Newspapers Poised to Make a Comeback Online

MediaPost reports that newspapers online are reaching the coveted and elusive 18-34 demographic. However newspapers have always argued they reach a desirable, educated and age-diverse audience. Here’s what the MediaPost article says, citing Scarborough Research:

The Scarborough survey tracked 88 newspapers in the top 50 local markets from August 2004 to March 2007. It found that local newspaper audience weekly “coverage” or penetration grew 14%, from 6.4% of the total adult population in the year ending September 2005 to 7.3% in the year ending March 2007.

Scarborough also studied the group of “Web exclusive” young adults ages 18-34, who visit the Web site but don’t read the print edition. This cohort increased 21% over the course of the study, with average weekly penetration of Web sites among non-newspaper readers ages 18-34 increasing from 2.6% to 2.9%.

Newspaper sites have an opening now…

Many pure play “local search” sites have foundered or are foundering and that really leaves three constituencies — putting aside some notable verticals — IYPs, search engines and newspapers. Newspapers have content assets that the others don’t have. If they continue to improve usability on their sites they could see their traffic continue to gain and become “go to” local destinations in ways that they are not today.

Here are the top 30 US newspaper sites:

1. NYTimes.com — 17,177
2. USATODAY.com — 9,939
3. washingtonpost.com — 8,478
4. Newsday — 6,450
5. Wall Street Journal Online — 5,409
6. LA Times — 4,607
7. Boston.com — 4,364
8. Chicago Tribune — 3,891
9. Daily News Online Edition — 2,956
10. New York Post — 2,851
11. SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 2,785
12. Philly.com — 2,300
13. International Herald Tribune — 2,250
14. Village Voice Media — 2,224
15. Chicago Sun-Times — 2,186
16. Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 1,974
17. The Houston Chronicle — 1,946
18. The Seattle Times — 1,840
19. DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News — 1,828
20. Seattle Post-Intelligencer — 1,785
21. The Politico — 1,672
22. Orlando Sentinel — 1,522
23. NJ.com — 1,455
24. Azcentral.com — 1,435
25. Baltimore Sun — 1,332
26. MercuryNews.com — 1,315
27. The Detroit News — 1,256
28. The San Diego Union-Tribune — 1,180
29. Detroit Free Press — 1,168
30. The Washington Times — 1,161

Source: Nielsen (1/08); traffic in thousands

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Related: Four more publishers join the Yahoo! newspaper consortium. The problem is, with the Zillow and quadrantOne efforts, not to mention Yahoo! turmoil, I think the consortium will ultimately not achieve its lofty ambitions.