Fresh perspective on online newspapers

As newspaper owners prepare to install paywalls and charge readers for online access to news stories, some interesting research puts the issue in perspective. Statistics from NAA Nielsen show newspapers own less than one percent of the time US web users spend online.

More precisely huge numbers of readers visit newspaper sites, but few stay for long or read very much.

Martin Langeveld who wrote the story for the Nieman Journalism Lab says this indicates newspapers need to do more to build online market share. He thinks paywalls and attacking aggregators is only going to harm market share numbers.

My take is yes, there is a danger newspapers could simply fade into irrelevance if publishers don’t find ways to keep readers on-site for longer and read more pages. Ironically making them pay for content is likely to deepen reader relationships, although with far smaller audiences.

NAA/Nielsen stats show newspapers own less than 1 percent of U.S. online audience page views, time spent

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