Art Smith at Ogden Newspapers

Recently I have been involved in some great email exchanges with writers that I admire. Two of them are Michael Hodgson and Kris Versteegen. Well, the point was made that traditional media was not dying, just morphing to new platforms.

Let’s take a look at the facts. Nielsen reported this the first of the year.

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.

Here’s the Nielsen list for August:

NYTimes.com — 14,277,000 — (-27%)

washingtonpost.com — 11,565,000 — 29%

USATODAY.com — 9,761,000 — (-6%)

Daily News Online Edition — 9,131,000 — 112%
LA Times — 8,938,000 — 2%

Wall Street Journal Online — 8,341,000 — (-4%)
New York Post — 6,535,000 — 32%
Boston.com — 5,274,000 — 8%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 5,092,000 — 13%
Chicago Tribune — 4,442,000 — 14%

Politico — 3,401,000 — 47%
NJ.com — 2,926,000 — 41%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 2,747,000 — (-31%)
The Houston Chronicle — 2,569,000 — (-3%)
Philly.com — 2,500,000 — 47%

Chicago Sun-Times — 2,480,000 — (-6%)
Newsday — 2,428,000 — (-28%)
The Sacramento Bee — 2,426,000 — 84%
Orlando Sentinel — 2,089,000 — 49%
The Seattle Times — 2,040,000 — 55%

Azcentral.com — 1,999,000 — 41%
MercuryNews.com — 1,871,000 — 16%
DallasNews.com – The Dallas Morning News — 1,832,000 — (-12%)
MiamiHerald.com — 1,829,000 — 36%
The Washington Times — 1,803,000 — 56%

tampabay.com — 1,758,000 — 24%
KansasCity.com — 1,708,000 — 59%
Baltimore Sun — 1,697,000 — 7%
Star Tribune — 1,662,000 — 8%
Detroit Free Press — 1,648,000 — 9%

Look at those numbers. And the numbers are also big when it comes to good magazines, and vertical publications that offer content online.

Why? Because most people want their news and serious information delivered by reputable brands. They know that journalists who work for those brands dig for the story, present both sides, and can back up what they write with facts. Editors make sure of that.

We see this on Channel Signal all the time. We have a Channel called Online Traditional Media, and the traffic is almost always much larger then any blog. Online Traditional Media is not dead. If anything it is growing. And as it morps it will get healthier as it develops a new system of payment.

I believe that people do want the facts, especially when first trying to understand an issue.

So, media employing professional journalists (to escape titles for a moment) will find a way to make money. Consumers understand the value and will pay for the privilege of solid information.

And we need debate and dialogue that is filtered with facts and reason. Spewing just isn’t working for me anymore.