readers
1,330,000 / 12 months = 110,833 readers per month
110,833 * 10 pages an issue = 1,108,330 pageviews per month
The Web stats are pretty easy too. For the past year, Vox has had 464,742 pageviews. Back to the math:
464,742 / 12 months = 38,728 views per month
38,728 online + 1,108,330 print = 1,147,058 total views per month
(38,728 online / 1,147,058 total) x 100 = 3.38 percent of views are online pageviews
So that number actually tracks pretty well with Langeveld’s assumptions about Web readership. And, let’s look at time on site as well. For the past year, the average time on site was 00:01:40. I’m going to use the higher Sunday time figure for Vox, since it’s a weekly publication (something more like a Sunday paper). So:
1.67 minutes * 365 days = 609.55 minutes per year.
609.55 / 12 = 50.8 online minutes per month
(11.7 minutes spent with the print * 50 weeks) 585 / 12 months = 48.75 print minutes per month.
Now that’s interesting — Vox users spend more time with the online site than the print site in any given week. My assumption on the reason for that rests on the fact that the Web site has content that people will come back to each week, like movie listings and a restaurant guide.
Now, there are some interesting criticisms of Langeveld’s study already out there. Hopefully this one will add to that list a bit.
His overall point — that we sometimes overestimate the Web audience — is true, but on a local level, publishers need to do their own analysis and know their own numbers to be able to make good decisions about their business future.
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