Frank Ba
reports that newspaper blogs’ audience is growing fast (of course, that is in part because so many of them are new):
The number of visitors to the blog pages of the top 10 online newspapers grew 210% in the past year, far outpacing growth to the parent sites. Nielsen/NetRatings found that while the unique audience to online newspapers grew 9% from December 2005 to December 2006, the number of visitors to blog pages at the top newspapers skyrocketed and accounted for 13% of the parent sites’ total traffic. Here are the most popular online newspaper blogs and their estimated December audiences:
* USATODAY.com blogs, 1.239 million
* The New York Times’ blogs, 1.173 million
* SFGate blogs, 515,000
* Washingtonpost.com blogs, 433,000
* Boston.com blogs, 388,000.
Note also that the definition of blogs is up for grabs. Many times, newspapers use blogging software as a means to get up news updates and such; it is the world’s lightest, easiest, cheapest content management system and it’s a smart use. But not all these blogs link out in conversation. Still, I’ll bet this helps take the cooties off the word ‘blog’ in newsrooms.
