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Essay
Ownership
(Note: the data on the ownership
section was updated March 17, 2005 with adjusted figures from
Nielsen NetRatings and with additional data from comScore
MediaMetrix.)
By the Project for Excellence in Journalism
Who owns the Web?
Has the people's medium been taken over by big media? Or
does attention to the big companies and their popular sites,
the most obvious part of the Web, miss the energy and verve
of the Internet?
In our inaugural report last year, we suggested that there
were, in effect, two Internets: one that aggregated large
numbers of users around a limited number of sites, and another
that was rapidly changing, full of energy and innovation.
The success of blogs
in 2004 suggests that this other, less visible Internet
is even more robust now than a year earlier. But data on where
people go on the Internet also suggest that at the same time
the biggest sites are getting even bigger.
In examining the top sites with the most traffic, there were
three main story lines worth noting in 2004.
- First, the big are getting bigger, something we also saw
a year earlier.
- Second, there are signs that local news may be gaining
force.
- Third, two new players are emerging in the top 20 Web
sites.
Big, Bigger, Biggest
While the Internet allows for a nearly infinite choice of
news outlets, in practice a few sites dominate, and in 2004
they appeared to be separating themselves even more from the
rest of the Web.
Two organizations are the central sources for online traffic
figures, Nielsen//Net Ratings and Comscore MediaMetrix. Both
show surges in 2004 traffic among the top sites, though their
numbers for specific sites vary somewhat.
The top 20 news sites, as measured by Nielsen//Net Ratings,
averaged 69.6 million visitors per month from January through
October 2004.
Unique Audience for Top 20 News and Information Sites
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These numbers have changed from our original calculations
which at times double counted visitors. These revised
numbers come directly from Nielsen//Net Ratings and
include no duplicated audience figures.
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When it comes to who is at the top of the top, both Nielsen//Net
Ratings and comScore show three sites dominating between January
and October 2004. CNN, Yahoo News and MSNBC, each averaged
around 20 million unique visitors a month in the first ten
months of 2004. A fourth site, AOL, is either in line with
these other three or slightly below them depending on whose
traffic numbers are used.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings data, CNN led the way with
23 million, followed by Yahoo News with 21.4 million and MSNBC
with 21 million. AOL News, according to these figures, trails
behind with 14.4 million unique visitors, a figure quite different
than that reported by comScore. ComScore reports Yahoo! in
the lead with an average of 23.2 million, followed by AOL
News at 22.6 million. CNN and MSNBC then follow with 21.3
million and 19.3 million, respectively.
Top Online News Sites (Nielsen)
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An average of January to October 2004 monthly unique
visitors
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After that there was a huge dropoff in traffic - an average
of around 7.1 million visitors a month. Through October of
2004, Yahoo News showed the most growth among the top three
sites since 2003, up 27%. CNN was up 15% and MSNBC 3%.
"Traditional" journalism brands still seem to hold
the most appeal. Of the top 25 Nielsen//NetRatings sites from
January to October 2004, 17 were associated with traditional
news companies - those that produce their own offline content
for newspapers, television, or magazines.
Top Online News Sites (comScore)
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An average of January 2004-October 2004 monthly data.
All Persons at U.S. Home/Work/College-University Locations.
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Five sites are unique and cannot be linked to traditional
offline news providers. The three sites that aggregate data
from other news services and do not do any original reporting
are AOL News, Yahoo! News, and Google News. AOL News and Yahoo!
News use editors who post stories from other news services
and do not do any original reporting. And while Google News
also offers a considerable number of wire stories from other
news sources, it does not use human editors but rather an
algorithm to find articles, and a specific search often turns
up material from outside the mainstream news pool.
A second category among news sites not linked to traditional
offline news providers comprises those that produce Internet-only
content, such as Drudge Report and Slate.
And the last category is those sites that produce local online
news content: Advance Internet, World Now and Internet Broadcasting
Systems.
In short, despite the attention paid to blogs and the openness
of the Internet, when it comes to sheer numbers, online news
appears dominated by a handful of traditional big media sites,
and for now that domination appears to be increasing.
Local News May Be Getting More Important
Looking further down the list, another distinction is worth
noting. Several of the names are not actually single Web sites,
but aggregations of various sites owned by the same company,
such as Gannett's local newspapers, or those of Knight Ridder.
