Digital Influencer Report: Letter of Introduction

By David Capece, Managing Partner

2009 has been a major struggle for old media. There have been 11 significant newspaper bankruptcy filings this year, including owners of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Star Tribune of Minneapolis, and the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Online upstarts are building scalable business models with free, real-time content that wreaks havoc in the print world, potentially making newspapers obsolete. Further, advertisers are tasked with being more creative in pushing their ad budgets further. Not only are total budgets smaller, but they are rapidly being transitioned into online advertising, highlighted by an exploding infatuation with social media. Print advertising revenue fell 30% in the first half of the year, and there are fears that few newspapers will go to print as early as 2011.

Our team at Sparxoo embarked on this study, “Digital Influence in News & Politics,” to evaluate how drastically the landscape has shifted. We defined digital influence as having a strong content voice that users actively engage with and share across platforms. We developed a content authority index to measure strength of content voice, a social power index to measure engagement and sharing, and a multimedia success index to measure success via audio and video. Our team scoured for data that show the breadth and depth of consumer interaction with news & politics leaders, including overall traffic, YouTube presence, podcasting, Twitter followers, and Facebook fans. We considered 100 different properties ranging from household names to US News, The Drudge Report, and Christian Science Monitor (please see methodology for more details).

As we compiled the results, we wondered if the much-hyped Huffington Post had surpassed the New York Times or if new entrant Daily Beast had surged ahead of Newsweek. Given how far out of favor newspapers have fallen, we wondered if newspapers have any digital influence at all. We were surprised by the results and believe there are significant learnings to be found in these rankings.

The headline: “While new entrants such as the Huffington Post (founded in 2005) have built tremendous momentum in a short period of time, traditional media still wields the largest digital influence when it comes to news & politics.” Indeed, the top seven digital influencers are all old media companies that have successfully leveraged assets to build a strong presence across platforms, led by #1 CNN and #2 New York Times. Whether you like them or not, #3 Fox News continues as the dominant voice of the right. NPR surprised us, coming in at #4 with high quality content that users love. While we expected Huffington Post (#8) to be the top player among Internet companies, a small company in the Valley, Google, placed just a few spots behind at #12.

At Sparxoo, we believe that a seismic shift is afoot. We have said, “an earthquake has shaken our social foundation, shifting the power of the chosen few and giving opportunity to the many.” Indeed, the opportunity is there for new entrants such as The Daily Beast, but we must respect the strength of established organizations such as the New York Times, founded in 1851, that embrace today’s digital world and attempt to reinvent themselves. As we emerge into a new economy, forward thinking leaders will survive, and perhaps even prosper.

Warm regards,

David Capece
Managing Partner, Sparxoo

Click here to read the report

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