Vote Recount Yields Clear Winners: Online Newspapers

Some of the biggest beneficiaries of the protracted election confusion are the online versions of daily newspapers.

The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other papers have recorded record Web audiences over the last few weeks--in some cases their highest ever.

Newspaper sites also saw their audiences spike after the release of independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal two years ago, and during other major news events. But media experts say that the election controversy offers a special case--compelling, complex and data-intensive. It demands a depth of analysis and graphical finesse that make an interactive Web site the most effective news medium.

A wide range of sites oriented toward news and politics have similarly gained new users in the last month--CNN.com, for example, tripled its standard audience, according to the Web research firm Nielsen/NetRatings.

But newspaper sites, often viewed by the Internet industry as technological laggards, may have the most to gain. And the rich range of local angles to a national story may make newspaper sites better equipped to provide the comprehensive view that some readers want.

Metropolitan and national papers could ride this event to substantially higher online readership in the long run, experts say, because the public is seeking political information online in rapidly rising numbers.

A study released Sunday by the Pew Research Center said that nearly one in five Americans sought election news online this year, compared with only 4% in 1996.

“This may be a unique opportunity for newspapers to show audiences a real reason to come to their sites” instead of seeking more generic reporting found on the news pages of general-interest Web portals, said John V. Pavlik, who heads the Center for New Media at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

“The question is: Will newspapers keep devoting resources to original reporting, putting the stories online without waiting for the next day’s paper?” he said. “If they go back to business as usual, the audience will go back to Yahoo.”

That reverse migration would be a variation on the experience of CNN, the cable news broadcaster.

“CNN was basically built by the Gulf War crisis” in 1991, said David Card, a media analyst with Web researcher Jupiter Communications. Since then, the network’s audience has peaked at every major news event--from the O.J. Simpson trial in 1994 to the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. After each crisis, many of those viewers defected back to the other TV networks.

In the short history of Web news, news audiences have also fluctuated in the same way but still maintained a consistent upward trend, analysts say.

Richard Core, editor of LATimes.com, confirmed that the Times’ Web site sees an audience spike after major news events; then readership falls off--but never all the way back to initial levels.

In the case of the election, newspaper sites gained most of their new users among people at work. Those readers typically do not have the option of turning on the TV or radio for a news report, but they can click to a Web site for a quick hit on the latest electoral twist.

For The Times, the number of Web users visiting the site from work nearly tripled in the week following the election; at the Post the audience more than doubled. Other newspapers also enjoyed substantial gains, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Mark Stencel, managing editor of political news at Washingtonpost.com, said that during President Clinton’s impeachment odyssey, the Post site received massive audience gains, but the election has easily eclipsed even those.

“Our 14 highest traffic days ever have all been in this election period,” and daily traffic on average has been above the highest day ever recorded before the election, he said.

Industry analysts say that to keep those readers, sites must add or update stories and graphics continuously.

“One of the goals would be to drive people back to the print newspaper, but you have to show your audience that you are actually timely” by refreshing content constantly, said Jupiter’s Card. “Sites have to offer compelling reasons for their audience to come back.”

Avid reader interest in the election story--which has sometimes changed radically hour by hour--has compelled newspapers to update their pages more frequently than usual, some editors say.

But newspapers are often leery of being scooped by their own Web sites, and they worry that rushing stories online will lead to an increase in errors--as many online, broadcast and print media realized to their horror when they prematurely called the election for George W. Bush last month.

The urgent pull to constantly augment a site may even divert resources away from in-depth investigations, something that major news organizations are best equipped to offer, said Paul Grabowicz, director of the New Media Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

“Credible news organizations that are willing to put some resources into the story can dig out what the facts are and move beyond the charges being flung back and forth,” he said.

And as dedicated Internet content providers and, more recently, retailers have painfully learned, large audiences do not necessarily mean profitable enterprises. Many such companies have been forced into bankruptcy--including some with millions of regular users.

So far, few if any newspaper Web sites have proved profitable.

“I think we’re going to see a very similar trend in online news as we’ve seen in e-commerce,” said Allen Weiner, vice president for analytical services at Nielsen/NetRatings. “The companies with [established offline] brands, such as Target, are doing pretty well in the world of e-commerce,” unlike most Web-only endeavors.

He added: “The online news business is moving the same way. The news sources that have brands and [traditional print or broadcast media] have an online advantage.”

Part of the advantage that newspapers offer, but have yet to fully exploit, is the local angle, said Columbia’s Pavlik. But that may be changing.

The Monica Lewinsky report “was mainly a national event, and there wasn’t a lot that newspapers did to report that story locally. With the election there are a lot of issues that relate to local communities,” Pavlik said.

Success “is going to depend on how well the media tell the story and tell it on a local level,” he added.

Others remain skeptical that the election will prove to be much of a breakthrough for online newspapers.

Grabowicz saw the huge new audiences for news sites as primarily tuning in for “entertainment value” that will soon fade.

The event has become a national political highway accident that a limited population of news junkies can’t seem to turn away from.

“You have the Princess Diana syndrome here,” he said.

*

Times staff writer Jube Shiver in Washington contributed to this article.