Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

Figure 19: Media preference when gathering news and background information (based on a 
survey in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the 
United States in 2009) 
Source: PwC, 2009 
The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism issued “The State of the News Media”, 
featuring the top 10 news sites in the USA ranked by unique visitors (Figure 20) from 2005 to 
2008, based on an internet panel survey conducted by Nielsen. Remarkably, only three news 
organizations (New York Times, Gannett and Tribune) are in the top 10. In 2008, the three 
traditional newspaper organizations accounted for 22% of the total unique visitors among the 
top 10. This might indicate that newspaper companies are losing their print audience slowly to 
online news sources. 

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The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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Figure 20: Top News Websites
Source: PEW, 2009 
Based on a combination of website statistics, eBiz has compiled a top-15 of most visited 
online news sites in the US (Ebizmba, 2011). In this top-15, four (American) newspapers are 
listed; the New York Times (5
th
position), the Washington Post (9
th
position), the LA Times 
(10
th
position) and USA Today (13
th
position). News aggregator Yahoo News has the number 
one position with an estimated number of 70 million unique users per month. Broadcaster 
CNN is second, and attracts approximately 48 million unique visitors per month. The third 
place is occupied by MSNBC, another US broadcaster (47 million unique visitors per month). 
Five ‘new’ news providers are listed. In addition to Yahoo News, the list consists of Google 
News, the Huffington Post, Digg and Drudge Report. The list features only one European 
news provider: the BBC (18.5 million unique visitors).
In some European countries the websites of the big national newspapers and public service 
broadcasters rank in the top 10 or top 25. This is the case for instance in Germany (AGOF, 
2011), the UK (Ofcom, 2011) and the Netherlands (STIR, 2011). But new news aggregators 
such as Google News are also often among the top 25. Due to the expanding availability of 
news, news consumption has become more fragmented, but comprehensive, reliable and 
publicly available data on online news site visitors, as an indicator of market shares for the 
different news providers and the level of competition in the different European Members 
States, is virtually non existent.
Online distribution of news could implicate that newspapers, which publish their content 
online, have a potential worldwide audience. In practice most news consumers prefer national 
or local news sources in their own language, although some of the major news providers did 
manage to build a worldwide audience online (BBC News, CNN etc.). English, Spanish or 
Chinese news publishers and other news sites publishing in languages which are spoken by 
many people in different countries across the world are likely to benefit more from the 
worldwide potential of internet news distribution than news media in languages, which are 
spoken only by limited numbers of people.
In addition to the numbers of readers, website visitors and users of news apps, information on 
the socio-demographics, lifestyle, consumer and media behaviour of these users become 
increasingly important for advertisers, especially for targeted advertising. 

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