Editor & Publisher has published a list of the 30 top newspaper web sites based on unique visitors. Not surprisingly, the Miami Herald is not on the list.
Many local bloggers, including yours truly, have lamented the Herald's online offering. MHMC has paid lip service to changing with the times but real change is slow in coming. The issue is twofold, content and layout. Addressing the content issue is much more difficult in the short run. The paper's reporters are who they are, the columnists are who they are and the editors are who they are. There's a lot of institutionalized attitudes at MHMC that prevent the paper from being what it could be.
But there's no excuse for the clumsy, stupid, and frustrating functionality of herald.com and elnuevoherald.com. All it takes is hiring the right people and spending the money necessary to get it done. If MHMC doesn't take those steps while their dead-tree circulation drops, they risk losing readers to national newspaper web sites, those from other cities, and perhaps in the future web-only local newspapers.
Below is the list. You'll notice that they aren't all markets bigger than Miami. In fact Seattle has two newspapers on the list. You'll also notice that there is only one McClatchy newspaper on the list, KansasCity.com (The Kansas City Star) at number 30. This despite the fact that McClatchy is the "third-largest newspaper publisher in America".
Top 30 Newspaper Websites, November 2007
Site -- Unique Audience (000) -- % Change/Uniques
NYTimes.com -- 18,930 -- 51.5%
USATODAY.com -- 9,563 -- (-6.0%)
washingtonpost.com -- 9,516 -- 16.8%
Wall Street Journal Online -- 5,630 -- 57.4% -
Newsday -- 5,350 -- 182.1%
Boston.com -- 4,839 -- 10.1%
LA Times -- 4,590 -- 5.9% -
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 3,635 -- (-5.6%) --
New York Post -- 3,390 -- 21.5%
Village Voice -- 2,774 -- 127.9%
Chicago Tribune -- 2,707 -- (-14.3%) -
NY Daily News Online Edition -- 2,679 -- 2.7%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 2,362 -- 42.9%
The Houston Chronicle -- 2,346 -- (-26.6%)
Chicago Sun-Times -- 2,196 -- 15.9%
DallasNews.com -- 2,102 -- 6.2%
International Herald Tribune -- 2,075 -- 13.4%
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 1,886 -- 31.9%
The Seattle Times -- 1,797 -- (-11.0%)
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 1,648 -- (-7.6%)
Ottaway Newspapers -- 1,549 -- (-10.3%)
Azcentral.com -- 1,462 -- (-24.2%)
Baltimore Sun -- 1,448 -- 41.5%
Philly.com -- 1,447 -- (-15.4%)
Orlando Sentinel -- 1,374 -- 27.1%
NJ.com -- 1,363 -- 13.4%
The Politico -- 1,363 -- N/A
MercuryNews.com -- 1,342 -- (-23.9%)
Detroit Free Press -- 1,265 -- (-17.7%)
KansasCity.com -- 1,260 -- 5.0%
1 comment:
The last few days, I've been having trouble opening the Miami Herald in both Firefox and Opera. But it worked fin in IE. Maybe it's something with my computer, but it seemed really weird.
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