Of the top sites for the first ten months of 2004, 12 were
actually single sites. In addition to CNN, Yahoo! and MSNBC,
they include, in order, AOL, The New York Times, USA Today,
ABC News, Google News, WashingtonPost.com, Fox News, CBS,
and the BBC.
Some of the strongest growth online was occurring at those
sites operating at the local level. For the first ten months
of 2004, Gannett and Knight Ridder, which report the traffic
of all their newspapers' Web sites in aggregate, saw increases
of 37% and 22%, respectively, over the previous year.
And Internet Broadcasting Systems, a company that operates
local-TV news Web sites, experienced an increase of 36%.
New Players in the Top 20
Still a third story line in online news growth in 2004 involves
two other sites, the Associated Press's CustomNews service
and Google News, which gained footholds in the top 20 news
sites for the first time.
AP CustomNews is designed primarily for smaller sites. The
AP sends stories to a site in the newspaper's own design and
structure, thereby requiring minimal investment in hardware,
bandwidth or staff.
Over the first ten months of 2004, AP CustomNews received
6.2 million unique visitors a month.
Google News is unique among the news sites in the top-20
list in 2004. In addition to its famous search engine, which
allows visitors to search for a seemingly endless supply of
news stories on topics they are interested in, the site uses
a computer algorithm that selects headlines based on how and
where the stories appear in other places on the Web. While the headlines are often from major players
like Reuters.com, they are frequently news stories from obscure
and unorthodox news and political sites. The site grew from
4.1 million unique visitors in January 2004, the first time
it was reported, to 7.5 million two months later. Over all,
from January through October, it averaged six million unique
visitors a month.
Where People Are Going for Online News
Survey data about what kinds of sites people go to for online
news help explain the increases seen among sites like Yahoo!
Such sites don't create original content but rather pull together
and pass along information from other sources. More people
report regularly going to news pages such as Yahoo! or AOL
than to any other form of Web site (13%), according to the
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, followed
by network TV news sites (10%). Just 3%, on the other hand,
report regularly going to opinion or online magazine sites.
Destination of Online News Consumers
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Regularly
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Sometimes
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Hardly
Ever
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Never
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Don't
Know
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| ISP News Pages (e.g. Yahoo, AOL) |
13%
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17
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8
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62
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0
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| Network TV Pages |
10%
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19
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10
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61
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0
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| Major Newspaper Sites |
6%
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13
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9
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71
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1
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| Local TV/Newspaper Sites |
9%
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19
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11
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61
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0
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| Online News/Opinion Magazine Sites |
3%
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7
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6
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84
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0
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qu: Now I'd like to know how often you read certain
types of publications. As I read each, tell me if you
read them regularly, sometimes, hardly ever or never.
Source: Pew Research Center for The People & The
Press, "Pew Research Biennial News Consumption
Survey," June 8, 2004.
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Another polling company, MORI Research, looked at where people
go specifically for local news and found that internet service
providers' pages were making headway there as well. For now,
local newspapers are still the most popular places, but the
data suggest their popularity is declining and facing stiff
competition from Google. According to the MORI data, 40% of
people who go online for local news use newspaper Web sites,
down from 62% in 2002. Google, on the other hand, went from
less than 3% in 2002 to 39% in 2004. Yahoo!, meanwhile, seems
also to have lost ground as a local news source online, declining
as a destination from 55% in 2002 to 37% in 2004.
Online Media Ownership Trends
Of the 25 online news sites (see footnote #1 for complete
list of the 25 sites), eight in ten are owned by media companies
in the 100 largest in revenue as reported by Advertising Age.
For example, CNN was the most visited news site and AOL News
was fourth. Both sites are owned by Time Warner, the leading
media company in total U.S. media revenue in 2003.
Ownership of Most Popular News Sites
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By company size, January through October, 2004
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Nearly a third (32%) of the top 25 news sites in 2004 were
owned by the top ten U.S. media companies; more than half
(56%) were owned by the 20 biggest companies. So the data
point to heavy concentration of ownership of the news the
public is getting online.
With the reelection of President Bush in November, one can
only speculate how Bush's second term will affect trends in
media ownership and concentration. The FCC was partly successful
in his first term in increasing the size of the national television
audience that any one company was allowed to reach, but many
of the modifications it sought were thrown out by the courts.
Click
here to view footnotes for this section.
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