Washington Post (WPO) Versus NY Times (NYT) Online

The Washington Post Company (WPO) and New York Times (NYT) have been posting very different numbers in their online businesses. While the NYT figures show that its internet operations could offset its declines in print revenue, there does not appear to be any chance of that at the Post.

In the last quarter, the newspaper business at WPO had revenue of $211 million and operating income of $8.8 million a drop of almost half from the same quarter a year ago  It barely broke even. At the Times, newspaper revenue was $730 million and operating income was $33 million.

At the Post, online revenue was much more modest than Wall St. might have hoped. It hit $27.2 million up only 11% from the year before. At the Times, internet revenue from the same period rose almost 26% to just under $80 million. Taking out the company’s About.com business, and that figure for Q3 is $55 million for the online versions of the newspapers, and the growth rate over the previous year was 23%.

The Washington Post properties may be suffering from slow audience growth, which is not good news. According to Alexa, the online audience measurement service, washingtonpost.com ranks 763 among all websites, down 139 positions in three months. More recent numbers show that slide continuing. Another measurement service, Compete, shows the website’s audience growing, but not as fast as nytimes.com. The audience at Newsweek.com has started to grow sharply since it became independent from MSNBC, but Slate, the Post’s online magazine property, is ranked No. 2,606 in Alexa, down 858 places over the last three months. In measurements by Compete, it shows slow growth over the last year.

At the Times, Compete shows 38% growth over the last twelve months for nytimes.com. Alexa ranks the site at No. 216, down 16 positions in three months. The company’s Boston.com site is up 8 spots in Alexa to 1,302 among all websites. Compete has it up 24% in audience over the last year.

The slow internet revenue growth at The Washington Post appears to be linked to poor audience growth at some of its properties. And, that may be a hard problem to solve.

Look for more in-depth on these and other new and old media operations in 24/7 Wall St.’s "Old Media/New Media" Stock Letter.

Douglas A. McIntyre