Hispanic, Black Digital News Websites See Increase In Traffic

For the 97 news outlets whose primary domain – the outlet’s flagship website – averaged at least 10 million unique visitors per month, traffic rose 11% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the state of the U.S. news media. The average monthly unique visitors for these primary domains was 32.1 million in 2020, compared with 29 million visitors in 2019, while the average minutes per visit to these domains was down to 1.95, according to Comscore data.

Newspapers made for and by the two largest racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States – Hispanic Americans and Black Americans – have recently experienced audience declines, while Univision and Telemundo have fared better with both network and local television audiences. This kind of audience growth is similar to increases that have been seen broadly in the cable, network and local TV news sectors this year.

Since 2004, Pew Research Center has published analyses of key audience and economic indicators for a variety of sectors within the U.S. news media industry, presented as a series of fact sheets showcasing the most important data points for each sector in an easy-to-digest format. The final set for 2021, released today, includes fact sheets on the digital news and Hispanic and Black news media sectors.

Among the key findings for digital news:

• About seven-in-ten (73%) of the news outlets studied have mobile apps available on at least one of the two main mobile platforms (iOS and Android). Roughly two-in-three (64%) have apps for both platforms, while 9% have just an iOS app. None of the digital news outlets studied offer only an Android app.
• Nearly all of the outlets studied offer newsletters (93%) and have an official presence on Flipboard (95%) or Apple News (88%). News outlets are also adopting other digital outreach and engagement methods: three-in-four release podcasts, and 39% allow comments on their articles.
• News outlets are highly likely to have an official presence on social media platforms. All outlets studied here have an official presence on Facebook and Twitter, while at least nine-in-ten also have a presence on Instagram (96%) and YouTube (93%). Fewer outlets have accounts on TikTok (57%) and Snapchat (26%).
• Digital advertising continues to grow as a proportion of total advertising revenue, a trend driven in large part by growth in advertising on mobile devices. In 2020, according to eMarketer estimates, digital advertising grew to $152 billion, an increase from $132 billion in 2019 and $111 billion in 2018. It was estimated to comprise 63% of all advertising revenue, up from 55% in 2019 and 49% in 2018. (Note: The estimates above are for all digital advertising revenue, not just for news outlets, and thus are an indicator of the general direction of the economic health of the digital realm rather than the digital news sector specifically.)
• Mobile advertising revenue increased roughly sixtyfold between 2011 and 2020, from $1.7 billion in 2011 to $102.6 billion in 2020, while desktop advertising revenue increased from $30.3 billion to $40.6 billion over the same period. Looking at the change between 2020 and 2019, mobile advertising revenue increased from $87.3 billion in 2019 to $102.6 billion in 2020. It is worth noting that mobile advertising revenue comprised two-thirds of digital advertising revenue on mobile and desktop in 2020, up from 5% in 2011.
• Digital display advertising revenue continued to be dominated by just a few companies in 2020, with Facebook comprising 45% of this advertising segment, according to eMarketer estimates. Google accounted for 10% of this segment, while no other company controlled more than 5% of this market.
• Roughly 18,000 employees worked as reporters, editors, photographers or videographers in the newsrooms of digital-native outlets in 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). The median annual wage for reporters was roughly $73,000 and $69,000 for editors in 2020, while the median annual wage for photographers was roughly $75,000. Data was unavailable for television, film and video editors and camera operators in the industry in 2020.

Among the key findings for Hispanic and Black news media:

• Viewership for the national newscasts of Univision increased from 2019 to 2020 for all three national time slots studied. According to Comscore TV Essentials® data, Univision saw a 10% increase for the evening news time slot (4 p.m. to 7 p.m.), to an average audience of about 1.1 million; a 32% increase in late night news (11 p.m. to 2 a.m.); and a 12% increase for the morning news time slot (6 a.m. to 9 a.m.).
• Audience figures for Telemundo’s national newscasts varied in 2020, increasing by 15% in the late night news time slot (to an average audience of about 460,000) and decreasing by 9% for evening news (to an average audience of around 700,000). Average audience in this fact sheet is defined as the average number of TVs tuned to an entity throughout a time period.
• Univision and Telemundo also have local affiliate stations that carry their own original news programming. In 2020, average viewership for Univision affiliates increased in three key time slots, while average viewership for Telemundo affiliates was more varied for these time slots.
• Univision’s total revenue saw a 5% decline, to $2.5 billion in 2020, according to Univision and public filings by the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Note: Telemundo’s revenue is not available for analysis, as its parent company, Comcast, does not provide network-specific revenue.)

• Revenue for Spanish-language news radio continues to decline. Average station revenue for Spanish-language radio news stations that are listed in the BIA Advisory Services database saw a 22% decline from 2019 to 2020, for an overall decline of 31% since 2013, to just under $1 million.
• There are 15 newspapers owned by or oriented around Black Americans with recently reported circulation data. Among the eight papers with data for both 2020 and 2019, five saw their circulation drop by at least 10%, with the largest drop being 40% for the St. Louis American, according to the Alliance for Audited Media and Verified Audit Circulation.
• There are 195 newspapers listed by the Mapping Black Media Project by The Center for Community Media at the CUNY School of Journalism as being owned by or oriented toward Black Americans. However, few of those newspapers, or those listed as members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (the Black Press trade association), have regularly audited circulation figures, making it difficult to acquire audience figures for the sector as a whole.
• There are 49 radio stations and station networks, from 27 different states, that are owned by or oriented towards Black Americans, according to the Mapping Black Media Project, in addition to three local television stations: KSQA in Kansas, WHPR in Michigan and WHUT in Washington, D.C.
• In the absence of abundant audience or financial data, our survey data can shine some light on how Black Americans engage with the news: Black Americans are more likely than others to prefer to get their news on television and are more likely than any other group to follow local news very closely.