-- Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts

Traffic to newspaper Web sites has leveled-off and in some areas is declining, according to a new, controversial report from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. University

In part, the study revealed:

The websites of national “brand-name” newspapers are growing, whereas those of many local papers are not. The sites of national “brand-name” television networks are also experiencing increased traffic, as are those of local television and radio stations. However, sites connected to traditional news organizations are growing more slowly than those of the major nontraditional news disseminators, including aggregators, bloggers, and search engines and service providers.

The report relies on data from Compete.com.

But several bloggers and online news outlets pointed out flaws in the study’s methodology and with Web traffic measurement in general. PaidContent.org’s Rafat Ali wrote, “One red flag: Make sure you read the methodology and Appendix on where they got the data, and the methods for coming to these conclusions.”

In fact, the second sentence of the executive summary is: "In light of the continuing migration of Americans to online news, the evolving nature of Web technology, and the limits of our survey of websites, our assessments are necessarily speculative."

The report writers noted in the methodology section, “We chose to take a thinner but wider look at Internet-based news, examining traffic to 160 sites over a yearlong period in an effort to compare categories of sites.” The sample size within each category was small, and numbers from some cities with two newspapers (Chicago, New York) were combined. The sample choices were intentionally not random. Further, the researchers chose to use statistics only from Compete.com, deciding to forgo cross-referencing numbers, rankings and trends from other site traffic measurement firms.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Recovering Journalist): Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts wrote the Shorenstein report shows USAToday.com’s traffic has increased significantly, directly contradicting a report yesterday in TechCrunch.

The TechCrunch report, based on Compete.com data, “suggests that USAToday.com’s traffic has been dropping steadily over the past few months, in the wake of the site’s controversial redesign (which, in fairness, occurred just as the Shorenstein report was winding up,” Potts wrote. “But wait, there's more, and this illustrates the fallacy of Web statistics: TechCrunch also reports that Comscore's stats show USAToday.co's unique visitors falling 14 percent since March—half of what Compete.com shows. So USAToday.com traffic is either up, down, or down a lot over the past few months. Take your pick.”

USAToday.com Says Traffic Way Up (TechCrunch): “Less than twelve hours after I posted that USAToday’s traffic appears to be going the wrong way, they issue a press release  saying traffic is way up,” wrote TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington.

Flat-Lining Online (Reflections of a Newsosaur): Reflections of a Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter wrote, “In fairness, newspaper websites absolutely have more readers than broadcasters, because they have been publishing online much longer – and more effectively – than most broadcasters. Because papers have larger bases of site visitors, they have to add far more new readers than lower-traffic broadcast sites to achieve meaningful percentage gains in readership.

“With that said, however, a loss of traffic is still a loss in traffic.

“If it is not turned around, then newspapers can’t hope to maintain the double-digit increases in online advertising sales that have provided the sliver of silver lining in their otherwise gloomy earnings reports for the last five quarters.”

Mutter also pointed out the Shorenstein report contradicts Newspaper Association of America data (from Nielsen//NetRatings), that notes the newspaper online audience is continuing to break records in both time spend on newspaper Web sites and in unique audience members.

One a more positive note, this paragraph in the Shorenstein report is a take-away worth reading a few times:

“Although the sites of nontraditional news organizations are a threat to traditional news organizations, the latter have strengths they can leverage on the Web. Local news organizations are “brand names” within their communities, which can be used to their advantage. Their offline reach can also be used to drive traffic to their sites. Most important, they have a product—the news—that people want.”

Note: Part of this entry ran in the August 17 Online Publishing Update.