Who's Hot in
Election News?
News flash: CNN dominates the major news organizations online.
That's the verdict of our tally of news searches during last week's election brouhaha. The 20 most popular TV news networks and newspapers are below, with the percentage of searches each organization got among the top 20:
41.3% CNN
14.2% The Drudge Report
10.7% MSNBC
5.9% ABC News
5.2% New York Times
4.7% Fox News
4.1% USA Today
2.6% Washington Post
2.1% CBS News
1.9% NBC News
1.1% Miami Herald
1.1% Wall Street Journal
0.9% Los Angeles Times
0.9% C-SPAN
0.8% Chicago Tribune
0.7% Boston Globe
0.7% Florida newspapers
0.6% Dallas Morning News
0.3% New York Daily News
0.2% Orlando Sentinel
And no, don't bother asking for a search recount.
CNN got a whopping 41% of the top 20 searches, and if you throw out Matt Drudge (as ABC just did) the CNN number gets close to 50%. As noted in yesterday's report, CNN would have been #2 on this week's Lycos 50 if we didn't exclude commercial entities. That's amazing.
The Drudge Report isn't a true news site, after all, and most of the Drudge action last week was due to his promise to release early editions of the exit polls reports. Still, 14.2% (nearly three times the New York Times) is quite a comment on the Drudge's tidbit-mongering power.
And: Web users heavily favor TV news sites over newspaper sites. Four out of five newshounds turned to a TV network site instead of a newspaper site. How come? Perhaps Web users figure an older electronic medium (TV) will know better how to use a newer electronic medium (the Web)?
And though last week's news was all about Florida, nearly 98% of Web users turned to national news sites instead of local Florida sites. We included the term "Florida newspapers" in this group on the assumption that lots of people would be searching for local angles. But instead Web users turned to CNN, MSNBC (a very strong showing) and eight other national outlets before the Miami Herald.
Even with the power of the Internet to bring any local paper to your desk, people prefer typing in a famous national name like CNN (or Lycos News!) to hunting up the local experts.
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And now a personal note: this is my last edition of the Lycos 50. After 15 months and nearly 300 reports I'm leaving the Lycos 50 in the capable hands of the energetic Aaron Schatz, who has been learning the ropes here for the last month.
I'd like to thank in particular Doug Beeferman and Kathy O'Reilly, without whom the Lycos 50 simply wouldn't have been a success. Doug is the brainiac who makes it possible for us to slice and dice millions of search queries every day. Kathy has been an indefatigable evangelist for the Lycos 50 ever since it began.
Thanks also go to our semi-voluntary support crew: David Yuknat on code, Lisa Vergow on graphics, Ben Sturner and Katie Janisko in PR, Jon Levine in administration, and many others too numerous to mention. And a special tip of the cap to our partners who have spread the Lycos 50 around the globe: in Japan, Italy, Canada, France, The Netherlands and even Sweden.
And of course thanks to you, gentle readers, for your continued interest in the Lycos 50. The pleasure has been mine. Please tune in tomorrow for the first edition of The Lycos 50 with Aaron Schatz.
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