Internet Newspapers: Are Some More Equal than Others?

In 450 years of existence, the written press has never faced a change with the intensity and consequences as those of the Internet. The decision of going online represents a whole set of opportunities and threats that publishers must carefully weigh. Once they have made the step, newspapers find themselves in a completely different competitive environment. They deal with different competitors, business models, customers and patterns of consumption. The present study explores such patterns of consumption by using data from 15 Spanish newspapers, covering time periods from 2 to 20 months. Characteristics of the printed newspapers and general patterns of the Internet are also analyzed in order to isolate the factors that enable an Internet newspaper to achieve a high level of readership. The findings indicate that reading patterns on the Internet strongly differ from those in the physical world, particularly when we consider weekday versus weekend circulation. The use of the newspaper is different too: reading of Internet newspapers is usually more functional and goal oriented, as indicated by the small number of pages read per visit. These and other results can provide publishers with valuable insights to understand this new frontier in the history of journalism.