Why are readers fleeing from Australia’s top news sites?
Australia’s ten most-visited news sites lost millions of readers throughout June, with The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, and the ABC suffering the most dramatic audience drops.
With over 12 million readers, ABC News remains the most-read Australian news site, according to the latest Ipsos Iris data. This is despite losing more than 1.9 million readers from May to June.
The Guardian lost more than one-fifth of its audience during June, dropping close to 2.1 million readers, and falling from 9.38 million to 7.395 million. That decline of 21% is the biggest monthly fall of any major news site over at least the past year (see trend graph below).
Pretty weird that they all dropped down. Could have been post-election effect. Or it could be that lots of people are tired of being bomb-barded by pretty ordinary stuff.
I’m agreeing with your AI call. People were probably going to the mastheads for some sort of depth and parsing pre-election, but since then have succumbed to the learned helplessness paragraph that now sits atop the goggle search. Would be curious to know if sports metrics align with general news in the above chart.
In today’s news… a young bubbly presenter speaks enthusiastically about house prices rising to even more unaffordable levels; an investments expert recommends getting into fossil fuels; we explain why the latest police atrocities were actually deserved; a politician lies about something and we just parrot what they say; plus, we’ve a polarising selection of sports.
People might feel they’ve seen it all before, perhaps? Or maybe that there’s nothing relatable or positive about consuming it any more.
Maybe yet another story about how it is about to rain in Sydney didn’t hold people’s attention?
Average agenda or tabloid schlock reporting, opinion pieces dominating over actual news, relentlessly negative subject matter and all behind a paywall and crammed with pre-roll ads.
Wonder why the numbers are dropping?