... It's become a popular meme in the blogosphere that more people read the New York Times online than on paper. While that's true, an order of magnitude more people read the Christian Science Monitor online than on paper. Digital Deliverance speculated a year ago that CSM had about 69,000 paper subscribers, and 1.7 million unique visitors per month to their website. In other words, by one count, roughly twenty-five times as many people read CSM online as on paper...
It's hard to summarize such an excellent technical article. But there are four very interesting points.
a) The Christian Science Monitor has the highest ratio of blogging references in comparison to it's relatively small real world circulation of roughly 71,000... with 9,578 links from 4,636 sources according to Technoratti. This is 134.90 links per thousand circulation (LpkC). It would appear far and away the the CSM is the most successful paper of record within the blogosphere.
b) USA Today the highest circulation US paper with 2,665,815 subscribers has 17.800 links from 10,861 sources for a LpkC ratio of 6.68, which is about average according to the newspapers Ethan tested. His mean was 14.43 links per thousand circulation.
c) The NY Times whom some (including myself) might mistakenly think would have a low link rate given it's pay to read archive appears to have the second highest link to circulation ratio of 63.08 links per thousand circulation (LpkC). This is a sure sign that their free for 2 weeks(?) pay to read historical articles policy really works in courting the blogosphere and still collecting money. I'm personally sort of disappointed by this as I'm disappointed by their pay and subscription practices. I have to give them credit though it seems to be very effective. I only hope that one day we'll have a much more historical understanding on their numbers. It would be nice to know what their numbers were like prior to their pay to read policy, and how much money they're making of their pay to read policy. It's like $4 or $5 an article, which seems a little steep, but I could see it being an ever growing source of revenue as it is heavily referenced in the blogosphere. Devils! :)
d) The Wall Street Journal is clearly is one of the least blogged about newspapers with their "notorious" policy "for hiding nearly all of its content behind a paid firewall". They have the second highest circulation of any US paper of 2,106,774, but there were only 910 links to them from 828 sources and their link per thousand subscribers ratio is only .40.
Just to reiterate this means for every 2,500 subscribers one person blogs about them. This compared to Christian Science Monitor's one blog post per 7.5 subscribers. That's quite an amazing difference. Perhaps we'll see everyone picking up on the NY Times way of doing things in the near future. They're evil but they're brilliant, I'll have to live with it.
The most blogged about or "bloggiest" newspapers according to Ethan are:
Christian Science Monitor - 134.90
New York Times - 63.08
Washington Post - 58.44
San Francisco Chronicle - 38.32
Boston Globe - 29.80
Seattle Post Intelligencer - 18.56
New York Post - 12.48
LA Times - 11.21"
So, if you've read my sorry take on it then you should really read the original post. Hopefully I added some value in my perspective.
LINK: Ethan's Weblog - My blog is in Cambridge, but my heart's in Accra
Also contained in Ethan's post is an excellent article about the Christian Science Monitor.
NAA: Presstime Profile: The Christian Science Monitor
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